Quotes about animals

A collection of quotes on the topic of dogs, horse, cats, animals.

Best quotes about animals

„Animals don't hate, and we're supposed to be smarter than them.“

— Elvis Presley American singer and actor 1935 - 1977

Variant: Animals don't hate, and we're supposed to be better than them.

„Dying more like animals than human beings.“

— Giovanni Boccaccio, book The Decameron

Non come uomini, ma quasi come bestie, morieno.
First Day, Introduction
The Decameron (c. 1350)

„I've had an animal all my life, I wouldnt know myself without one!)“

— Ben Kowalewicz musician 1975

From "The Diary of Billy Talent":

„Man is an animal that diddles, and there is no animal that diddles but man.“

— Edgar Allan Poe American author, poet, editor and literary critic 1809 - 1849

" Diddling: Considered As One Of The Exact Sciences http://www.classicreader.com/read.php/sid.6/bookid.1390/"; first published as "Raising the Wind" in Saturday Courier (1843-10-14).

„Animals are my friends… and I don't eat my friends.“

— George Bernard Shaw Irish playwright 1856 - 1950

„Whosoever is delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or a god.“

— Aristotle Classical Greek philosopher, student of Plato and founder of Western philosophy -384 - -321 BC

„All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal.“

— John Steinbeck American writer 1902 - 1968

„You can judge a man's true character by the way he treats his fellow animals.“

— Paul McCartney English singer-songwriter and composer 1942

„Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened.“

— Anatole France French writer 1844 - 1924

„Man is the cruelest animal.“

— Friedrich Nietzsche German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist 1844 - 1900

All quotes about animals

Total 3131 quotes animals, filter:

„.. When an individual, e. g. higher forms of animals, thinks, it is always for his own advantage whether the resulting action or expression is favorable or not to the onlookers or observers.“

— Isidro A. T. Savillo Filipino biologist 1959

The Overpowering Influence of the Environment to Gene Expression, Biologybrowser.org, 2002 http://biologybrowser.org/node/1154589,

Thinking

„Struggle is the father of all things. It is not by the principles of humanity that man lives or is able to preserve himself above the animal world, but solely by means of the most brutal struggle.“

— Adolf Hitler Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party 1889 - 1945

World

„Thousands of people who say they "love" animals sit down once or twice a day to enjoy the flesh of creatures who have been utterly deprived of everything that could make their lives worth living and who endured the awful suffering and the terror of the abattoirs— and the journey to get there— before finally leaving their miserable world, only too often after a painful death.“

— Jane Goodall British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist 1934

The Ten Trusts (2003), p. xv

Love, Death, Pain, People

„Researchers find it very necessary to keep blinkers on. They don't want to admit that the animals they are working with have feelings.“

— Jane Goodall British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist 1934

" An Interview with Jane Goodall https://web.archive.org/web/20100920074838/http://www.idausa.org:80/essays/goodallinterview.html", In Defense of Animals (date unknown)
Context: Researchers find it very necessary to keep blinkers on. They don't want to admit that the animals they are working with have feelings. They don't want to admit that they might have minds and personalities because that would make it quite difficult for them to do what they do; so we find that within the lab communities there is a very strong resistance among the researchers to admitting that animals have minds, personalities and feelings.

Feeling

„Auschwitz begins wherever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they’re only animals.“

— Theodor W. Adorno German sociologist, philosopher and musicologist known for his critical theory of society 1903 - 1969

Thinking

„If today is Children's Day, yesterday I said that child… the children's day is mother's day, father's day and teachers' day, but is also the day of the animals. Whenever you look at a child, there is always a hidden figure, which is a dog behind, which is something very important.“

— Dilma Rousseff 36th President of Brazil 1947

Speech in Porto Alegre http://www2.planalto.gov.br/acompanhe-o-planalto/discursos/discursos-da-presidenta/discurso-da-presidenta-da-republica-dilma-rousseff-na-cerimonia-de-anuncio-de-investimentos-do-pac-mobilidade-urbana-e-entrega-de-57-maquinas-motoniveladoras ( YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3IvZToSwgE), October 12.
2013

Children, Dogs, Teachers

„It's dangerous & humiliating. The whalers killed whales while green peace watched. Now, you don't walk by a child that is being abused, you don't walk by a kitten that is being kicked to death and do nothing. So I find it abhorrent to sit there and watch a whale being slaughtered and do nothing but "bear witness" as they call it. I think it was best illustrated a few years ago, the contradictions that we have, when a ranger in Zimbabwe shot and killed a poacher that was about to kill a black rhinoceros and uh human rights groups around the world said "how dare you? Take a human life to protect an animal". I think the rangers' answer to that really illustrated a hypocrisy. He said "Ya know, if I lived in, If I was a police officer in Herrari and a man ran out of Bark Place Bank with a bag of money and I shot him in the head in front of everybody and killed him, you'd pin a medal on me and call me a national hero. Why is that bag of paper more valued than the future heritage of this nation?" This is our values. WE fight, WE kill, WE risk our lives for things we believe in… Imagine going into Mecca, walk up to the black stone and spit on it. See how far you get. You’re not going to get very far. You’re going to be torn to pieces. Walk into Jerusalem, walk up to that wailing wall with a pick axe, start whacking away. See how far you’re going to get, somebody is going to put a bullet in your back. And everybody will say you deserved it. Walk into the Vatican with a hammer, start smashing a few statues. See how far you’re going to get. Not very far. But each and every day, ya know, people go into the most beautiful, most profoundly sacred cathedrals of this planet, the rainforests of the Amazonia, the redwood forests of California, the rainforests of Indonesia, and totally desecrate & destroy these cathedrals with bulldozers, chainsaws and how do we respond to that? Oh, we write a few letters and protest; we dress up in animal costumes with picket signs and jump up and down; but if the rainforests of Amazonia and redwoods of California, were as, or had as much value to us as a chunk of old meteorite in Mecca, a decrepit old wall in Jerusalem or a piece of old marble in the Vatican, we would literally rip those pieces limb from limb for the act of blasphemy that we’re committing but we won’t do that because nature is an abstraction, wilderness is an abstraction. It has no value in our anthropocentric world where the only thing we value is that which is created by humans.“

— Paul Watson Canadian environmental activist 1950

Life, Death, Money, People

„We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth.“

— Henry Beston American writer 1888 - 1968

Source: The Outermost House, 1928, p. 25: Ch 2
Source: The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod
Context: We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they moved finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.

Life, Fate, World, Sense

„The man who kills the animals today is the man who kills the people who get in his way tomorrow“

— Dian Fossey American zoologist, gorilla researcher 1932 - 1985

People, Way

„The truth is I love being alive. And I love feeling free. So if I can't have those things then I feel like a caged animal and I'd rather not be in a cage. I'd rather be dead. And it's real simple. And I think it's not that uncommon.“

— Angelina Jolie American actress, film director, and screenwriter 1975

Love, Truth, Feeling, Thinking

„Accustom yourself to look first to the dreadful consequences of failure; then fix your eye on the glorious prize which is before you; and when your strength begins to fail, and your spirits are well nigh exhausted, let the animating view rekindle your resolution, and call forth in renewed vigour the fainting energies of your soul.“

— William Wilberforce English politician 1759 - 1833

Soul, Failure

„If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.“

— George Orwell, book Animal Farm

Sometimes paraphrased as "Liberty is telling people what they do not want to hear."
Variant: Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
Source: Original preface to Animal Farm; as published in George Orwell: Some Materials for a Bibliography (1953) by Ian R. Willison

People

„If a black cat crosses your path, it signifies that the animal is going somewhere.“

— Groucho Marx American comedian 1890 - 1977

Cats, Funny

„I no longer have patience for certain things, not because I’ve become arrogant, but simply because I reached a point in my life where I do not want to waste more time with what displeases me or hurts me. I have no patience for cynicism, excessive criticism and demands of any nature. I lost the will to please those who do not like me, to love those who do not love me and to smile at those who do not want to smile at me. I no longer spend a single minute on those who lie or want to manipulate. I decided not to coexist anymore with pretense, hypocrisy, dishonesty and cheap praise. I do not tolerate selective erudition nor academic arrogance. I do not adjust either to popular gossiping. I hate conflict and comparisons. I believe in a world of opposites and that’s why I avoid people with rigid and inflexible personalities. In friendship I dislike the lack of loyalty and betrayal. I do not get along with those who do not know how to give a compliment or a word of encouragement. Exaggerations bore me and I have difficulty accepting those who do not like animals. And on top of everything I have no patience for anyone who does not deserve my patience.“

— Meryl Streep American actress 1949

Misattributed to Meryl Streep (and widely disseminated on the Internet as of August/September 2014), this quote is allegedly a translation of a text by the author José Micard Teixeira, the original of which begins (in Portuguese): "Já não tenho paciência para algumas coisas, não porque me tenha tornado arrogante..."
Misattributed

Love, Life, Hate, Friendship

„A member of the human race who is completely incapable of understanding the higher productivity of labor performed under a division of labor based on private property is not properly speaking a person… but falls instead into the same moral category as an animal – of either the harmless sort (to be domesticated and employed as a producer or consumer good, or to be enjoyed as a “free good”) or the wild and dangerous one (to be fought as a pest). On the other hand, there are members of the human species who are capable of understanding the [value of the division of labor] but…who knowingly act wrongly… [B]esides having to be tamed or even physically defeated [they] must also be punished… to make them understand the nature of their wrongdoings and hopefully teach them a lesson for the future.“

— Hans-Hermann Hoppe, book Democracy: The God That Failed

Source: Democracy: The God That Failed (2001), P.173

Understanding, Nature, Future, Personality

„I'm very proud [to be part Italian] … Although I don't eat a lot of Italian things, because I'm vegan. … I love animals more than I love most people, not kidding. But I am a firm believer in eating a full plant-based, whole food diet that can expand your life length and make you an all-round happier person. It is tricky dining out, but I just stick to what I know – veggies, fruit and salad – then when I get home I'll have something else.“

— Ariana Grande American singer-songwriter 1993

"Ariana Grande: "I love animals more than I love most people, not kidding"" https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/ariana-grande-i-love-animals-4754625, interview with the Mirror (5 December 2014)

Love, Life, People, Food

„Like the old Indian proverb says, do not judge a man until you've walked 2 moons in his moccasins.
Most people don't know me, that is why they write such things in which most is not true. I cry very very often because it hurts and I worry about the children, all my children all over the world, I live for them.
If a man could say nothing against a character but what he could prove, history could not be written.
Animals strike not from malice but because they want to live, it is the same with those who criticize, they desire our blood not our pain. But still I must achieve I must seek truth in all things. I must endure for the power I was sent forth, for the world for the children.
But have mercy, for I've been bleeding a long time now. MJ.“

— Michael Jackson American singer, songwriter and dancer 1958 - 2009

Handwritten note published in People (12 October 1987)

Pain, Children, People, Truth

„I became a vegetarian because I felt really bad for the animals and I love them a lot. Animals are very sweet, and I don't think that they deserve to be tortured.“

— Mckenna Grace American child actress 2006

“Young Actors Visit a Rescued Animal Sanctuary,” video interview with PETA Kids (14 November 2016) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jq4n3Pnku0.

Love, Thinking

„If exposure of body is modernism, then animals are more modern than humans.“

— Zakir Naik Islamic televangelist 1965

Zakir Naik https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/7133146.Zakir_Naik

„Behold, my brothers, the spring has come; the earth has received the embraces of the sun and we shall soon see the results of that love! Every seed has awakened and so has all animal life. It is through this mysterious power that we too have our being and we therefore yield to our neighbors, even our animal neighbors, the same right as ourselves, to inhabit this land.“

— Sitting Bull Hunkpapa Lakota medicine man and holy man 1831 - 1890

GoodReads https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/5712889.Sitting_Bull
Attributed quotes

Sun, Spring, Love, Life

„I'm looking for the face i had before the world was made. I was the primordial flaring forth, the gravitational waves, the whirling galaxies, and the exploding supernovas that would become stars and planets. I was the steaming planet Earth, the bacteria awash in the sea, and the early eukaryotes and multicellular animals. I exploded in the Cambrian explosion, stumbled onto land, walked with dinosaurs, saw trees and flowers appear, walked upright in Africa, and walked on the moon. I felt the embrace of gravity. I was one with all that had been and all that was to be. I experienced subjective mystical communion with the evolutionary, emergent universe. I was the universe. We know not where the journey leads, nor whether a final destination is even a meaningful concept. The attraction is the inherent thrill of participating in a grand creative endeavor for which participation is its own reward“

— Alexis Karpouzos 1967

Source: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14108295.alexis_karpouzos

Tree, Star, Flowers, Universe

„Animal lovers are a special breed of humans, generous of spirit, full of empathy, perhaps a little prone to sentimentality, and with hearts as big as a cloudless sky“

— John Grogan American journalist 1958

Source: Marley & Me: Life and Love with the World's Worst Dog

Lovers, Heart

„By ceasing to rear and kill animals for food, we can make so much extra food available for humans that, properly distributed, it would eliminate starvation and malnutrition from this planet. Animal Liberation is Human Liberation too.“

— Peter Singer, book Animal Liberation

Source: Animal Liberation

Food

„Am I in the picture? Am I getting in or out of it? I could be a ghost, an animal or a dead body, not just this girl standing on the corner…?“

— Francesca Woodman American photographer 1958 - 1981

Girl, Dead

„If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and man.“

— Mark Twain American author and humorist 1835 - 1910

Variant: If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.

Dogs

„For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen.“

— Stephen Hawking British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author 1942 - 2018

British Telecom advertisement (1993), part of which was used in Pink Floyd's Keep Talking (1994) and Talkin' Hawkin'<nowiki/> (2014)
Context: For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen. Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings to work together to build the impossible. Mankind's greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn't have to be like this. Our greatest hopes could become reality in the future. With the technology at our disposal, the possibilities are unbounded. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.

Imagination, Learning

„Folk caught up in a riot aren't our cousins and sisters, our brothers and uncles. They are part of a big animal with many arms and claws, armed with stones and sticks.“

— Tamora Pierce, book Terrier

Source: Terrier

Sister, Parting

„As long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seeds of murder and pain cannot reap the joy of love.“

— Pythagoras ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher -585 - -495 BC

Attribution to Pythagoras by Ovid, as quoted in The Extended Circle: A Dictionary of Humane Thought (1985) by Jon Wynne-Tyson, p. 260; also in Vegetarian Times, No. 168 (August 1991), p. 4
Context: As long as Man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings, he will never know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.

Love, Men, Pain, Joy

„You are the Protector of the Small. You see real people in the humans and animals overlooked by your peers. There will always be work for you.“

— Tamora Pierce, book Lady Knight

Source: Lady Knight

People

„Do not fight them. Instead think of them the way you think of children, or pets, not important enough to affect your mental balance“

— Robert Greene, The 33 Strategies of War

Source: The 33 Strategies of War

Children, Way, Thinking, Fight

„Nonconformity is the highest evolutionary attainment of social animals.“

— Aldo Leopold, book A Sand County Almanac

"A Man's Leisure Time," 1920; Published in Round River, Luna B. Leopold (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1966, p. 8.
1920s
Source: A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There

„Never break a promise to an animal. They're like babies—they won't understand.“

— Tamora Pierce, book Wild Magic

Source: Wild Magic

Understanding, Baby

„If having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans.“

— James Herriot veterinary surgeon and writer 1916 - 1995

Source: All Creatures Great and Small

Love, Feeling, Soul, Loyalty

„If animals could speak, the dog would be a blundering outspoken fellow; but the cat would have the rare grace of never saying a word too much.“

— Mark Twain American author and humorist 1835 - 1910

Dogs, Cats

„Books have the same enemies as people: fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content.“

— Paul Valéry French poet, essayist, and philosopher 1871 - 1945

People, Books, Weather

„No domestic animal can be as still as a wild animal. The civilized people have lost the aptitude of stillness, and must take lessons in silence from the wild before they are accepted by it.“

— Karen Blixen, book Out of Africa

Source: Out of Africa

People, Silence

„As a general rule of biology, migratory species are less 'aggressive' than sedentary ones.

There is one obvious reason why this should be so. The migration itself, like the pilgrimage, is the hard journey: a 'leveller' on which the 'fit' survive and stragglers fall by the wayside.

The journey thus pre-empts the need for hierarchies and shows of dominance. The 'dictators' of the animal kingdom are those who live in an ambience of plenty. The anarchists, as always, are the 'gentlemen of the road'.“

— Bruce Chatwin, book The Songlines

Source: The Songlines

„Animals shouldn’t be hunted and nature shouldn’t be disturbed, even destroyed, to benefit the whims of mankind“

— Charles Manson American criminal and musician 1934 - 2017

Nature

„Nature is part our humanity, and without some awareness and experience of that divine mystery man ceases to be man. When the Pleiades and the wind in the grass are no longer a part of the human spirit, a part of very flesh and bone, man becomes, as it were, a kind of cosmic outlaw, having neither the completeness and integrity of the animal nor the birthright of a true humanity.“

— Henry Beston American writer 1888 - 1968

Source: The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod

Nature, Grass, Parting

„Better to be an animal than a man, an insect than an animal, a plant than an insect, and so on. Salvation? Whatever diminishes the kingdom of consciousness and compromises its supremacy.“

— Emil M. Cioran, book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
Source: The Trouble with Being Born

„I'd rather skate naked than wear fur.“

— Surya Bonaly French figure skater 1973

Banner held for PETA, as she skated in Asnieres, near Paris (31 January 2007); as quoted in " 今天我最炫 Skate Naked 裸體滑冰 http://www.appledaily.com.tw/appledaily/article/international/20070202/3227612/", in the Apple Daily (2 February 2007).

„If melodiously piping flutes sprang from the olive, would you doubt that a knowledge of flute-playing resided in the olive? And what if plane trees bore harps which gave forth rhythmical sounds? Clearly you would think in the same way that the art of music was possessed by plane trees. Why, then, seeing that the universe gives birth to beings that are animate and wise, should it not be considered animate and wise itself?“

— Zeno of Citium ancient Greek philosopher -334 - -263 BC

As quoted in De Natura Deorum by Cicero, ii. 8.

Art, Music, Way, Birth

„I first saw the light on the 5th of August, 1860, I was born in Lee Street, Wharf Street, Leicester. The deformity which I am now exhibiting was caused by my mother being frightened by an Elephant; my mother was going along the street when a procession of Animals were passing by, there was a terrible crush of people to see them, and unfortunately she was pushed under the Elephant's feet, which frightened her very much; this occurring during a time of pregnancy was the cause of my deformity.“

— Joseph Merrick English man with severe deformities 1862 - 1890

Autobiographical sideshow pamphlet

People, Light, Time

„Oh! Women can never forgive me. They hate me, they can feel that I ‘m disarming them. I show them without their coquetry, in the states of animals cleaning themselves… …I'm sure of it; they see me as the enemy. Fortunately, since if they did like me, that would be the end of me.“

— Edgar Degas French artist 1834 - 1917

In Degas by Himself, Drawings, Paintings, Writings, ed. Richard Kendall 2000, p. 299
quotes, undated

Women, Hate, Feeling, Forgiveness

„On the surface it may seem that wars are caused by economic and political questions, but in fact they are caused by our wholesale slaughter of animals. The laws of justice are inexorable, and human beings are going to have to pay with their own blood … We kill animals, but nature is an organic whole, and by killing animals we are, as it were, affecting certain glands in that organism. When this happens, the balance of the organism is disrupted, and it is not surprising that before long war breaks out among men. Yes, human beings have slaughtered millions of animals for their meat, without realizing that on the invisible plane those animals are linked to other human beings, and it is they who will now have to share the fate of the animals. When we slaughter animals we are slaughtering human beings. Everybody agrees that it is time to establish the reign of peace in the world, that there must be no more wars. Yes, but war will go on just as long as we continue to slaughter animals, because by destroying them we are destroying ourselves.“

— Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov Bulgarian philosopher 1900 - 1986

The Yoga of Nutrition, Editions Prosveta, 2012 ebook edition, pp. 24 https://books.google.it/books?id=jnoVCwAAQBAJ&pg=PT24-25.

Men, Fate, War, World

„GG Allin is an entertainer with a message to a sick society. He makes us look at it for what we really are. The human is just another animal who is able to speak out freely, to express himself clearly. Make no mistake about it, behind what he does is a brain.“

— John Wayne Gacy American serial killer and torturer 1942 - 1994

John Wayne Gacy on Todd Phillips: Hated: GG Allin and the Murder Junkies, Skinny Nervous Guy Prod, 1994. 2007 DVD re-release watched March 1, 2010.

„No man who aims at making his life an harmonious whole, pure, complete, and harmless to others, can endure to gratify an appetite at the cost of the daily suffering and bloodshed of his inferiors in degree, and of the moral degradation of his own kind. I know not which strikes me most forcibly in the ethics of this question the injustice, the cruelty, or the nastiness of flesh-eating. The injustice is to the butchers, the cruelty is to the animals, the nastiness concerns the consumer. With regard to this last in particular, I greatly wonder what persons of refinement—aye, even of decency—do not feel insulted on being offered, as a matter of course, portions of corpses as food! Such comestibles might possibly be tolerated during sieges, or times of other privation of proper viands in exceptional circumstances, but in the midst of a civilised community able to command a profusion of sound and delicious foods, it ought to be deemed an affront to set dead flesh before a guest.“

— Anna Kingsford English physician, activist and feminist 1846 - 1888

Addresses and Essays on Vegetarianism (1912); quoted in Awe for the Tiger, Love for the Lamb by Rod Preece (Routledge, 2002), p. 344 https://books.google.it/books?id=Mf6TAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA344.

Life, Food, Feeling, Communication

„I’d made a family friendly game about a beaver before this, when I went to put it online it got torn apart by a few prominent reviewers. People said that the main character looked like a scary animatronic animal. I was heartbroken and was ready to give up on game-making. Then one night something just snapped in me, and I thought to myself- I bet I can make something a lot scarier than that.“

— Scott Cawthon American independent video game designer 1971

People, Family, Game, Night

„I’m a good person but a shitty writer. You’re a shitty person but a good writer. We’d make a good team. I don’t want to ask you any favors, but if you have time – and from what I saw, you have plenty – I was wondering if you could write a eulogy for Hazel. I’ve got notes and everything, but if you could just make it into a coherent whole or whatever? Or even just tell me what I should say differently. Here’s the thing about Hazel: Almost everyone is obsessed with leaving a mark upon the world. Bequeathing a legacy. Outlasting death. We all want to be remembered. I do, too. That’s what bothers me most, is being another unremembered casualty in the ancient and inglorious war against disease. I want to leave a mark. But Van Houten: The marks humans leave are too often scars. You build a hideous minimall or start a coup or try to become a rock star and you think, “They’ll remember me now,” but (a) they don’t remember you, and (b) all you leave behind are more scars. Your coup becomes a dictatorship. Your minimall becomes a lesion. (Okay, maybe I’m not such a shitty writer. But I can’t pull my ideas together, Van Houten. My thoughts are stars I can’t fathom into constellations.) We are like a bunch of dogs squirting on fire hydrants. We poison the groundwater with our toxic piss, marking everything MINE in a ridiculous attempt to survive our deaths. I can’t stop pissing on fire hydrants. I know it’s silly and useless – epically useless in my current state – but I am an animal like any other. Hazel is different. She walks lightly, old man. She walks lightly upon the earth. Hazel knows the truth: We’re as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we’re not likely to do either. People will say it’s sad that she leaves a lesser scar, that fewer remember her, that she was loved deeply but not widely. But it’s not sad, Van Houten. It’s triumphant. It’s heroic. Isn’t that the real heroism? Like the doctors say: First, do no harm. The real heroes anyway aren’t the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention. The guy who invented the smallpox vaccine didn’t actually invent anything. He just noticed that people with cowpox didn’t get smallpox. After my PET scan lit up, I snuck into the ICU and saw her while she was unconscious. I just walked in behind a nurse with a badge and I got to sit next to her for like ten minutes before I got caught. I really thought she was going to die, too. It was brutal: the incessant mechanized haranguing of intensive care. She had this dark cancer water dripping out of her chest. Eyes closed. Intubated. But her hand was still her hand, still warm and the nails painted this almost black dark almost blue color, and I just held her hand and tried to imagine the world without us and for about one second I was a good enough person to hope she died so she would never know that I was going, too. But then I wanted more time so we could fall in love. I got my wish, I suppose. I left my scar. A nurse guy came in and told me I had to leave, that visitors weren’t allowed, and I asked if she was doing okay, and the guy said, “She’s still taking on water.”“

— John Green, book The Fault in Our Stars

A desert blessing, an ocean curse. What else? She is so beautiful. You don’t get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers."
Augustus "Gus" Waters, p. 310-313
The Fault in Our Stars (2012)

Love, Death, War, People

„Animal rights is a part of my everyday life. When you live by example, you create a certain level of awareness. Friends of mine, people I have never discussed vegetarianism with, are adopting vegetarian habits because they see it.“

— Joaquin Phoenix American actor, music video director, producer, musician, and social activist 1974

" Fake leather please! http://www.dnaindia.com/entertainment/report_fake-leather-please_1064075". Interview for Daily News and Analysis. November 14, 2006.

Life, People, Parting

„One basic principle must be the absolute rule for the S. S. men. We must be honest, decent, loyal, and comradely to members of our own blood and nobody else. What happens to a Russian and a Czech does not interest me in the least. What the nations can offer in the way of good blood of our type we will take, if necessary by kidnapping their children and raising them here with us. Whether nations live in prosperity or starve to death interests me only in so far as we need them as slaves for our culture: otherwise it is of no interest to me. Whether ten thousand Russian females fall down from exhaustion while digging an anti-tank ditch interests me only in so far as the anti-tank ditch for Germany is finished. We shall never be tough and heartless where it is not necessary, that is clear. We, Germans, who are the only people in the world who have a decent attitude towards animals, will also assume a decent attitude towards these human animals. But it is a crime against our blood to worry about them and give them ideals, thus causing our sons and grandsons to have a more difficult time with them. When somebody comes up to me and says: 'I cannot dig the anti-tank ditch with women and children, it is inhuman, for it would kill them,' then I have to say: 'You are the murderer of your own blood, because if the anti-tank ditch is not dug German soldiers will die, and they are the sons of German mothers. They are our own blood….“

— Heinrich Himmler Nazi officer, Commander of the SS 1900 - 1945

Our concern, our duty, is our people and our blood. We can be indifferent to everything else. I wish the S.S. to adopt this attitude towards the problem of all foreign, non-Germanic peoples, especially Russians....
The Posen speech to SS officers (6 October 1943)
1940s

Death, Women, Men, Children

„Plato had defined Man as an animal, biped and featherless, and was applauded. Diogenes plucked a fowl and brought it into the lecture-room with the words, "Behold Plato's man!"“

— Diogenes of Sinope ancient Greek philosopher, one of the founders of the Cynic philosophy -404 - -322 BC

Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 40
Quoted by Diogenes Laërtius

„Being a vegan, caring about animals … all this compassion in my lifestyle is the reward in and of itself.“

— Steve-O England-born American stunt performer/radio personality 1974

"Steve-O Snags Top PETA Honor" https://www.peta.org/blog/steve-o-takes-top-peta-honor/, PETA (July 18, 2011).

„When the common good of a society is regarded as something apart from and superior to the individual good of its members, it means that the good of some men takes precedence over the good of others, with those others consigned to the status of sacrificial animals.“

— Ayn Rand, book Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966)

Men

„We felt that the public, and especially the children, like animals that are cute and little. I think we are rather indebted to Charlie Chaplin for the idea.“

— Walt Disney American film producer and businessman 1901 - 1966

Stating that the development of the Mickey Mouse character was inspired by Charlie Chaplin's character "the Tramp", as quoted in How to Be Like Walt : Capturing the Disney Magic Every Day of Your Life (2004) by Pat Williams and Jim Denney, p. 52
Context: We felt that the public, and especially the children, like animals that are cute and little. I think we are rather indebted to Charlie Chaplin for the idea. We wanted something appealing, and we thought of a tiny bit of a mouse that would have something of the wistfulness of Chaplin — a little fellow trying to do the best he could.

Children, Idea, Thinking

„I concluded that women are flawed. There is something mentally wrong with the way their brains are wired, as if they haven’t evolved from animal-like thinking. They are incapable of reason or thinking rationally. They are like animals, completely controlled by their primal, depraved emotions and impulses. That is why they are attracted to barbaric, wild, beast-like men. They are beasts themselves. Beasts should not be able to have any rights in a civilized society. If their wickedness is not contained, the whole of humanity will be held back from advancement to a more civilized state. Women should not have the right to choose who to mate with. That choice should be made for them by civilized men of intelligence. If women had the freedom to choose which men to mate with, like they do today, they would breed with stupid, degenerate men, which would only produce stupid, degenerate offspring. This in turn would hinder the advancement of humanity. Not only hinder it, but devolve humanity completely. Women are like a plague that must be quarantined. When I came to this brilliant, pefect revelation, I felt like everything was now clear to me, in a bitter, twisted way. I am one of the few people on this world who has the intelligence to see this. I am like a god, and my purpose is to exact ultimate Retribution on all of the impurities I see in the world.“

— Elliot Rodger American spree killer 1991 - 2014

My Twisted World (2014), 19-22, UC Santa Barbara, Building to Violence

God, Freedom, Intelligence, People

„When I get honest, I admit I am a bundle of paradoxes. I believe and I doubt, I hope and get discouraged, I love and I hate, I feel bad about feeling good, I feel guilty about not feeling guilty. I am trusting and suspicious. I am honest and I still play games. Aristotle said I am a rational animal; I say I am an angel with an incredible capacity for beer.“

— Brennan Manning, book The Ragamuffin Gospel

p. 11 https://books.google.com/books?id=sUTZCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA11
1990s, The Ragamuffin Gospel (1990)

Hate, Beer, Bad luck, Game

„I think, whether we’re talking about gender inequality or racism or queer rights or indigenous rights or animal rights, we’re talking about the fight against injustice. We’re talking about the fight against the belief that one nation, one people, one race, one gender, one species, has the right to dominate, use and control another with impunity. I think we’ve become very disconnected from the natural world. Many of us are guilty of an egocentric world view, and we believe that we’re the centre of the universe. We go into the natural world and we plunder it for its resources. We feel entitled to artificially inseminate a cow and steal her baby, even though her cries of anguish are unmistakeable. Then we take her milk that’s intended for her calf and we put it in our coffee and our cereal. We fear the idea of personal change, because we think we need to sacrifice something; to give something up. But human beings at our best are so creative and inventive, and we can create, develop and implement systems of change that are beneficial to all sentient beings and the environment.“

— Joaquin Phoenix American actor, music video director, producer, musician, and social activist 1974

"Joaquin Phoenix's Oscars speech in full: 'We feel entitled to artificially inseminate a cow and steal her baby'" https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/feb/10/joaquin-phoenixs-oscars-speech-in-full, The Guardian (February 10, 2020).

Baby, Personality, People, Nature

„There is no animal that can intimidate a lion to act against his will.“

— Mwanandeke Kindembo 1996

„Make ethical choices in what we buy, do, and watch. In a consumer-driven society our individual choices, used collectively for the good of animals and nature, can change the world faster than laws.“

— Marc Bekoff American biologist 1945

Source: Animals Matter: A Biologist Explains Why We Should Treat Animals with Compassion and Respect

World, Law, Nature, Change

„animals never worry about Heaven or Hell. neither do I. maybe that's why we get along“

— Charles Bukowski American writer 1920 - 1994

Source: The Last Night of the Earth Poems

Hell

„All the arguments to prove man's superiority cannot shatter this hard fact: in suffering the animals are our equals.“

— Peter Singer Australian philosopher 1946

Suffering

„Producing an animation series merely to fill time slots in the broadcast schedule is like generating cultural pollution.“

— Hayao Miyazaki Japanese animator, film director, and mangaka 1941

Time

„Four legs good, two legs better! All Animals Are Equal. But Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others.“

— George Orwell, book Animal Farm

Variant: All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
Source: Animal Farm

„And so we exchange privacy for intimacy. We gamble with it, hoping that by exposing ourselves, someone will find a way in. This is why the human animal will always be vulnerable: because it wants to be.“

— Max Barry Australian writer 1973

Source: Lexicon

Hope, Way

„I can't abide people who go soft over animals and then cheat every human they come across!“

— Diana Wynne Jones, book Castle in the Air

Source: Castle in the Air

People, Cheating

„I think using animals for food is an ethical thing to do, but we've got to do it right. We've got to give those animals a decent life and we've got to give them a painless death. We owe the animal respect.“

— Temple Grandin USA-american doctor of animal science, author, and autism activist 1947

Life, Death, Food, Thinking

„Compassion for animals is intimately connected with goodness of character, and it may be confidently asserted that he, who is cruel to living creatures, cannot be a good man. Moreover, this compassion manifestly flows from the same source whence arise the virtues of justice and loving-kindness towards men.“

— Arthur Schopenhauer German philosopher 1788 - 1860

Part III, Ch. VIII, 7, p. 223 https://archive.org/stream/basisofmorality00schoiala#page/223/mode/2up
On the Basis of Morality (1840)
Source: The Basis of Morality

Love, Men, Justice, Confidence

„Oh, I don’t mean you’re handsome, not the way people think of handsome. Your face seems kind. But your eyes - they’re beautiful. They’re wild, crazy, like some animal peering out of a forest on fire.“

— Charles Bukowski, book Women

Source: Women

People, Beauty, Way, Thinking

„The only animal from which humans have nothing to learn, in fact, is the sheep. Humans have already learned everything the sheep's got to teach.“

— Glen Duncan, book I, Lucifer

Source: I, Lucifer

Learning

„(Raven) "Makes me think of werewolves. Do you think a man can change into an animal?"
(Alexander) "If he's with the right girl.“

— Ellen Schreiber, book Vampire Kisses

Source: Vampire Kisses

Girl, Thinking, Change

„We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals… They are not our brethren; they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life…“

— Henry Beston American writer 1888 - 1968

Source: The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod

Life

„Animation is not just for children - it's also for adults who take drugs.“

— Paul McCartney English singer-songwriter and composer 1942

Children

„I think 2-D animation disappeared from Disney because they made so many uninteresting films. They became very conservative in the way they created them. It's too bad. I thought 2-D and 3-D could coexist happily.“

— Hayao Miyazaki Japanese animator, film director, and mangaka 1941

Way, Thinking

„When people say that animal rescuers are crazy, what they really mean is that animal rescuers share a number of fundamental beliefs that makes them easy to marginalize. Among those is the belief that Rene Descartes was a jackass.“

— Steven Kotler American journalist 1967

Source: A Small Furry Prayer: Dog Rescue and the Meaning of Life

People

„For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.“

— Henry Beston American writer 1888 - 1968

Source: The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod

Life, World, Sense, Time

„Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human. Society is something that precedes the individual. Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast or a god.“

— Aristotle, book Politics

Source: Politics

Life, God, Nature

„Dogs do not have many advantages over people, but one of them is extremely important: euthanasia is not forbidden by law in their case; animals have the right to a merciful death.“

— Milan Kundera, book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Death, People, Law, Dogs

„Just because an animal is large, it doesn't mean he doesn't want kindness; however big Tigger seems to be, remember that he wants as much kindness as Roo.“

— A.A. Milne, book Winnie-the-Pooh

Source: Winnie-the-Pooh

„We do not need to eat animals, wear animals, or use animals for entertainment purposes, and our only defense of these uses is our pleasure, amusement, and convenience.“

— Gary L. Francione American legal scholar 1954

Pleasure

„Sex and excretion are reminders that anyone's claim to round-the-clock dignity is tenuous. The so-called rational animal has a desperate drive to pair up and moan and writhe.“

— Steven Pinker psychologist, linguist, author 1954

Sex

„If we look straight and deep into a chimpanzee's eyes, an intelligent self-assured personality looks back at us. If they are animals, what must we be?“

— Frans de Waal Dutch primatologist and ethologist 1948

Intelligence, Personality

„What is this thing called life? I believe
That the earth and the stars too, and the whole glittering universe, and rocks on the mountains have life,
Only we do not call it so--I speak of the life
That oxidizes fats and proteins and carbo-
Hydrates to live on, and from that chemical energy
Makes pleasure and pain, wonder, love, adoration, hatred and terror: how do these things grow
From a chemical reaction?
I think they were here already, I think the rocks
And the earth and the other planets, and the stars and the galaxies
have their various consciousness, all things are conscious;
But the nerves of an animal, the nerves and brain
Bring it to focus; the nerves and brain are like a burning-glass
To concentrate the heat and make it catch fire:
It seems to us martyrs hotter than the blazing hearth
From which it came. So we scream and laugh, clamorous animals
Born howling to die groaning: the old stones in the dooryard
Prefer silence; but those and all things have their own awareness,
As the cells of a man have; they feel and feed and influence each other, each unto all,
Like the cells of a man's body making one being,
They make one being, one consciousness, one life, one God.“

— Robinson Jeffers American poet 1887 - 1962

Source: The Selected Poetry

Love, Life, God, Pain

„When a human kills an animal for food, he is neglecting his own hunger for justice. Man prays for mercy, but is unwilling to extend it to others. Why should man then expect mercy from God? It's unfair to expect something that you are not willing to give. It is inconsistent. I can never accept inconsistency or injustice. Even if it comes from God. If there would come a voice from God saying, "I'm against vegetarianism!" I would say, "Well, I am for it!" This is how strongly I feel in this regard.“

— Isaac Bashevis Singer Polish-born Jewish-American author 1902 - 1991

Hunger, God, Justice, Food

„Human beings are not natural carnivores. When we kill animals to eat them, they end up killing us because their flesh, which contains cholesterol and saturated fat, was never intended for human beings, who are natural herbivores.“

— William C. Roberts American physician 1932

Quoted in Will Tuttle, The World Peace Diet, [//books.google.it/books?id=H_clxwd27CgC&pg=PT107 ch. 5]

Nature

„If you can spend a little time with these creatures, you can connect them again to animals that you love, which I think helps everybody remember the importance of treating them humanely and with dignity. These are, you know, the lucky animals that have fallen off the backs of trucks and stuff. If you want to help the environment, go vegetarian.“

— Jorja Fox American actress 1968

From a 2008 interview on her involvement with Farm Sanctuary, a charity that rescues abused or neglected animals; as quoted in “'CSI' star fronts new PETA veggie campaign,” in MNN.com (9 November 2011) https://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/blogs/csi-star-fronts-new-peta-veggie-campaign.

Love, Thinking, Time, Help

„[Hindustan] is a wonderful country. Compared with our countries it is a different world; its mountains, rivers, jungles and deserts, its towns, its cultivated lands, its animals and plants, its peoples and their tongues, its rains, and its winds, are all different. …Once the water of Sind is crossed, everything is in the Hindustan way, land, water, tree, rock, people and horde, opinion and custom.“

— Babur 1st Mughal Emperor 1483 - 1530

People, World, Way, Mountain

„Man is a tragic animal. Not because of his smallness, but because he is too well endowed. Man has longings and spiritual demands that reality cannot fulfill. We have expectations of a just and moral world. Man requires meaning in a meaningless world.“

— Peter Wessel Zapffe Norwegian philosopher, mountaineer, and author 1899 - 1990

Source: To Be a Human Being (1989–90)

World, Reality

„What proofs other than negative have we that the animal is without a surviving, if not immortal, soul? On strictly scientific grounds we can adduce as many arguments pro as contra. To express it clearer, neither man nor animal can offer either proof or disproof of the survival of their souls after death. And from the point of view of scientific experience, it is impossible to bring that which has no objective existence under the cognizance of any exact law of science.“

— Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, book Isis Unveiled

Source: Isis Unveiled (1877), Volume I, Chapter XII

Death, Law, Soul, Science

„In one variant, "Allah Almighty has a hundred mercies out of which He sent down one mercy among jinn, men, beasts and insects by which they show affection to one another and by which they show mercy to one another and by which wild animals show mercy to their young. Allah Almighty has held back ninety-nine of the mercies and will show them to His slaves on the Day of Rising."“

— Muhammad Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam 570 - 632

Sunni Hadith

Men

„Ideas should be neutral. But man animates them with his passions and folly. Impure and turned into beliefs, they take on the appearance of reality. The passage from logic is consummated. Thus are born ideologies, doctrines, and bloody farce.“

— Emil M. Cioran, book A Short History of Decay

A Short History of Decay (1949)

Idea, Reality, Appearance, Passion

„I feel there is sensuality … eroticism in the primary things that move, like animals and insects. Being able to inspire the movement to still images … gives me the joy of the creator that breathes life into things that do not have life. The movement must be sufficiently round and sweet … so express its eroticism. In creating cartoons I always think of an ideal, but … half the finish to doubt the rightness of what I'm doing. So I put all my expectations always work next. * * […] I often say jokingly that comics are my true wife and that the cartoons are my lover. The fact that I am fully dedicated to animation, my lover … is because it allows me to express in a sublime … the interesting metamorphosis of a changing body. For me, the greatest fun, no doubt, lies in the draw and give movement to change processes. Always look in my cartons this metamorphosis.“

— Osamu Tezuka Japanese cartoonist and animator 1928 - 1989

From Interview to the author , in Osamu Tezuka, Jumping ; quoted in AA.VV., Osamu Tezuka: A Manga Biography , vol. 4, translated by Marta Fogato, Coconino Press, Bologna, 2001, p. 178. ISBN 8888063188

Life, Feeling, Lovers, Thinking

„The perpetual tendency of the race of man to increase beyond the means of subsistence is one of the general laws of animated nature, which we can have no reason to expect to change.“

— Thomas Robert Malthus British political economist 1766 - 1834

Essay on the Principle of Population (1798; rev. through 1826)

Law, Nature, Change

„Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!“

— Charles Dickens, book Hard Times

Bk. I, Ch. 1
Hard Times (1854)

Life, Children, Girl, Boy

„You see, whether you can draw like this or not, being able to think up this kind of design, it depends on whether or not you can say to yourself, 'Oh, yeah, girls like this exist in real life.' If you don’t spend time watching real people, you can’t do this, because you’ve never seen it. Some people spend their lives interested only in themselves. Almost all Japanese animation is produced with hardly any basis taken from observing real people, you know. It’s produced by humans who can’t stand looking at other humans. And that’s why the industry is full of otaku!“

— Hayao Miyazaki Japanese animator, film director, and mangaka 1941

2014 interview http://en.rocketnews24.com/2014/01/30/ghiblis-hayao-miyazaki-says-the-anime-industrys-problem-is-that-its-full-of-anime-fans/ with Japanese news website Golden Times, 27 January 2014. Translated by RocketNews24 on January 30, 2014.

Life, People, Girl, Thinking

„I first followed the comics of Tagawa Suihō and Yokoyama Ryūichi. But suddenly, once I became devoted to Disney, I set out to copy and master that stuffed-animal style, eventually ending up with how I now draw.“

— Osamu Tezuka Japanese cartoonist and animator 1928 - 1989

Source: http://www.tcj.com/tezuka-osamu-and-american-comics/ Tezuka Osamu and American Comics

Drawing

„How many times, for instance, have we not heard people speak with all the authority of conviction about the "canine teeth" and "simple stomach" of man, as certain evidence of his natural adaptation for a flesh diet! At least we have demonstrated one fact; that if such arguments are valid, they apply with even greater force to the anthropoid apes—whose "canine" teeth are much longer and more powerful than those of man … And yet, with the solitary exception of man, there is not one of these last which does not in a natural condition absolutely refuse to feed on flesh! M. Pouchet observes that all the details of the digestive apparatus in man, as well as his dentition, constitute "so many proofs of his frugivorous origin"—an opinion shared by Professor Owen, who remarks that the anthropoids and all the quadrumana derive their alimentation from fruits, grains, and other succulent and nutritive vegetable substances, and that the strict analogy which exists between the structure of these animals and that of man clearly demonstrates his frugivorous nature. This is also the view taken by Cuvier, Linnæus, Professor Lawrence, Charles Bell, Gassendi, Flourens, and a great number of other eminent writers.“

— Anna Kingsford English physician, activist and feminist 1846 - 1888

The Perfect Way in Diet (London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1881), pp. 13 https://archive.org/stream/perfectwayindie00kinggoog#page/n34-14.

People, Nature, Time

„Because superior non-animal methods are used for this exact training by military and civilian programs around the world, animals are clearly not required to meet your objectives. … I'm sure you agree that our military personnel deserve state-of-the-art training and that our country deserves to be respected for its civilized treatment of animals.“

— Woody Harrelson American actor 1961

Letter that he sent to the Army, against the use of monkeys in chemical attack training exercises; full text in "Woody Harrelson Fights Army Tests on Chimps", in Usnews.com (13 September 2011) https://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2011/09/13/woody-harrelson-fights-army-tests-on-chimps.

World, Art, Training, Country

„The desert was always there, a patient white animal, waiting for men to die, for civilizations to flicker and pass into the darkness…All the evil of the world seemed not evil at all, but inevitable and good and part of that endless struggle to keep the desert down.“

— John Fante, book Ask the Dust

Source: Ask the Dust (1939), Chapter Fourteen

Men, World, Evil, Waiting

„According to the pronouncements of our state rulers and their intellectual bodyguards (of whom there are more than ever before), we are better protected and more secure than ever. We are supposedly protected from global warming and cooling, from the extinction of animals and plants, from the abuses of husbands and wives, parents and employers, from poverty, disease, disaster, ignorance, prejudice, racism, sexism, homophobia, and countless other public enemies and dangers. In fact, however, matters are strikingly different. In order to provide us with all this protection, the state managers expropriate more than 40 percent of the incomes of private producers year in and year out. Government debt and liabilities have increased without interruption, thus increasing the need for future expropriations. Owing to the substitution of government paper money for gold, financial insecurity has increased sharply, and we are continually robbed through currency depreciation. Every detail of private life, property, trade, and contract is regulated by ever higher mountains of laws legislation), thereby creating permanent legal uncertainty and moral hazard. In particular, we have been gradually stripped of the right to exclusion implied in the very concept of private property. … In short, the more the state has increased its expenditures on social security and public safety, the more our private property rights have been eroded, the more our property has been expropriated, confiscated, destroyed, or depreciated, and the more we have been deprived of the very foundation of all protection: economic independence, financial strength, and personal wealth.“

— Hans-Hermann Hoppe Austrian school economist and libertarian anarcho-capitalist philosopher 1949

"The Private Production of Defense" http://www.mises.org/journals/scholar/Hoppe.pdf (15 June 1999)

Life, Money, Disease, Law