Quotes about animals

„I'm a pioneer, I'm an explorer, I'm a human, and I'm coming. I'm animated, I'm alive, my heart's big, it's got hot blood going through it fast. I like to fight, too! I like to eat! I like to have children! I'm here! I've got a life force: This is a human, this is what we look like, this is what we act like, this what everybody was like before us, this is what I am, I'm a throwback. I'm here! I've got the fire of human liberty! I'm setting fires everywhere, and humans are turning on everywhere.“

—  Alex Jones American radio host, author, conspiracy theorist and filmmaker 1974

The Alex Jones Show, "Alex Jones is a human" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=na4GYyJwYjQ, July 22, 2016
2016

„(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

„The only difference between a human and an animal is in having inspiration.“

—  Mwanandeke Kindembo 1996

„I don't know if it's a hundred years, but it seems to me if history continues—that's not at all obvious, that it will—but if society continues to develop without catastrophe on something like the course that you can sort of see over time, I wouldn't be in the least surprised if it moves toward vegetarianism and protection of animal rights. In fact, what we've seen over the years—and it's hard to be optimistic in the twentieth century, which is one of the worst centuries in human history in terms of atrocities and terror and so on—but still, over the years, including the twentieth century, there is a widening of the moral realm, bringing in broader and broader domains of individuals who are regarded as moral agents.“

—  Noam Chomsky american linguist, philosopher and activist 1928

Interview http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Chomsky/Chomsky_Tapes_MAlbert.html with Michael Albert (January 1993)
Quotes 1990s, 1990-1994

„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

„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)

„From that time forth he believed that the wise man is one who never sets himself apart from other living things, whether they have speech or not, and in later years he strove long to learn what can be learned, in silence, from the eyes of animals, the flight of birds, the great slow gestures of trees.“

—  Ursula K. Le Guin American writer 1929 - 2018

Source: Earthsea Books, A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), Chapter 5

„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.

„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

„I'm not a Starfleet commander, or T. J. Hooker. I don't live on Starship NCC-170… [some audience members say "1"], or own a phaser. I don't know anybody named Bones, Sulu, or Spock [picture of Dr. Benjamin Spock is shown on screen behind him]. And no, I've never had green alien sex, but I'm sure it'd be quite an evening. [Pomp and Circumstance begins playing. ] I speak English and French, not Klingon! I drink Labatt's, not Romulan Ale! And when someone says to me 'live long and prosper', I seriously mean it when I say, 'get a life'. My doctor's name is not McCoy, it's Ginsberg [nude picture of Dr. Ginsberg shown on screen]. And tribbles were puppets, not real animals. PUPPETS! And when I speak, I never, ever talk like Every. Word. Is. Its. Own. Sentence. I live in California, but I was raised in Montreal. And I believe in Priceline. com, where you never have to pay full price for airline tickets, hotels, and car rentals! I've appeared on stage at Stratford, at Carnegie Hall, Albert Hall, and the Monkland Theatre in NDG. And, yes, I've gone where no man has gone before, but… I was in Mexico and her father gave me permission! My name is William Shatner, and I am Canadian!“

—  William Shatner Canadian actor, musician, recording artist, author, and film director 1931

From a Just for Laughs appearance in a parody of the popular Molson "I Am Canadian" commercials (21 July 2007) http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1648058156561008324&q=i+am+canadian.

„It is asserted that beasts have no rights; the illusion is harboured that our conduct, so far as they are concerned, has no moral significance, or, as it is put in the language of these codes, that "there are no duties to be fulfilled towards animals." Such a view is one of revolting coarseness, a barbarism of the West, whose source is Judaism. In philosophy, however, it rests on the assumption, despite all evidence to the contrary, of the radical difference between man and beast,—a doctrine which, as is well known, was proclaimed with more trenchant emphasis by Descartes than by any one else: it was indeed the necessary consequence of his mistakes.“

—  Arthur Schopenhauer, book On the Basis of Morality

Part III, Ch. VIII, 7, p. 218 https://archive.org/stream/basisofmorality00schoiala#page/218/mode/2up
On the Basis of Morality (1840)

„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

„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

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

—  John Steinbeck American writer 1902 - 1968

„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

„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

„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

„That Descartes' Cartesian way of looking at animals, like they're machines… It is outdated, and quite frankly, 100% insane. Because, if we all understand that animals use their eyes to see, ears to hear, noses to smell, mouths to eat, legs to walk, feathers to fly, fins to swim, genitalia to procreate, bowels to defecate.. I'm always perplexed that most people don't believe that they can also use their brains to think, feel, be rational, be aware and be self-aware! Am I supposed to believe, that every body part of an animal functions just like it's supposed to, except the brain?“

—  Gary Yourofsky animal rights activist 1970

Part of the speech to the students of the Georgia Institute of Technology, On animal intelligence (Summer 2010)

„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.