Quotes about animals

„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)

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

—  George Bernard Shaw Irish playwright 1856 - 1950

„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

„It seemed a pity so much Argentinian talent is wasted. Our best football will come against the right type of opposition—a team who come to play football, and not act as animals.“

—  Alf Ramsey English association football player and manager 1920 - 1999

Ramsey's indignant opinion of Argentina after England beat them 1–0 in a bruising quarter final in the 1966 World Cup. [World Cup medal honour for Sir Alf, http://www.ipswichstar.co.uk/news/world_cup_medal_honour_for_sir_alf_1_173288, 1 April 2012, ipswichstar.co.uk, 26 June 2009]

„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.

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

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

„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.

„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

„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.

„This season I've been on more of a plant-based diet, getting away from all the animals and all that. I had to get away from that. So my energy is up, my body feels amazing. Just understanding what the diet is like for me and what’s beneficial for me for having the highest energy out here and being able to sustain it at a very high level.“

—  Kyrie Irving American basketball player 1992

Interview with ESPN’s Chauncey Billups; as quoted in "NBA players explain why they are going vegan and vegetarian" https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/nba/nba-players-explain-why-they-are-going-vegan-and-vegetarian/ar-AAu21r4, MSN.com (October 25, 2017).

„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

„Some eat animals, some eat the plants. None can survive without eating either of them. The doctrine of Ahimsa is difficult to sustain.“

—  Sarvajna Kannada poet, pragmatist and philosopher

Flowers of Wisdom

„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.

„Law, in its most general and comprehensive sense, signifies a rule of action; and is applied indiscriminately to all kinds of action, whether animate, or inanimate, rational or irrational. Thus we say, the laws of motion, of gravitation, of optics, or mechanics, as well as the laws of nature and of nations. And it is that rule of action, which is prescribed by some superior, and which the inferior is bound to obey.“

—  William Blackstone, book Commentaries on the Laws of England

Introduction, Section II http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/blackstone_intro.asp: Of the Nature of Laws in General
Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765–1769)

„The anatomy of self-propelling objects is subject to universal laws. Those of cars and animals are similar in many ways. First of all, there's the stomach. Stomachs are like petrol tanks. It takes energy to move around, and that energy must accompany its user. All self-propelling objects carry provisions with them in a sealed-off space, a stomach or a tank. Self-propelling beach animals like Animaris Percipiere have a stomach too. This consists of recycled plastic bottles containing air that can be pumped up to a high pressure by the wind.“

—  Theo Jansen artist 1948

Source: The Great Pretender. (2007), p. 153

„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

„There are also animals which are called elks [alces "moose" in Am. Engl.; elk "wapiti"]. The shape of these, and the varied colour of their skins, is much like roes, but in size they surpass them a little and are destitute of horns, and have legs without joints and ligatures; nor do they lie down for the purpose of rest, nor, if they have been thrown down by any accident, can they raise or lift themselves up. Trees serve as beds to them; they lean themselves against them, and thus reclining only slightly, they take their rest; when the huntsmen have discovered from the footsteps of these animals whither they are accustomed to betake themselves, they either undermine all the trees at the roots, or cut into them so far that the upper part of the trees may appear to be left standing. When they have leant upon them, according to their habit, they knock down by their weight the unsupported trees, and fall down themselves along with them.“

—  Julius Caesar, book Commentarii de Bello Gallico

Book VI
De Bello Gallico
Original: (la) Sunt item, quae appellantur alces. Harum est consimilis capris figura et varietas pellium, sed magnitudine paulo antecedunt mutilaeque sunt cornibus et crura sine nodis articulisque habent neque quietis causa procumbunt neque, si quo adflictae casu conciderunt, erigere sese aut sublevare possunt. His sunt arbores pro cubilibus: ad eas se applicant atque ita paulum modo reclinatae quietem capiunt. Quarum ex vestigiis cum est animadversum a venatoribus, quo se recipere consuerint, omnes eo loco aut ab radicibus subruunt aut accidunt arbores, tantum ut summa species earum stantium relinquatur. Huc cum se consuetudine reclinaverunt, infirmas arbores pondere adfligunt atque una ipsae concidunt.

„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

„Some Vietnam veterans have told me what they did over there when they were animals. They have been giving testimony about it to the public, to juries, to judges. Some of the juries cry, and so do some of the judges.
One Ex-Marine has a face like a Puerto Rican angel and a body count of 390. That means he and his unit killed 390 people in a variety of hideous ways, and the angel got to go count the dead bodies for the record.
And now he and a lot of his buddies are trying to make up for what we made them do. We paid the taxes that bought the war that hired the men and dropped the fire that burned the huts and killed the people who then were the bodies that Scott counted. It's a rotten thing to brainwash someone into doing the dirty part of killing while we stay at home. It's a rotten thing to pretend the war is coming to an end when it's only taken to the air. And in 1972 if you don't fight against a rotten thing you become a part of it.
What I'm asking you to do is take some risks. Stop paying war taxes, refuse the armed forces, organize against the air war, support the strikes and boycotts of farmers, workers and poor people, analyze the flag salute, give up the nation state, share your money, refuse to hate, be willing to work … in short, sisters and brothers, arm up with love and come from the shadows.“

—  Joan Baez American singer 1941

Text notes on Come From The Shadows (1972)