Quotes about animals
page 14

Norman Mailer photo
Auguste Rodin photo
Daniel Bryan photo
Richard Leakey photo
Hendrik Werkman photo

“I have applied for a pass and I am going to travel through Western Europe for 5 days. [I] start in Cologne and will probably end in Paris. Who cares. In Cologne there is a large exhibition of German painters [especially Die Brücke-artists]. Jan W. [= Jan Wiegers, who knew Kirchner very well since 1920] has been there and animated so much that I'm going there for a while.... it seems that Jan wants to come with me. He was so enthusiastic that I suspect to be able to note him as my traveling companion.”

Hendrik Werkman (1882–1945) Dutch artist

version in original Dutch (origineel citaat van Hendrik Werkman, in het Nederlands): Ik heb een pas aangevraagd en ga West-Europa in 5 dagen afreizen. Begin in Keulen en eindig vermoedelijk in Parijs. Wie doet je wat. In Keulen is een groote tentoonstelling van Duitse schilders [met name van Die Brücke]. Jan W. [= nl:Jan Wiegers] is er geweest en animeerde zoodanig dat ik er even heen ga.. ..'t schijnt dat Jan met me mee wil. Hij was zo enthousiast dat ik vermoed hem als reisgezel te kunnen noteren.
Quote van Werkman, in his letter to Cor Spruit, 14 August, 1929; as cited in H. N. Werkman - Leven & Werk - 1882-1945, ed. A. de Vries, J. van der Spek, D. Sijens, M. Jansen; WBooks, Groninger Museum / Stichting Werkman, 2015 (transl: Fons Heijnsbroek), p. 110
After this trip Werkman made a series of prints from the Paris' metro: 'D-67' and 'D-69'
1920's

Alfred Korzybski photo
Shelly Kagan photo
Matthew Lewis (writer) photo
Agatha Christie photo
Hans Christian Andersen photo
Charles Darwin photo
George Salmon photo

“In early times of Christianity, even those who used animal food themselves came to think of the vegetarian as one who lived a higher life, and approached more nearly to Christian perfection.”

George Salmon (1819–1904) mathematician and Anglican theologian

A Historical Introduction to the Study of the Books of the New Testament (London: John Murray, 1885; 4th ed. 1889), p. 203 http://archive.org/stream/historicalintrod00salmuoft#page/203/mode/2up.

Charles Darwin photo

“Amongst the half-human progenitors of man, and amongst savages, there have been struggles between the males during many generations for the possession of the females. But mere bodily strength and size would do little for victory, unless associated with courage, perseverance, and determined energy. With social animals, the young males have to pass through many a contest before they win a female, and the older males have to retain their females by renewed battles. They have, also, in the case of mankind, to defend their females, as well as their young, from enemies of all kinds, and to hunt for their joint subsistence. But to avoid enemies or to attack them with success, to capture wild animals, and to fashion weapons, requires the aid of the higher mental faculties, namely, observation, reason, invention, or imagination. These various faculties will thus have been continually put to the test and selected during manhood; they will, moreover, have been strengthened by use during this same period of life. Consequently, in accordance with the principle often alluded to, we might expect that they would at least tend to be transmitted chiefly to the male offspring at the corresponding period of manhood.”

second edition (1874), chapter XIX: "Secondary Sexual Characters of Man", page 564 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=587&itemID=F944&viewtype=image
The Descent of Man (1871)

Pino Caruso photo

“People eat meat and think they will become strong as an ox, forgetting that the ox eats grass.
Eating an animal with gusto is premeditated lust murder, and digesting it is concealment of corpse.”

Pino Caruso (1934–2019) Italian actor

La gente mangia carne e pensa: "Diventerò forte come un bue".
Dimenticando che il bue mangia erba.
Mangiarsi con gusto un animale è assassinio premeditato a scopo di libidine. Digerirlo, occultamento di cadavere.
Il diluvio universale: acqua passata https://books.google.it/books?hl=it&id=9WIhAQAAIAAJ (Palermo: Novecento, 1993), p. 179.

Morarji Desai photo

“I would, therefore, say that for no reason whatsoever, except in self-defense, should one think of killing any animal.”

Morarji Desai (1896–1995) Former Indian Finance Minister, Freedom Fighters, Former prime minister

19th World Vegetarian Congress 1967

Percy Bysshe Shelley photo
John Ruskin photo

“Without perfect sympathy with the animals around them, no gentleman's education, no Christian education, could be of any possible use.”

John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic

At the annual meeting of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (1877), in Arrows of the Chase, vol. 2 (in The Complete Works of John Ruskin, vol. 23 https://books.google.it/books?hl=it&id=Gpc3AAAAYAAJ), p. 129.

Jane Roberts photo
John Gray photo
Ken Ham photo
Anthony Burgess photo
Makoto Shinkai photo

“I think animation can tell more than live action.”

Makoto Shinkai (1973) Japanese anime director and former graphic designer

Interviewed on Complex http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2016/10/your-name-makoto-shinkai-interview/2
About Your Name

Susan Cooper photo
Sri Aurobindo photo

“When we have passed beyond humanity, then we shall be the Man. The Animal was the helper; the Animal is the bar.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

Thoughts and Glimpses (1916-17)

Herman Melville photo
Peter Singer photo
Ernesto Che Guevara photo
Ray Harryhausen photo
David Attenborough photo
Roald Dahl photo
Orson Scott Card photo
Walker Percy photo
Maggie Q photo
Ken Ham photo
Gary L. Francione photo
Pierre Gassendi photo
Hugh Blair photo
Valentino Braitenberg photo

“[The final chapter of the book] sketch a few facts about animal brains that have inspired some of the properties of our vehicles, and their behavior will then seem less gratuitous than it may have seemed up to this poin. t”

Valentino Braitenberg (1926–2011) Italian-Austrian neuroscientist

Source: Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology (1984), p. 95 as cited in: Michael R. W. Dawson (2008) Minds and Machines: Connectionism and Psychological Modeling. p. 88

Meagan Duhamel photo
Hannah Arendt photo

“What stuck in the minds of these men who had become murderers was simply the notion of being involved in something historic, grandiose, unique ("a great task that occurs once in two thousand years"), which must therefore be difficult to bear. This was important, because the murderers were not sadists or killers by nature; on the contrary, a systematic effort was made to weed out all those who derived physical pleasure from what they did. The troops of the Einsatzgruppen had been drafted from the Armed S. S., a military unit with hardly more crimes in its record than any ordinary unit of the German Army, and their commanders had been chosen by Heydrich from the S. S. élite with academic degrees. Hence the problem was how to overcome not so much their conscience as the animal pity by which all normal men are affected in the presence of physical suffering. The trick used by Himmler — who apparently was rather strongly afflicted by these instinctive reactions himself — was very simple and probably very effective; it consisted in turning these instincts around, as it were, in directing them toward the self. So that instead of saying: What horrible things I did to people!, the murderers would be able to say: What horrible things I had to watch in the pursuance of my duties, how heavily the task weighed upon my shoulders!”

Source: Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963), Ch. VI.

Pythagoras photo

“The soul of man is divided into three parts, intelligence, reason, and passion. Intelligence and passion are possessed by other animals, but reason by man alone.”

Pythagoras (-585–-495 BC) ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher

As reported by Alexander Polyhistor, and Diogenes Laërtius in Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, "Pythagoras", Sect. 30, in the translation of C. D. Yonge (1853)

Gregory Colbert photo

“We need to renegotiate our contract with nature. Ecology is a unifying force that can diminish intolerance and expand our empathy towards others—both human and animal.”

Gregory Colbert (1960) Canadian photographer

"Peace and Harmony: The Message of Our Discovery" in Photo No. 427 (March 2006)

Iain Banks photo
Kent Hovind photo

“Today some evidence arises that UML will more and more be used not as a specification language but as a high level programming language. This has some advantages, as if the concepts of UML are executable, they can immediately be animated and tested, or the generated code even be used as implementation. Thus UML probably will have an implementation-oriented semantics describing this animation.”

Bernhard Rumpe (1967) German computer scientist

Bernhard Rumpe (1998) " A Note on Semantics (with an Emphasis on UML) http://sse-tubs.de/~rumpe/publications/papers/RUM98a/RUM98a.pdf." Proceedings of Second ECOOP Workshop on Precise Behavioral Semantics. 1998.

Albert Camus photo
Charlie Brooker photo
Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson photo
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner photo
Wilhelm Liebknecht photo
Chuck Jones photo
Aldo Leopold photo
Mahatma Gandhi photo

“Kaffirs are as a rule uncivilised—the convicts even more so. They are troublesome, very dirty and live almost like animals.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

"My Experience in Gaol", Indian Opinion (7 March 1908). Also: Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, op cit., Vol. 8, p. 199.
1900s

Pippa Black photo
Rousas John Rushdoony photo
Bill Mollison photo
Maximus the Confessor photo
Helen Nearing photo
Kent Hovind photo
William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham photo

“Resistance to your acts was necessary as it was just; and your vain declarations of the omnipotence of Parliament, and your imperious doctrines of the necessity of submission, will be found equally impotent to convince or to enslave your fellow-subjects in America, who feel tyranny, whether ambitioned by an individual part of the legislature, or the bodies who compose it, is equally intolerable to British subjects…What, though you march form town to town, and from province to province; though you should be able to enforce a temporary and local submission, which I only suppose, not admit—how shall you be able to secure the obedience of the country you leave behind you in your progress, to grasp the dominion of eighteen hundred miles of continent, populous in numbers, possessing valour, liberty, and resistance? This resistance to your arbitrary system of taxation might have been foreseen: it was obvious, from the nature of things and of mankind; and, above all, from the Whiggish spirit flourishing in that country. The spirit which now resists your taxation in America, is the same which formerly opposed loans, benevolences, and ship-money, in England: the same spirit which called all England on its legs, and by the Bill of Rights vindicated the English constitution: the same spirit which established the great, fundamental, essential maxim of your liberties, that no subject of England shall be taxed but by his own consent.”

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham (1708–1778) British politician

This glorious spirit of Whiggism animates three millions in America; who prefer poverty with liberty to gilded chains and sordid affluence; and who will die in defence of their rights as men, as freemen.
Speech in the House of Lords (20 January 1775), quoted in William Pitt, The Speeches of the Right Honourable the Earl of Chatham in the Houses of Lords and Commons: With a Biographical Memoir and Introductions and Explanatory Notes to the Speeches (London: Aylott & Jones, 1848), pp. 134-6.

John Dear photo

“I also think living in the country gives you faith. All you have to do is get up and look at the mountains and look at the other animals to realize that your problems are mostly made up or exacerbated by humans. But human life isn't necessarily life. There's so much more out there.”

Rita Mae Brown (1944) Novelist, poet, screenwriter, activist

Interview in OutSmart magazine https://web.archive.org/web/20080727021104/http://home.houston.rr.com/blase/Root%20Folder/ritamae.html (January 1998)

Charles Darwin photo
Seba Johnson photo
John Gray photo
John Gray photo
Richard D. Ryder photo
Kent Hovind photo
Connie Willis photo
David Attenborough photo
Temple Grandin photo
Jean Meslier photo
Robert E. Howard photo
Roger Bacon photo
Annie Besant photo
Ray Harryhausen photo
Charles Bell photo

“In concluding these papers, I hope I may be permitted to offer a few words in favour of anatomy, as better adapted for discovery than experiment. … Experiments have never been the means of discovery; and a survey of what has been attempted of late years in physiology, will prove that the opening of living animals has done more to perpetuate error, than to confirm the just views taken from the study of anatomy and natural motions.”

Charles Bell (1774–1842) Scottish surgeon and artist (1774-1842)

An Exposition of the Natural System of the Nerves of the Human Body. With a Republication of the Papers Delivered to the Royal Society, on the Subject of the Nerves, London: Spottiswoode, 1824, pp. 376 https://books.google.it/books?id=hc0GAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA376-377.

John Muir photo
Czeslaw Milosz photo

“For a country without a past is nothing, a word
That, hardly spoken, loses its meaning,
A perishable wall destroyed by flame,
An echo of animal emotions.”

Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator

"A Legend" (1949), trans. Czesŀaw Miŀosz and Robert Hass
Daylight (1953)

“Everything about Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, from its toy-box colors to its superb, hyper-animated Danny Elfman score to the butch-waxed hairdo and wooden-puppet walk of its star and mastermind is pure pleasure.”

Stephanie Zacharek (1963) American film critic

Review http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/dvd/review/2000/10/10/peewees_big_adventure/index.html of Pee-Wee's Big Adventure (1985)

Ralph Waldo Trine photo
Tamara Ecclestone photo

“I enjoy going to fashion shows and I enjoy seeing what's new and fantastic but I just don't understand how fur is necessarily fashionable. I just think it's terrible to harm living animals all in the name of vanity… it's completely unnecessary.”

Tamara Ecclestone (1984) British model, socialite and television personality

"Formula One heiress Tamara Ecclestone poses naked for Peta anti-fur campaign", The Telegraph (7 October 2008) https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/3154511/Formula-One-heiress-Tamara-Ecclestone-poses-naked-for-Peta-anti-fur-campaign.html.

Edgar Degas photo
Richard D. Ryder photo
Clive Staples Lewis photo
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon photo
Steph Davis photo
Kent Hovind photo

“The Hyracotherium, the so-called ancient horse is a small four-toed meat-eating animal still alive in Turkey and East Africa today.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Source: Are you being brainwashed?: Propaganda in science textbooks (2007), p. 19

Rāmabhadrācārya photo