Quotes about animals (3122 quotes, page 2)

“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 (1945) American biologist

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

World , Law , Nature , Change

“The Marines I have seen around the world have the cleanest bodies, the filthiest minds, the highest morale, and the lowest morals of any group of animals I have ever seen. Thank God for the United States Marine Corps!”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

God , World

“Let us therefore animate and encourage each other, and show the whole world that a Freeman, contending for liberty on his own ground, is superior to any slavish mercenary on earth.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

General Orders, Headquarters, New York (2 July 1776)
1770s

World

“You know, at times like this one feels, well, perhaps extinct animals should be left extinct.”

Michael Crichton book Jurassic Park

Source: Jurassic Park

Feeling , Time

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

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: The Last Night of the Earth Poems

Hell

“It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions.”

Mark Twain book What Is Man?

Source: What Is Man? (1906), Ch. 6

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

Hayao Miyazaki (1941) Japanese animator, film director, and mangaka

Time

“To live alone one must be an animal or a god - says Aristotle. There is yet a third case: one must be both - a philosopher.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Twilight of the Idols

Maxims and Arrows, 3
Twilight of the Idols (1888)

God

“The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

Men , Time

“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 (1973) Australian writer

Source: Lexicon

Hope , Way

“The human animal is a beast that dies but the fact that he’s dying don’t give him pity for others.”

Tennessee Williams Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Source: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

“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

“All our knowledge merely helps us to die a more painful death than the animals that know nothing. A day will come when science will turn upon its error and no longer hesitate to shorten our woes. A day will come when it will dare and act with certainty; when life, grown wiser, will depart silently at its hour, knowing that it has reached its term.”

Maurice Maeterlinck (1862–1949) Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist

Our Eternity, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Life , Death , Pain , Error

“I have no doubt that it is part of the destiny of the human race in it's gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Parting

“Have you any notion how many books are written about women in the course of one year? Have you any notion how many are written by men? Are you aware that you are, perhaps, the most discussed animal in the universe?”

Virginia Woolf book A Room of One's Own

Source: A Room of One's Own (1929), Ch. 2, p. 26

Women , Men , Books , Universe

“Why can't you place a blessing like that on us?" I asked.

"It only works on wild animals."

"So it would only affect Percy," Annabeth reasoned.

"Hey!" I protested.”

Rick Riordan book The Lightning Thief

Source: The Lightning Thief

“The fate of animals is of far greater importance to me than the fear of appearing ridiculous.”

Emile Zola (1840–1902) French writer (1840-1902)

Fate , Fear , Appearance

“Yes, but humans are more important than animals,' said Brutha.
'This is a point of view often expressed by humans,' said Om.”

Terry Pratchett book Small Gods

Source: Small Gods

“It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Life , Search , Support

“I have been studying the traits and dispositions of the "lower animals" (so called) and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result humiliating to me.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Source: Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

Study

“I wonder who it was defined man as a rational animal. It was the most premature definition ever given. Man is many things, but he is not rational.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray and Other Writings

“I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Way

“The proper definition of a man is an animal that writes letters.”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

Source: Lewis Carroll, Roger Lancelyn Green (1989). “The Selected Letters of Lewis Carroll”, p.10, Springer

“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 (1947) USA-american doctor of animal science, author, and autism activist

Life , Death , Food , Thinking

“One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Lie , Cats

“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 (1788–1860) German philosopher

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

“Mere animals couldn’t possibly manage to act like this. You need to be a human being to be really stupid.”

Terry Pratchett book Pyramids

Source: Pyramids

Stupidity

“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

“Animals are such agreeable friends―they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.”

George Eliot (1819–1880) English novelist, journalist and translator

Source: Mr Gilfil's Love Story

Question

“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 (1888–1968) American writer

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 (1942) English singer-songwriter and composer

Children

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

Anatole France (1844–1924) French writer

For Mother , Love , Soul , Parting

“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 (1941) Japanese animator, film director, and mangaka

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 (1967) American journalist

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

People

“Humanity's true moral test, its fundamental test…consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals.”

Milan Kundera (1929–2023) Czech author of Czech and French literature

“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 (1888–1968) American writer

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

Life , World , Sense , Time

“Humans are the only animal that blushes, laughs, has religion, wages war, and kisses with lips. So in a way, the more you kiss with lips, the more human you are.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005), p. 99

War , Religion , Way , Kiss

“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

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

Paul McCartney (1942) English singer-songwriter and composer

For Men , Way

“One is tempted to define man as a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

The Critic as Artist (1891), Part II

“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

“Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1950s, Unpopular Essays (1950)

“Man has much power of discourse which for the most part is vain and false; animals have but little, but it is useful and true, and a small truth is better than a great lie.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.
Source: Leonardo's Notebooks

Truth , Lie , Parting , Falseness

“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 (1954) American legal scholar

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 (1954) psychologist, linguist, author

Sex

“The trouble with witches is that they’ll never run away from things they really hate.

And the trouble with small furry animals in a corner is that, just occasionally, one of them’s a mongoose.”

Terry Pratchett book Witches Abroad

Source: Witches Abroad

Hate

“One cannot bring children into a world like this. One cannot perpetuate suffering, or increase the breed of these lustful animals, who have no lasting emotions, but only whims and vanities, eddying them now this way, now that.”

Virginia Woolf book Mrs Dalloway

Source: Mrs. Dalloway

Children , World , Way , Suffering

“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 (1948) Dutch primatologist and ethologist

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 (1887–1962) American poet

Source: The Selected Poetry

Love , Life , God , Pain

“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 (1932) American physician

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 (1968) American actress

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

“With trembling hands, I made a tiny breach in the upper left hand corner… widening the hole a little, I inserted the candle and peered in… at first I could see nothing, the hot air escaping from the chamber causing the candle to flicker. Presently, details of the room emerged slowly from the mist, strange animals, statues and gold – everywhere the glint of gold. For the moment – an eternity it must have seemed to the others standing by – I was struck dumb with amazement, and when Lord Carnarvon, unable to stand in suspense any longer, inquired anxiously "Can you see anything?", it was all I could do to get out the words "Yes, wonderful things".”

Howard Carter (1874–1939) British egyptologist

Tutankhamen and the Glint of Gold http://www.fathom.com/feature/190166/index.html
Diary, 26 November 1922.

“Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.”

W.B. Yeats book The Tower

St. 3
The Tower (1928), Sailing to Byzantium http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1575/

Heart

“For in truth all our justice, morality, all our thoughts and feelings, derive from three or four primordial necessities, whereof the principal one is food. The least modification of one of these necessities would entail a marked change in our moral existence. Were the belief one day to become general that man could dispense with animal food, there would ensue not only a great economic revolution--for a bullock, to produce one pound of meat, consumes more than a hundred of provender--but a moral improvement as well, not less important and certainly more sincere and more lasting than might follow a second appearance on the earth of the Envoy of the Father, come to remedy the errors and omissions of his former pilgrimage. For we find that the man who abandons the regimen of meat abandons alcohol also; and to do this is to renounce most of the coarser and more degraded pleasures of life. And it is in the passionate craving for these pleasures, in their glamour, and the prejudice they create, that the most formidable obstacle is found to the harmonious development of the race.”

Maurice Maeterlinck (1862–1949) Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist

Source: The Buried Temple (1902), Ch. III: "The Kingdom of Matter", § 5

Life , Alcohol , Pleasure , Truth

“In manufacturing food for its own cells, the plant is producing a supply of food that will be available for the sustenance of animal cells also. Thus the entire animal World may be said to be a vast parasitic colony as absolutely dependent upon the vegetable colony for its essential food supplies as any other parasite is dependent upon its host.”

Luther Burbank (1849–1926) American botanist, horticulturist and pioneer in agricultural science

p, 125
How Plants are Trained to Work for Man (1921) Vol. 5 Gardening

World , Food , Dependency

“I just don’t quite understand it [the press], really. I don’t understand the animal. It’s a strange, roundabout way of selling something; it leaves a foul taste… The thing that fascinates me is: who cares what an actor thinks?”

Johnny Depp (1963) American actor, film producer, and musician

Quoted in Steven Daly, "The Maverick King," http://www.deppimpact.com/mags/transcripts/vanityfair_nov04.html Vanity Fair (November 2004)

Way , Understanding , Thinking

“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

“Animals in their generation are wiser than the sons of men; but their wisdom is confined to a few particulars, and lies in a very narrow compass.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

No. 120 (18 July 1711).
The Spectator (1711–1714)

Wisdom , Men

“The main dimensions of Marx’s discussion of alienation are as follows: …
1. The worker … has no power to determine the fate of what he produces. …
2. The work task does not offer intrinsic satisfactions. …
3. Human relations, in capitalism, tend to become reduced to operations of the market. … Money promotes the rationalization of social relationships, since it provides an abstract standard in terms of which the most heterogeneous qualities can be compared, and reduced, to one another. …
4. Some animals do produce, of course, but only in a mechanical, adaptive fashion. Alienated labor reduces human productive activity to the level of adaptation to, rather than active mastery of, nature.”

Anthony Giddens (1938) British sociologist

Source: Capitalism and Modern Social Theory (1971), pp. 12-13.

Money , Fate , Fashion , Nature

“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 (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

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 (1928–1989) Japanese cartoonist and animator

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

“He who does not love his own language is worse than an animal and a smelly fish.”

José Rizal (1861–1896) Filipino writer, ophthalmologist, polyglot and nationalist

This has long been attributed to Rizal as part of a poem, titled Sa Aking Mga Kabata (To My Fellow Children), he wrote at the age of 8, as quoted in " Community Celebrates Rizal Day" in Asian Journal USA (31 December 2007) http://asianjournalusa.com/community-celebrates-rizal-day-p3868-95.htm, but this has become disputed as highly unlikely in "Did young Rizal really write poem for children?" by Ambeth R. Ocampo, in Philippine Daily Inquirer (22 August 22 2011) http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/45479/did-young-rizal-really-write-poem-for-children
Disputed

Love , Fish

“This song of the waters is audible to every ear, but there is other music in these hills, by no means audible to all. To hear even a few notes of it you must first live here for a long time, and you must know the speech of hills and rivers. Then on a still night, when the campfire is low and the Pleiades have climbed over rimrocks, sit quietly and listen for a wolf to howl, and think hard of everything you have seen and tried to understand. Then you may hear it—a vast pulsing harmony—its score inscribed on a thousand hills, its notes the lives and deaths of plants and animals, its rhythms spanning the seconds and the centuries.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

Source: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Chihuahua and Sonora: The Green Lagoons", p. 149.

Death , Music , Understanding , 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 (1766–1834) British political economist

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

“With kings, nations, and private individuals, the strongest assume to themselves rights over the weakest, and the same rule is followed by animals, by matter, by the elements, so that everything is performed in the universe by violence. And that order which we blame with some appearance of justice is the most universal, most absolute, most unchangeable, and most ancient law of nature.”

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues (1715–1747) French writer, a moralist

Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 176.

Justice , Law , Nature , Universe

“Prabhupada: Yes. That is Tulasi dasa’s remark. So in many passages of his poetry he has not done very justice to woman. And another poetry, he writes, dhol gunar sudra nari. Dhol gunar sudra nari ihe sab sasan ke adhikari. (?) Dhol gunar pasu sudra nari, ihe sab sasan ke adhikari. Dhol, dhol means drum, mrdanga. Gunar, gunar means… What is called English? A fool, fool. Illiterate fool, what is one word?
Brahmananda: Buffoon?
Prabhupada: Maybe buffoon. Buffoon is sometimes troublesome. But gunar means he doesn’t understand very nicely.
Brahmananda: Dullard.
Prabhupada: Dull, dull. Dhol gunar, dhol means drum and gunar means dull. Sudra, and the laborer class. Three. Dhol, gunar, sudra, and pasu, household animals, just like cows, dogs.
Brahmananda: Pet.
Prabhupada: Pet, like that. Dhol gunar sudra pasu and nari. Nari means woman. (laughs) Just see. He has classified the nari amongst these class, dhol, gunar, sudra, pasu, nari. Ihe sab sasan ke adhikari. Sasan ke adhikari means all these are subjected for punishment. And what about the guest?
Govinda dasi: Oh, the guest? It’s coming.
Prabhupada: So sasan ke adhikari means they should be punished. (laughs) Punished means, just like dhol, when the, I mean to say, sound is not very hard, dag-dag, if you beat it on the border, then it comes to be nice tune. Similarly, pasu, animals, if you request, “My dear dog, please do not go there.” Hut! (laughter) “No, my dear dog.” Hut! This is the way.(?) Similarly, woman. If you become lenient, then she will be troublesome. So in India still, in villages, whenever there is some quarrel between husband wife, the husband beats and she is tamed. (laughs) In civilized society, “Oh, you have done this?” Immediately some criminal case. But in uncivilized society they don’t care for court or civilized way of…”

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896–1977) Indian guru

Conversation, New York, April 12, 1969 PrabhupadaBooks.com http://prabhupadabooks.com/conversations/1969/apr/new_york/april/12/1969?d=1
Quotes from other Sources, Quotes from other Sources: Violence and Dictatorship

Justice , Dogs , Fools , Way

“I am not slighting intellect; but life is common to us along with poorer living things than ourselves. He who kills an animal, however lowly it may be, unless there is necessity, is an assassin.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

Light (1919), Ch, XXI - No!

Life

“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 (1941) Japanese animator, film director, and mangaka

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

“The mistake made by all previous systems of ethics has been the failure to recognize that life as such is the mysterious value with which they have to deal. All spiritual life meets us within natural life. Reverence for life, therefore, is applied to natural life and spiritual life alike. In the parable of Jesus, the shepherd saves not merely the soul of the lost sheep but the whole animal. The stronger the reverence for natural life, the stronger grows also that for spiritual life.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Source: The Spiritual Life (1947), p. 264

Life , Soul , Failure , Nature

“Beauty is something animal, the beautiful is something celestial.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

Beauty

“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 (1928–1989) Japanese cartoonist and animator

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 (1846–1888) English physician, activist and feminist

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

People , Nature , Time

“Of course it's tempting to close one's eyes to history, and instead speculate about the roots of war in some possible animal instinct: as if, like the tiger, we still had to kill to live, or, like the robin redbreast, to defend a nesting territory. But war, organized war, is not a human instinct. It is a highly planned and cooperative form of theft. And that form of theft began 10,000 years ago when the harvesters of wheat accumulated a surplus and the nomads rose out of the desert to rob them of what they themselves could not provide. The evidence for that, we saw, in the walled city of Jericho and its prehistoric tower… That is the beginning of war.”

Jacob Bronowski The Ascent of Man

Episode 2: "The Harvest of the Seasons"
The Ascent of Man (1973)

War , History

“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 (1961) American actor

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

“"I swear that what I went through, no animal would have gone through." This sentence, the noblest ever spoken, this sentence that defines man's place in the universe, that honors him, that re-establishes the true hierarchy, floated back into my thoughts.”

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900–1944) French writer and aviator

Ch III : The Tool
Terre des Hommes (1939)

Universe

“Animals are innocence incarnate. This horse is like an enormous child, and if one wanted to point out life's innocence face to face, one would have to typify, not a little child, but a horse.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

Light (1919), Ch. XIV - The Ruins

Life , Horse

“[looking at the dead body of his first wife Camille, 5 Sept 1879], watching her tragic forehead, almost mechanically observing the colors which death was imposing on her rigid face. Blue. Blue, yellows, grey, what do I know?... How natural to to want to reproduce the last image of her, who was leaving us for ever. But even before the idea came to me to record her beloved features, something in me automatically responded tot the shocks of colours. I just seem to be compelled in an unconsciousness activity, the one I engage in every day, like an animal turning in its mill.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

Quote in Monet's letter, September 1879; as cited in The Private Lives of the Impressionists Sue Roe; Harper Collins Publishers, New York, 2006, p. 209
1870 - 1890

Death , Color , Idea , Nature

“Man differs from other animals in one very important respect, and that is that he has some desires which are, so to speak, infinite, which can never be fully gratified, and which would keep him restless even in Paradise. The boa constrictor, when he has had an adequate meal, goes to sleep, and does not wake until he needs another meal. Human beings, for the most part, are not like this.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1950s, What Desires Are Politically Important? (1950)

Sleep , Parting

“The only respect in which man is superior to animals is that he can die when he wants to, not just when he has to. Maybe it's the one freedom you can always count on — the freedom to throw your life away.”

Stefan Zweig book The Post Office Girl

The Post Office Girl (published posthumously in 1982)

Life , Freedom

“As all regions below are replenished with living creatures… so may the heavens above be replenished with beings whose nature we do not understand. He that shall well consider the strange and wonderful nature of life and the frame of the Animals, will think nothing beyond the possibility of nature, nothing too hard for the omnipotent power of God. And as the Planets remain in their orbs, so may any other bodies subsist at any distance from the earth, and much more may beings, who have sufficient power of self motion, move whether they will, and continue in any regions of the heavens whatever, there to enjoy the society of one another, and by their messengers or Angels to rule the earth and convers with the remotest regions. Thus may the whole heavens or any part thereof whatever be the habitation of the Blessed, and at the same time the earth be subject to their dominion. And to have thus the liberty and dominion of the whole heavens and the choice of the happiest places for abode seems a greater happiness than to be confined to any one place whatever.”

Isaac Newton (1643–1727) British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern classical physics

As quoted by Frank Edward Manuel, The Religion of Isaac Newton (1977)

Life , God , Angels , Understanding

“Perhaps no philosopher is more correct than the cynic. The happiness of the animal, that thorough cynic, is the living proof of cynicism.”

Friedrich Nietzsche Untimely Meditations

§ 2.1, cited in Peter Sloterdijk, Critique of Cynical Reason (1987), p. ix
Untimely Meditations (1876)

Happiness

“This may surprise you, because it surprised me when I found out, but the single biggest thing that an individual can do to combat climate change is to stop eating animals. Because of the huge, huge carbon footprint of animal agriculture. I was shocked to find out that animal agriculture directly or indirectly accounts for 14.5% of all greenhouse gas emissions, compared to all transportation – every ship, car, truck, plane on the planet only accounts for 13%. Less than animal agriculture. So most people think that buying a Prius is the answer, and it’s certainly not wrong, but it’s not the biggest agent of climate change.”

James Cameron (1954) Canadian film director

From an " Ask Me Anything https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/22uz4m/i_am_james_cameron_ama/" session on Reddit; as quoted in "Director James Cameron on Vegan Diet: Like I've Set the Clock Back 15 Years", in Ecorazzi (12 April 2014) http://www.ecorazzi.com/2014/04/12/director-james-cameron-on-vegan-diet-like-ive-set-the-clock-back-15-years/

People , Cars , Thinking , Change

“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

“All I have produced before the age of seventy is not worth taking into account. At seventy-three I have learned a little about the real structure of nature, of animals, plants, trees, birds, fishes and insects. In consequence when I am eighty, I shall have made still more progress. At ninety I shall penetrate the mystery of things; at one hundred I shall certainly have reached a marvelous stage; and when I am a hundred and ten, everything I do, be it a dot or a line, will be alive. I beg those who live as long as I to see if I do not keep my word. Written at the age of seventy five by me, once Hokusai, today Gwakyo Rojin, the old man mad about drawing.”

Hokusai (1760–1849) Japanese artist

On one of his pseudonom, Gyakyo Rojin. He may have said the above in his late life definitely, since he began to use the name Gwakyo Rojin in 1843.
Attributed

Age , Nature , Bird , Fish

“"Take my camel, dear," said my aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass.”

Rose Macaulay book The Towers of Trebizond

The Towers of Trebizond (1956), opening words

“It requires twenty years for a man to rise from the vegetable state in which he is within his mother's womb, and from the pure animal state which is the lot of his early childhood, to the state when the maturity of reason begins to appear. It has required thirty centuries to learn a little about his structure. It would need eternity to learn something about his soul. It takes an instant to kill him.”

Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher

Il faut vingt ans pour mener l’homme de l’état de plante où il est dans le ventre de sa mère, et de l’état de pur animal, qui est le partage de sa première enfance, jusqu’à celui où la maturité de la raison commence à poindre. Il a fallu trente siècles pour connaître un peu sa structure. Il faudrait l’éternité pour connaître quelque chose de son âme. Il ne faut qu’un instant pour le tuer.
"Man: General Reflection on Man" (1771)
Citas, Questions sur l'Encyclopédie (1770–1774)

Soul , Learning , Appearance , Childhood

“Oh! how foul a thing, that we should see the tongue of one animal in the guts of another.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

Of the Tongues of Pigs and Calves in Sausage-skins.
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XX Humorous Writings

“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 (1949) Austrian school economist and libertarian anarcho-capitalist philosopher

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

Life , Money , Disease , Law

“My last words? "Life is no way to treat an animal, not even a mouse."”

Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) American writer

I Love You, Madame Librarian (2004)

Life , Way

“For cruelty to animals, vegetarianism is the great thing to get rid of that. For the planet, to prevent depleting the water and the land and everything, it’s a great idea. And I think it’s a great thing for your health, and doctors nowadays agree with that. There are plenty of great books and organizations, so no matter where you are, there is someone to help you. That’s your first step, and I think your second step is just look in the supermarket for good vegetarian food, and I think it’s so much more readily available now.”

Paul McCartney (1942) English singer-songwriter and composer

Sir Paul McCartney and PETA VP Dan Mathews Reflect on Two Decades of Activism http://www.peta.org/features/paul-mccartney-interview/ (April 2005)

Health , Books , Food , Idea

“Animals come when their names are called. Just like human beings.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 67e

“I believe I am not interested to know whether Vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn't. To know that the results are profitable to the race would not remove my hostility to it. The pains which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity towards it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further. It is so distinctly a matter of feeling with me, and is so strong and so deeply-rooted in my make and constitution, that I am sure I could not even see a vivisector vivisected with anything more than a sort of qualified satisfaction.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Letter https://books.google.it/books?id=-rgnCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT370 to Sidney G. Trist, Editor of the Animals' Friend Magazine, in his capacity as Secretary of the London Anti-Vivisection Society (26 May 1899), in Mark Twain's Notebooks, ed. Carlo De Vito (Black Dog & Leventhal, 2015)

Pain , Hostility , Feeling , Strong