Quotes about animals (3122 quotes, page 27)

“The Animals, you say, were "sent"
For man's free use and nutriment.
Pray, then, inform me, and be candid,
Why came they aeons before Man did,
To spend long centuries on earth,
Awaiting their Devourer's birth?
Those ill-timed chattels, sent from Heaven,
Were, sure, the maddest gift e'er given—
"Sent" for Man's usage (can Man believe it?)
When there was no Man to receive it!”

Henry Stephens Salt (1851–1939) British activist

The Sending of the Animals, as quoted in The Savour of Salt: A Henry Salt Anthology, Centaur Press, 1989, p. 55.

Birth , Time

“But whatever its defects, the classification of Linnæus was the first attempt at grouping animals together according to certain common structural characters.”

Louis Agassiz (1807–1873) Swiss naturalist

Methods of Study in Natural History (1863), ch. 1, p. 7 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015065771407;view=1up;seq=21

“Creationists contend that they don’t believe in magic. But “speaking” anything into existence is an incantation, and the Bible is full of spells of one sort or another. Animating golems, or conjuring interdependent systems, and causing complex organisms to appear out of thin air -are each logically implausible and physically impossible according to everything we know about anything at all, yet this is exactly what religiously-motivated pseudoscientists actually promote! How do we test these ideas? How can we tell them apart from any of the thousands of fables men have concocted for the ghosts and gods of other religions? How can we tell whether any of this is even real, and not something someone just made up? Because despite anyone’s assertions of personal conviction, it is impossible to distinguish miracles from subjective impressions imagined out of nothing. In the realm of fantasy, it’s easy to demonstrate psionic talents, astral entities, and magical manifestations. Until they do that in reality too, then science has nothing but nature to work with.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

"12th Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TkY7HrJOhc Youtube (April 19, 2008)
Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

Men , God , Religion , Imagination

“Beer commercials usually show big men, manly men, doing manly things: "You've just killed a small animal. It's time for a light beer." Why not have a realistic beer commercial, with a realistic thing about beer, where someone goes, "It's 5:00 in the morning. You've just pissed on a dumpster. It's Miller time."”

Robin Williams (1951–2014) American actor and stand-up comedian

A Night at the Met (1986)

Men , Beer , Light , Time

“The sole religious orthodoxy permitted in our public schools is the separation of paper from plastic. Not so many miles from this beach, great-grandchildren of westering pioneers chain themselves to redwoods, martyrs of the new animism.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Brown : The Last Discovery of America (2003)

School

“Animals were allowed to have lawyers — even insects. The insects (usually fleas, lice or locusts) had to be given three days' notice before the trial and some representatives brought into court, duly notified, and then freed so they could warn others.”

Daniel P. Mannix (1911–1997) animal collector and author

The History of Torture (1964), p. 89

“My proximity to the sheep, cattle, and geese who are now my neighbors in the country is what has finally turned me into a vegetarian. I talk to these animals when I walk. Sometimes I am lucky enough to make physical contact with them, and as I look into their eyes I see not only the innocence, but also the clear fact that those eyes are no less complicated in their structure than my own. Don't we now have enough tasty things to eat from the garden and all the delicious ways to prepare them?”

Mary Tyler Moore (1936–2017) American actress, television producer

After All https://books.google.it/books?id=siBPpd0BdeQC (New York: Putnam, 1995), p. 27

Way , Country

“I know people who just absolutely everyday of their life work for change. … The animal rights people. THOSE are my people. … You always hear about the Farmer in the Dell and how he loves his animals, but we’re not educated. And now it’s all coming out and people are starting to finally get educated about it. Farm Sanctuary is rescuing all these animals … I mean not one animal had a good life before they got here.”

Jennifer Coolidge (1961) American actress and comedian

"Farm Sanctuary Exclusive Interview: Jennifer Puts The "Cool" In Coolidge", in Ecorazzi (8 December 2008) http://www.ecorazzi.com/2008/12/08/farm-sanctuary-exclusive-interview-jennifer-puts-the-cool-in-coolidge/.

Love , Life , People , Education

“The world — whatever we might think when terrified by its vastness and our own impotence, or embittered by its indifference to individual suffering, of people, animals, and perhaps even plants, for why are we so sure that plants feel no pain; whatever we might think of its expanses pierced by the rays of stars surrounded by planets we've just begun to discover, planets already dead? still dead? we just don't know; whatever we might think of this measureless theater to which we've got reserved tickets, but tickets whose lifespan is laughably short, bounded as it is by two arbitrary dates; whatever else we might think of this world — it is astonishing.”

Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) Polish writer

The Poet and the World (1996)

Pain , People , World , Feeling

“We can solve many problems thousands of times faster than natural selection. Now, by creating the means to execute those simulations at much higher speeds, we are entering a regime as radically different from our human past as we humans are from the lower animals.”

Vernor Vinge (1944) American mathematician, computer scientist, and science fiction writer

The Coming Technological Singularity (1993)

Nature , Problem , Time , Past

“Our deep urge to evolve to a more spiritually mature level of understanding and living, and to create a social order that promotes more justice, peace, freedom, health, sanity, prosperity, sustainability, and happiness, absolutely requires us to stop viewing animals as food objects to be consumed and to shift to a plant-based way of eating.”

Will Tuttle book The World Peace Diet

Source: The World Peace Diet (2005), Ch. 2

Health , Peace , Justice , Food

“I'm not an animal lover if that means you think things are nice if you can pet them, but I am intoxicated by animals.”

David Attenborough (1926) British broadcaster and naturalist

Interview in Metro 29 Jan 2013

Lovers , Thinking

“My lords, we are vertebrate animals, we are mammalia! My learned friend's manner would be intolerable in Almighty God to a black beetle.”

William Henry Maule (1788–1858) British politician

"On the Authority of Lord Coleridge" [John Duke Coleridge, first Baron Coleridge (1820–1894)]; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 493. The same quotation is given on the same authority in the ninth edition of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1905), essentially a reprint of the 1891 edition.

P. G. Wodehouse made use of the same quotation in a short story, "The Man Upstairs," which was published nearly simultaneously in March 1910 in the Cosmopolitan magazine for the American market and for the Strand magazine for the English market. Interestingly, while the American short story uses the "Almighty God" version of the quotation, it appears in a slightly variant form in the English publication: " ' "My learned friend’s manner would be intolerable in an emperor to a black-beetle," ' quoted Beverley." It is probably that Wodehouse (or more likely his editors) altered the quotation to avoid the very strict blasphemy laws that formerly obtained in the United Kingdom, changing the quotation to refer merely to a highly ranked human.
Attributed

God , Learning

“Reading conventional notions of class struggle and anti-colonialism into bin Laden, the Taliban, and radical Islam is not just solipsistic. It is nonsense. If poverty and destitution, colonialism and capitalism are animating radical Islam, explain this: In March, the Taliban went to the Afghan desert where stood great monuments of human culture, two massive Buddhas carved out of a cliff. At first, Taliban soldiers tried artillery. The 1,500-year-old masterpieces proved too hardy. The Taliban had to resort to dynamite. They blew the statues to bits, then slaughtered 100 cows in atonement-for having taken so long to finish the job. Buddhism is hardly a representative of the West. It is hardly a cause of poverty and destitution. It is hardly a symbol of colonialism. No. The statues represented two things: an alternative faith and a great work of civilization. To the Taliban, the presence of both was intolerable.”

Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) American journalist

2000s, 2001, The Enemy is not Islam. It is Nihilism (2001)

Faith , Reading

“May those men who are animated by the true scientific spirit cease to believe that they are obliged to consider only subjects of public utility; …because, one must not hide it, the field of applications, so rich and fertile today, would not take long to be blighted by sterility if it ceased to be fertilized and revivified by the beneficial light which theoretical research radiates and pours incessantly upon it.”

Léon Foucault (1819–1868) French physicist

As quoted in The Life and Science of Léon Foucault : The Man Who Proved the Earth Rotates (2003) by William Tobin, p. 93.

Men , Light

“You can verbalize what happens to these animals a thousand times, but [when] you see it, it definitely clicks in—and it did for me. … I’m an animal lover. I was definitely one of those people who wore fur years ago. I was looking online and I [saw] how these animals are tortured and skinned, and you don’t really realize the hurt and the pain they go through just for fashion. I want to be a voice for them. I think that parents should show what’s done to these animals. People who do wear fur, I would like for them to do the research for themselves.”

Evelyn Lozada (1975) American reality show participant, model, spokesmodel.

"Cross Fur off Your Shopping List With Evelyn Lozada" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBiicjOS80A, video interview with PETA (11 December 2012).

Pain , People , Lovers , Fashion

“Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”

Clive Staples Lewis book God in the Dock

"The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment" (1949), p. 292
Similar statements were included in "A Reply to Professor Haldane" (1946) (see above), published posthumously.
God in the Dock (1970)

Age , Disease , Exercises , Hell

“Islam's jihad is a struggle against idolatry, sexual deviations, plunder, repression, and cruelty. The war waged by [non-Muslim] conquerors, however, aims at promoting lust and animal pleasures. They care not if whole countries are wiped out and many families left homeless. But those who study jihad will understand why Islam wants to conquer the whole world. All the countries conquered by Islam or to be conquered in the future will be marked for everlasting salvation. For they shall live under”

Ruhollah Khomeini (1902–1989) Religious leader, politician

God's law
As quoted in Anti-American Terrorism and the Middle East (2002) by Barry Rubin and Judith Colp Rubin, pp. 29, 32-36
Disputed

God , War , Pleasure , World

“In one variant, "On the day He created the heavens and the earth, Allah Almighty created a hundred mercies, each mercy equal to what is between the heaven and the earth, and He put one mercy on the earth by which a mother has compassion for her child and wild animals and birds for each other. On the Day of Rising, He will perfect them with this mercy."”

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

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 3, hadith number 420
Sunni Hadith

Bird , Perfection

“I find it difficult to take these psycho-analysts at all seriously when they try to scrutinise spiritual experience by the flicker of their torch-lights,'yet perhaps one ought to, for half-knowledge is a powerful thing and can be a great obstacle to the coming in front of the true Truth. This new psychology looks to me very much like children learning some summary and not very adequate alphabet, exulting in putting their a-b-c-d of the subconscient and the mysterious underground super-ego together and imagining that their first book of obscure beginnings (c-a-t cat, t-r-e-e tree) is the very heart of the real knowledge. They look from down up and explain the higher lights by the lower obscurities; but the foundation of these things is above and not below, upari budhna esam [Rig-Veda, 1.24.7]. The superconscient, not the subconscient, is the true foundation of things. The significance of the lotus is not to be found by analysing the secrets of the mud from which it grows here; its secret is to be found in the heavenly archetype of the lotus that blooms for ever in the Light above. The self-chosen field of these psychologists is besides poor, dark and limited; you must know the whole before you can know the part and the highest before you can truly understand the lowest. That is the promise of the greater psychology awaiting its hour before which these poor gropings will disappear and come to nothing…. Wanton waste, careless spoiling of physical things in an incredibly short time, loose disorder, misuse of service and materials due either to vital grasping or to tamasic inertia are baneful to prosperity and tend to drive away or discourage the Wealth-Power. These things have long been rampant in the society and, if that continues, an increase in our means might well mean a proportionate increase in the wastage and disorder and neutralise the material advantage. This must be remedied if there is to be any sound progress…. Asceticism for its own sake is not the ideal of this yoga, but self-control in the vital and right order in the material are a very important part of it… and even an ascetic discipline is better for our purpose than a loose absence of true control. Mastery of the material does not mean having plenty and profusely throwing it out or spoiling it as fast as it comes or faster. Mastery implies in it the right and careful utilisation of things and also a self-control in their use…. There is a consciousness in [things], a life which is not the life and consciousness of man and animal which we know, but still secret and real. That is why we must have a respect for physical things and use them rightly, not misuse and waste, ill-treat or handle with a careless roughness. This feeling of all being consciousness or alive comes when our own physical consciousness'and not the mind only'awakes out of its obscurity and becomes aware of the One in all things, the Divine everywhere.”

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

Undated
India's Rebirth

Life , Children , Truth , Secret

“I personally chose to go vegan because I educated myself on factory farming and cruelty to animals, and I suddenly realized that what was on my plate were living things, with feelings. And I just couldn’t disconnect myself from it any longer.”

Ellen DeGeneres (1958) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actress

From her website; quoted in "Why Ellen Went Vegan", in peta.org (9 November 2009) https://www.peta.org/blog/ellen-went-vegan/

Education , Feeling , Personality

“I gave up the Old Testament on account of its mistakes, its absurdities, its ignorance and its cruelty. I gave up the New because it vouched for the truth of the Old. I gave it up on account of its miracles, its contradictions, because Christ and his disciples believed in the existence of devils—talked and made bargains with them, expelled them from people and animals. This, of itself, is enough. We know, if we know anything, that devils do not exist—that Christ never cast them out, and that if he pretended to, he was either ignorant, dishonest or insane. These stories about devils demonstrate the human, the ignorant origin of the New Testament.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Why I Am an Agnostic (1896)

People , Truth , Christ

“Sometimes captured from the great arboreal freedom of their jungle homes, monkeys are closely confined in cages only three or four feet square. … They can never sit or lie down on a flat, soft or yielding surface. Little wonder that by the time they are needed for the knife or the needle they are so crazed or inert that they are no longer representative examples of animal life. Psychologists who study the behaviour of thousands of such creatures annually, rarely make allowances for the fact that their pathetic subjects have been so deprived that they have become more like monsters than animals. Many people who have experienced close affectionate relationships with individuals of other species testify to the considerable potential for emotional and intellectual development that animals have. When properly cared for a pet dog or cat can develop great subtleties of behaviour that the laboratory animal never shows. Those who have been fortunate enough to closely observe unfrightened animals living in the wild are often struck by the complexity and richness of the life they lead. These positive pleasures the laboratory animal never knows; for him the same four white walls and the smell of disinfectant.”

Richard D. Ryder (1940) British psychologist

Experiments on Animals (1971)

Life , People , Pleasure , Lie

“Simon, a man of the sect of the Essens, desired leave to speak his mind freely, and said that the vision denoted a change in the affairs of Archelaus, and that not for the better; that oxen, because that animal takes uneasy pains in his labors, denoted afflictions, and indeed denoted, further, a change of affairs, because that land which is ploughed by oxen cannot remain in its former state; and that the ears of corn being ten, determined the like number of years, because an ear of corn grows in one year; and that the time of Archelaus's government was over. And thus did this man expound the dream. Now on the fifth day after this dream came first to Archelaus, the other Archelaus, that was sent to Judea by Caesar to call him away, came hither also.”

Josephus on the Essenes

AJ 17.13.3
Antiquities of the Jews

Pain , Dreams , Affliction , Change

“As I luxuriate in the discovery that I am no special sponge for sorrow, but merely another fallible animal in this stone maze of a city, I come simultaneously to see that I am the focus of some vast device fueled by an obscure desire.”

William Gibson book Count Zero

On Marly Krushkhova
Count Zero (1986)

“I'd received death threats over the phone. Dead animals on your porch, mutilated animals on your porch some mornings when you get up. So I was not a 'good guy.”

Hugh Thompson, Jr. (1943–2006) United States helicopter pilot during the Vietnam War

In a 2004 interview with 60 minutes. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/07/national/07thompson.html
Attributed

Death , Guy , Dead

“Now there's no *beeping* way in hell I'm gonna go over because I'm a little afraid of animals.”

Ben Kowalewicz (1975) musician

From "The Diary of Billy Talent":

Way , Hell

“In the recent past, wolves were labeled a flagship species or an umbrella, indicator, or keystone species, depending on what conservation market one was trying to penetrate… A flagship species is an attraction to nearly all society's strata, but wolves are not welcomed by all factions of society. With a few rare exceptions, the rural world opposes wolves, so the animal's flagship role is restricted primarily to urbanites or to local areas. Wolves are certainly a powerful flagship species for the conservation movement, particularly that of affluent societies with strong lobbies in large cities, but a true flagship species should be able to move an entire society toward a goal.
Neither are wolves a good umbrella species (i. e., a species, usually high in the ecological pyramid, whose conservation necessarily fosters that of the rest of the chain) in that they can live well on a variety of food resources and in areas with an impoverished prey base. Wolves are not a keystone species either, in that they are not essential for the presence of many other species (e. g., herbivores flourish in areas devoid of wolves). And wolves are not necessarily indicators of good habitat quality or integrity because they are too generalist to be good indicators of the presence of a pristine trophic chain.
The above labels have been very useful in many circumstance and have contributed significantly to wolf recovery. They may still be useful in the future, but we should be aware that they are shortcuts to "sell a product" rather than good scientific grounds on which to build conservation.”

L. David Mech (1937) American Biologist , Ecologist

Wolves: Behavior, Ecology and Conservation (2003)

World , Food , Strong , Wolf

“The dinosaur is for most people the epitome of extinctness, the prototype of an animal so maladapted to a changing environment that it dies out, leaving fossils but no descendants.”

Robert T. Bakker (1945) American paleontologist

"Dinosaur Renaissance", Scientific American 232, no. 4 (April 1975), 58—78
Dinosaur Renaissance (1975)

People , Change

“Srila Visvanatha Cakravarti has given us a detailed analysis of the obstructions to our individual and collective devotional service. He has given us a sublime outline of the stages of progress up to prema [ecstatic love of God]. Now the challenge is before each of us to fully use what he has given us. How blessed we all are to receive this opportunity through the blueprints given by such great acaryas, to facilitate us in returning back to the realm of pure, enchanting, enduring and animated love.”

Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005) American Hindu writer

?
Books, Reflections on Sacred Teachings, Volume II: Madhurya Kadambini (Hari-Nama Press, 2003)

Love , God

“[W]hat good to us is the gods' knowledge if we can't get it from them? How could one communicate with the gods? Our ancestors (while they were alive!) stumbled on an extremely ingenious solution: divination.

We all know how hard it is to make the major decisions of life: should I hang tough or admit my transgression, should I move or stay in my present position, should I go to war or not, should I follow my heart or my head? We still haven't figured out any satisfactory systematic way of deciding these things. Anything that can relieve the burden of figuring out how to make these hard calls is bound to be an attractive idea.

Consider flipping a coin, for instance. Why do we do it? To take away the burden of having to find a reason for choosing A over B. We like to have reasons for what we do, but sometimes nothing sufficiently persuasive comes to mind, and we recognize that we have to decide soon, so we concoct a little gadget, an external thing that will make the decision for us. But if the decision is about something momentous, like whether to go to war, or marry, or confess, anything like flipping a coin would be just too, well, flippant.

In such a case, choosing for no good reason would be too obviously a sign of incompetence, and, besides, if the decision is really that important, once the coin has landed you'll have to confront the further choice: should you honor your just-avowed commitment to be bound by the flip of the coin, or should you reconsider? Faced with such quandaries, we recognize the need for some treatment stronger than a coin flip. Something more ceremonial, more impressive, like divination, which not only tells you what to do, but gives you a reason (if you squint just right and use your imagination).

Scholars have uncovered a comically variegated profusion of ancient ways of delegating important decisions to uncontrollable externalities. Instead of flipping a coin, you can flip arrows (belomancy) or rods (rhabdomancy) or bones or cards (sortilege), and instead of looking at tea leaves (tasseography), you can examine the livers of sacrificed animals (hepatoscopy) or other entrails (haruspicy) or melted wax poured into water (ceroscopy). Then there is moleosophy (divination by blemishes), myomancy (divination by rodent behavior), nephomancy (divination by clouds), and of course the old favorites, numerology and astrology, among dozens of others.”

Daniel Dennett book Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

Breaking the Spell (2006)

Idea , Life , God , War

“Interviewer: How about pets, Wayne? Would you envision a future with no pets in the world?
Wayne Pacelle: I wouldn’t say that I envision that, no. If I had my personal view perhaps that might take hold. In fact, I don’t want to see another cat or dog born. It’s not something I strive for, though. If people were very responsible, and didn’t do manipulative breeding, and cared for animals in all senses, and accounted for their nutritional needs as well as their social and psychological needs, then I think it could be an appropriate thing. I’m not sure. I think it’s one of those things that we’ll decide later in society. I think we’re still far from it.”

Wayne Pacelle (1965) American activist

Interview in "Bloodties: Nature, Culture, and the Hunt," 1994

People , World , Dogs , Cats

“My Impossible Five would be: Cape mountain leopard, aardvark, pangolin, riverine rabbit and (naturally occurring) white lion. These animals had survived into our modern age largely due to their elusiveness. Their ‘impossibility’ was their tenuous insurance against extinction. They were still wild and free, most of them living outside national parks, still occupying the same territories they had for millennia. As such, they were symbols of wilderness – that wildness once everywhere, and which is now drastically curtailed and shrinking by the day.
Their continued presence, even if never seen, was a comfort, a kind of ecological money in the bank. If they disappeared or were driven into contained environments, our human species would be far poorer for it. I began to think of my creatures’ impossibility as their saving grace – our saving grace. In this light, it didn’t matter if I found none of them, and my mission was a complete failure. As long as I knew – we knew – they were still out there, that would be enough.”

Justin D. Fox (1967) South African author, photojournalist, lecturer and editor

The Impossible Five (2015)

Money , Age , Mountain , Failure

“So black people, you are subjects of white people. Even under ANC, even under the so-called democracy, you are subject, you are servant of white people. No white man will be served by me. I do not serve white masters. … I am here to disturb the white man's peace. … The white man has been too comfortable for too long. We are here unashamedly to disturb the white man's peace, because we have never known peace. We don't know what peace looks like. … They have been swimming in a pool of privilege. They have been enjoying themselves because they always owned our land. We, the rightful owners, our peace was disturbed by white man's arrival here. They committed a black genocide. They killed our people during land dispossession. … They found peaceful Africans here. They killed them. They slaughtered them like animals. We are not calling for the slaughtering of white people, at least for now. What we are calling for is for peaceful occupation of the land. And we don't owe anyone apology about that. … Revolution is about making those who are comfortable uncomfortable. … Revolution is about disturbing the peace of those who are swimming in a peaceful environment through exploitation of the working class. … Our strategic objective is the defeat of white monopoly capital. And that defeat […] means the ownership of property must change and be transferred into the hands of the people. Their mines must be nationalized, the banks must be nationalized, the land must be expropriated without compensation. … But white minority be warned, we will take our land no matter what.”

Julius Malema (1981) South African political activist

To EFF supporters after appearing in the Newcastle Magistrates court on 7 November 2016, for allegedly contravening the Riotous Assemblies Act, “We are not calling for the slaughtering of white people, at least for now.” Malema http://www.thesouthafrican.com/we-are-not-calling-for-the-slaughtering-of-white-people-at-least-for-now-malema/, Ezra Claymore, The South African, 8 November 2016, and a video https://twitter.com/tshidi_lee/status/795572416290443264/video/1 by Matshidiso Madia. See also: Malema addresses supporters after appearing in court, 7 November 2016 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjBi3z-1yAs, SABC News, YouTube

People , Peace , Democracy , Change

“Neither in the ancient pagan world nor in any other culture has human history ever been thought to have an overarching significance. In Greece and Rome, it was a series of natural cycles of growth and decline. In India, it was a collective dream, endlessly repeated. The idea that history must make sense is just a Christian prejudice. If you believe that humans are animals, there can be no such thing as the history of humanity, only the lives of particular humans. If we speak of the history of the species at all, it is only to signify the unknowable sum of these lives. As with other animals, some lives are happy, others wretched. None has a meaning that lies beyond itsel£. Looking for meaning in history is like looking for patterns in clouds.”

John Gray book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

The Deception: Nietzsche's Optimism (p.47-8)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

World , Dreams , History , Idea

“My belief in how plant-based nutrition could boost athletic performance while also reducing the strain on the environment was, at the time, considered fringe at best. … Ten years later, it's now common for people to speak of their “plant-based diet.” Even “vegan” is a familiar word, seen on the most conventional restaurants' menus. The importance of avoiding animal products in our diet, whether for heath, physical and mental performance, environmental, ethical, or a combination of these reasons, is now well understood and widely accepted.”

Brendan Brazier (1975) Canadian triathlete, publisher, writer, editor

Preface to the 10th Anniversary Edition
The Thrive Diet

People , Time

“Investment planning and execution are two completely different animals.”

William J. Bernstein (1948) economist

Source: The Four Pillars of Investing (2002), Chapter 14, Getting Started, Keeping It Going, p. 293.

“Animals are not here for us to do as we please with. We are not their superiors, we are their equals. We are their family. Be kind to them.”

Ricky Gervais (1961) English comedian, actor, director, producer, musician, writer, and former radio presenter

Twitter, 17 November 2013; quoted in "Ricky Gervais Is PETA’s Person of the Year," PETA (23 December 2013) https://www.peta.org/blog/ricky-gervais-petas-person-year/

Family

“To see the Convulsions, Agonies and Tortures of a poor Fellow-Creature, whom they cannot restore nor recompense, dying to gratify Luxury, and scratch callous and rank Organs, must require a rocky Heart, and a great Degree of Cruelty and Ferocity. I cannot find any great Difference on the Foot of natural Reason and Equity only, between feeding on human Flesh, and feeding on brute animal Flesh, except Custom and Example. I believe some rational Creatures would suffer less in being fairly butcher'd, than a strong Ox, or red Deer; and in natural Morality and Justice, the Degrees of Pain here, make the essential Difference; for as to other Differences, they are relative only, and can be of no Weight with an infinitely perfect Being.”

George Cheyne (physician) (1671–1743) British doctor

Did not Use and Example weaken this Terror, and make the Difference, Reason alone could never do it.
An Essay on Regimen (London: C. Rivington, 1740), pp. 70 https://books.google.it/books?id=ezswAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA70-71.

Pain , Justice , Nature , Strong

“They first sallied forth in a body of about 500 persons to attack the market place of the village known as Poorwa, where they slaughtered a cow. With the blood of the animal they defiled a Hindu temple. Then they hung up the four quarters (of the cow) in the different parts of the market place. They maltreated and wounded an unfortunate Brahmin and threatened to make him a Muslim… The village of Laoghatty in the Nadia district was their next object attack. Here they commenced operations by the repetition of the same outrage to the religious feelings of the Hindus which they had committed at Poorwa, viz, the slaughter of a cow in that part of the village exclusively occupied by Hindu residents. But being opposed by Hardeb Ray, a principal inhabitant of the village, and a Brahmin, at the head of a party of villagers, an affray ensued in which one Debnath Ray was killed and Hardeb Ray and a number of villagers were severely wounded… Titu’s party went on increasing and with growing confidence they went on killing cows in different places, making raids on the neighbouring villages, forcing from the raiyats agreements to furnish grain, compelling many of them to profess conformity to the tenets of their sect… They openly proclaimed themselves masters of the country, asserting that the Mussalmans from whom the English usurped it, were the rightful owners of the empire… The rebels issued parwanas to the principal zamindars of the district. Their tenor was as follows: “This country is now given to our Deen Mohammed. You must, therefore, immediately send grain to the army.’ In a written report the magistrate of Nadia states that a paper written in Bengali and signed in Arabic characters, was put into his hand, purporting to be an order of Allah to the Pal Chowdhuries of Ranaghat to supply russud (rations) to the army of fakirs who were about to fight with the government.”

Titumir

About the exploits of Titumir. Narahari Kaviraj, Wahabi And Faraizi Rebels of Bengal, New Delhi, 1982, Pp. 37-38, 43-44, 50-51. Quoted in Goel, Sita Ram (1995). Muslim separatism: Causes and consequences. ISBN 9788185990262

Feeling , Confidence , Fight , Parting

“The Smokies seem to be in the process of losing most of their mussels. The National Park Service actually has something of a tradition of making things extinct. Bryce Canyon National Park is perhaps the most interesting—certainly the most striking—example. It was founded in 1923 and in less than half a century under the Park Service’s stewardship lost seven species of mammal—the white-tailed jackrabbit, prairie dog, pronghorn antelope, flying squirrel, beaver, red fox, and spotted skunk. Quite an achievement when you consider that these animals had survived in Bryce Canyon for tens of millions of years before the Park Service took an interest in them. Altogether, forty-two species of mammal have disappeared from America’s national parks this century.”

Bill Bryson A Walk in the Woods

Source: A Walk in the Woods (1997), Chapter 7 (p. 92)

Dogs , Flying

“There is only one thing that arouses animals more than pleasure, and that is pain. Under torture you are as if under the dominion of those grasses that produce visions. Everything you have heard told, everything you have read returns to your mind, as if you were being transported, not toward heaven, but towards hell. Under torture you say not only what the inquisitor wants, but also what you imagine might please him, because a bond (this, truly, diabolical) is established between you and him.”

Umberto Eco book The Name of the Rose

William of Baskerville http://books.google.com/books?id=XY2vXKsHbzIC&q="There+is+only+one+thing+that+arouses+animals+more+than+pleasure+and+that+is+pain+Under+torture+you+are+as+if+under+the+dominion+of+those+grasses+that+produce+visions+Everything+you+have+heard+told+everything+you+have+read+returns+to+your+mind+as+if+you+were+being+transported+not+toward+heaven+but+towards+helll+Under+torture+you+say+not+only+what+the+inquisitor+wants+but+also+what+you+imagine+might+please+him+because+a+bond+this+truly+diabolical+is+established+between+you+and+him"&pg=PA73#v=onepage
The Name of the Rose (1980)

Pain , Pleasure , Imagination , Hell

“As you love your own body, so regard everyone as equal to your own body. When the Supreme Experience supervenes, everyone's service is revealed as one's own service. Call it a bird, an insect, an animal or a man, call it by any name you please, one serves one's own Self in every one of them.”

Sri Anandamoyi Ma (1896–1982) Hindu saint

Anandamayi Ma, Ananda Varta Quarterly
By herself

Love , Bird

“As breeders of domestic animals, when they choose certain varieties in preference to others to breed from, speak technically of their method as that of 'selecting,' Mr. Darwin calls the combination of natural causes, which may enable certain varieties of wild animals or plants to prevail over others of the same species, 'natural selection.”

Charles Lyell (1797–1875) British lawyer and geologist

Source: The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man (1863), Ch.21, p. 410

Nature

“They are doing that here in the United States. American scientific companies are crossbreeding humans and animals and are coming up with, with mice with fully functioning human brains.”

Christine O'Donnell (1969) American Tea Party politician and former Republican Party candidate

2007-11-15
Television series
The O'Reilly Factor
Fox News
TV appearances

“Racist oppression invades the lives of Black people on an infinite variety of levels. Blacks are imprisoned in a world where our labor and toil hardly allow us to eke out a decent existence, if we are able to find jobs at all. When the economy begins to falter, we are forever the first victims, always the most deeply wounded. When the economy is on its feet, we continue to live in a depressed state. Unemployment is generally twice as high in the ghettos as it is in the country as a whole and even higher among Black women and youth. The unemployment rate among Black youth has presently skyrocketed to 30 per cent. If one-third of America’s white youth were without a means of livelihood, we would either be in the thick of revolution or else under the iron rule of fascism. Substandard schools, medical care hardly fit for animals, overpriced, dilapidated housing, a welfare system based on a policy of skimpy concessions, designed to degrade and divide (and even this may soon be cancelled)—this is only the beginning of the list of props in the overall scenery of oppression which, for the mass of Blacks, is the universe.”

Angela Davis (1944) American political activist, scholar, and author

If They Come in The Morning (1971)

Women , People , Youth , World

“And this in turn makes it plain that the Right Man problem is a problem of highly dominant people. Dominance is a subject of enormous importance to biologists and zoologists because the percentage of dominant animals — or human beings — seems to be amazingly constant. Bernard Shaw once asked the explorer H. M. Stanley how many other men could take over leadership of the expedition if Stanley himself fell ill; Stanley replied promptly: "One in twenty." "Is that exact or approximate?" asked Shaw. "Exact." And biological studies have confirmed this as a fact. For some odd reason, precisely five per cent — one in twenty — of any animal group are dominant — have leadership qualities. During the Korean War, the Chinese made the interesting discovery that if they separated out the dominant five per cent of American prisoners of war, and kept them in separate compound, the remaining ninety-five per cent made no attempt to escape.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: About, p. 216

Men , War , People , Problem

“As a poet I hold the most archaic values on earth. They go back to the upper Paleolithic: the fertility of the soil, the magic of animals, the power-vision in solitude, the terrifying initiation and rebirth, the love and ecstasy of the dance, the common work of the tribe. I try to hold both history and wilderness in mind, that my poems may approach the true measure of things and stand against the unbalance and ignorance of our times.”

Gary Snyder (1930) American poet

"Statement for the Paterson Society" (1961), as quoted in David Kherdian, Six Poets of the San Francisco Renaissance: Portraits and Checklists (1967), p. 52. Snyder repeated the first part of this quote (up to "… common work of the tribe.") in the introduction to the revised edition of Gary Snyder, Myths & Texts (1978), p. viii.

Love , History , Solitude , Time

“I say ethical principle, because it is beyond doubt that the chief motive of Vegetarianism is the humane one. Questions of hygiene and of economy both play their part, and an important part, in a full discussion of food reform; but the feeling which underlies and animates the whole movement is the instinctive horror of butchery, especially the butchery of the more highly organized animals, so human, so near akin to man.”

Henry Stephens Salt (1851–1939) British activist

The Humanities of Diet

Food , Feeling , Motivation , Question

““I wonder,” he thought, “is it worth getting myself crushed in that crowd just to save my life? Is it worth getting all frustrated and angry, lowering myself to their level, pushing and shoving with all the rest, fighting like a common animal, just to stay alive?” He smiled ruefully. “It always comes to the simple question: what is more important, life or self-respect?””

George Alec Effinger (1947–2002) Novelist, short story writer

Source: Relatives (1973)., Chapter 8 (p. 123).

Life , Smile , Question , Fight

“Can storied urn, or animated bust
Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust,
Or Flatt'ry soothe the dull cold ear of Death?”

Thomas Gray (1716–1771) English poet, historian

St. 11
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard http://www.thomasgray.org/cgi-bin/display.cgi?text=elcc (written 1750, publ. 1751)

Death

“The purpose of keeping any collection of wild animals in confinement should be threefold; first, to conduct as complete as possible a biological study of every species, especially those aspects which are too difficult or too costly to study in the wild and which may help in the preservation of that species in its natural habitat; second, to aid severely endangered species by setting up, under ideal conditions, protected breeding groups and, eventually, a reintroduction programme, so helping to ensure their future survival; thirdly, by the display and explanation of this work to the public, to persuade people of the vital necessity and urgency for the overall conservation of nature.”

Gerald Durrell (1925–1995) naturalist, zookeeper, conservationist, author and television presenter

The Stationary Ark (1976)

People , Nature , Study , Future

“[The] enormous appetite for animal products has forced the conversion (at a very poor rate) of more and more grain, soybean and even fish meal into feed for cattle, hogs and poultry, thus decreasing the amounts of food directly available for direct consumption by the poor.”

Jean Mayer (1920–1993) French-American scientist, university administrator

"By Bread Alone", The New York Times Book Review (15 December 1974); quoted in The Diet Delusion by Gary Taubes (Random House, 2008), p. 42 https://books.google.it/books?id=GIdodweSSE4C&pg=PA42.

Food , Fish

“At least you got him to pipe down,' she said. 'Are you okay? Mad animal.”

Kazuo Ishiguro book Never Let Me Go

Source: Never Let Me Go (2005), Chapter 1, p. 12

Madness

“Will you, laying aside all partiality, consider in the silence of your thoughts that we [humans] are creatures either quite like the rest [of animals], or separated by no great difference? For what is there to show that we do not resemble them? or what excellence is in us, such that we scorn to be ranked as creatures? Their bodies are built up on bones, and bound closely together by sinews; and our bodies are in like manner built up on bones, and bound closely together by sinews.”

Arnobius (255–327) Christian apologist

Book II, § 16
Adversus Nationes

Silence

“Ever since I was a kid, I had a really hard time eating meat. Every time I ate chicken, I actually spat it out in my napkin and gave it to my dog. … I would always see the animal in my mind. I never understood why I was eating another creature. That just never made sense to me.”

Allie (wrestler) (1987) Canadian professional wrestler

"Meatless in the Ring: Being Vegan in the Changing World of Pro Wrestling" https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2688747-meatless-in-the-ring-being-vegan-in-the-changing-world-of-pro-wrestling, Bleacher Report (15 March 2017).

Dogs , Sense , Time

“From the point of view of technique, I liked there to be internal lines in objects, I mean that instead of circumscribing forms, they animate the insides of things—the inside of formless and non-delimited areas. They function as internal textures and not primarily as contours.”

Jean Dubuffet (1901–1985) sculptor from France

Quote of Dubuffet in Catalogue, p. 47; as cited by Hubert Damisch, in 'Dubuffet or the Reading of the World', in 'Art de France 2' (1962), p. 337–346 (translated by Kent Minturn and Priya Wadhera)
1960-70's

“Some excuse seems necessary for the pain and loss which we occasion to brutes, by restraining them of their liberty, mutilating their bodies, and, at last, putting an end to their lives (which we suppose to be the whole of their existence), for our pleasure or conveniency.
The reasons alleged in vindication of this practice, are the following: that the several species of brutes being created to prey upon one another, affords a kind of analogy to prove that the human species were intended to feed upon them; that, if let alone, they would overrun the earth, and exclude mankind from the occupation of it; that they are requited for what they suffer at our hands, by our care and protection.
Upon which reasons I would observe, that the analogy contended for is extremely lame; since brutes have no power to support life by any other means, and since we have; for the whole human species might subsist entirely upon fruit, pulse, herbs, and roots, as many tribes of Hindoos actually do. The two other reasons may be valid reasons, as far as they go; for, no doubt, if man had been supported entirely by vegetable food, a great part of those animals which die to furnish his table, would never have lived: but they by no means justify our right over the lives of brutes to the extent in which we exercise it. What danger is there, for instance, of fish interfering with us, in the occupation of their element? or what do we contribute to their support or preservation?”

William Paley (1743–1805) Christian apologist, natural theologian, utilitarian

Vol. I, Book II, Ch. XI.
The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy (1785)

Life , Pain , Pleasure , Food

“From these early beginnings, and from the fact that nature had… equipped their minds with the powers of thought and understanding, thus putting all other animals under their sway, they next gradually advanced from the construction of buildings to the other arts and sciences, and so passed from a rude and barbarous mode of life to civilization and refinement.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book II, Chapter I, Sec. 6

Life , Art , Understanding , Nature

“I wish I could do it again, only I wish I could take all of the animals out of the environmental fur farm … I have absolutely no regrets, and I hope the same thing continues to happen at MSU and every other college campus that does animal research.”

Rod Coronado (1966) Native American eco-anarchist and animal rights activist

Activists Uncaged http://www.statenews.com/article.phtml?pk=23918

Hope

“The animal liberation movement is fighting what is arguably the most entrenched and widespread form of exploitation in human history: speciesism.”

Melanie Joy (1966) American psychologist

Source: Strategic Action for Animals (2008), p. 17

History , Fight

“It is usually assumed that, in speaking, in the 1844 Manuscripts, of man’s “being reduced to the level of the animals,” and of man’s alienation from his “species-being” under the conditions of capitalist production, Marx is thinking in terms of an abstract conception of “man” as being alienated from his biological characteristics as a species. So, it is presumed, at this initial stage in the evolution of his thought, Marx believed that man is essentially a creative being whose “natural” propensities are denied by the restrictive character of capitalism. Actually, Marx holds, on the contrary, that the enormous productive power of capitalism generates possibilities for the future development of man which could not have been possible under prior forms of productive system. The organization of social relationships within which capitalist production is carried on in fact leads to the failure to realize these historically generated possibilities. The character of alienated labor does not express a tension between “man in nature” (non-alienated) and “man in society” (alienated), but between the potential generated by a specific form of society—capitalism—and the frustrated realization of that potential. What separates man from the animals is not the mere existence of biological differences between mankind and other species, but the cultural achievements of men, which are the outcome of a very long process of social development.”

Anthony Giddens (1938) British sociologist

Source: Capitalism and Modern Social Theory (1971), pp. 15-16.

Men , Failure , Nature , Thinking

“One scarcely knows whether to laugh or cry. The spectacle presented, in Cynthia Russett's splendid book, of nineteenth-century white male scientists and thinkers earnestly trying to prove women inferior to men--thereby providing, along with "savages" and "idiots," an evolutionary buffer between men and animals--is by turns appalling, amusing, and saddening. Surveying the work of real scientists as well as the products of more dubious minds, Russett has produced a learned yet immensely enjoyable chapter in the annals of human folly.
At the turn of the century science was successfully challenging the social authority of religion; scientists wielded a power no other group commanded. Unfortunately, as Russett demonstrates, in Victorian sexual science, empiricism tangled with prior belief, and scientists' delineation of the mental and physical differences between men and women was directed to show how and why women were inferior to men. These men were not necessarily misogynists. This was an unsettling time, when the social order was threatened by wars, fierce economic competition, racial and industrial conflict, and the failure of society to ameliorate poverty, vice, crime, illnesses. Just when men needed the psychic lift an adoring dependent woman could give, she was demanding the vote, higher education, and the opportunity to become a wage earner!”

Cynthia Eagle Russett (1937–2013) American historian

Cynthia Eagle Russett. Sexual Science: The Victorian Construction of Womanhood. Harvard University Press, 2009. Abstract

Women , Men , War , Books

“The best part of our misfortunes - our moral unhappiness, I mean - comes from the fact that we have words to describe them… We give them body, we even go so far as to give them a body which is not their own, for the words of common language do not always correspond to our sufferings, which may be of a new and distinct sort. … And then, too, words prolong and preserve sorrows that should long have been forgotten. Animal nature forgets….”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

A Time for Silence

Nature , Suffering , Parting , Forgetting

“Around 16 or 17 years old, I started finding out about some of the animal cruelty things, and ethically it just didn't make sense to me to keep eating meat, so eventually I stopped. … I was watching an HBO special about eating habits and different cultures, and they actually showed in China how people eat cats, and I'm really fond of cats, and I just happened to be sitting on the couch with my cat, and once I saw that, it just put everything in perspective. If I wouldn't eat my cat what's the difference between eating a cat or a cow? If certain animals are considered lesser than, so are certain people and that's not really fair. And the root of that is to consider life on equal terms across the board.”

Ben Kenney (1977) American musician

“ Ben Kenney—Exclusive Interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRVPQc6UmdI,” ad for PETA (10 July 2008).

Life , People , Cats , Sense

“I got the idea for that story in May of 1979. I didn't know what it was going to be; I just thought it would be neat to write something about Jack the Ripper's dog, and ask Gahan Wilson to illustrate it, partly because of the fact that a dog is such an unusual person. No matter who owns a dog, if that person is nice to the animal, the dog is going to love him. I thought at the time, if you take a really despicable person, a serial killer or someone like that, and tell a story from his dog's point of view it would make him look pretty good.”

Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) American speculative fiction writer

Explaining the origins http://www.roger-zelazny.com/repository/absmag.html of his last book, A Night in the Lonesome October in an interview (Absolute Magnitude Autumn/Winter 1994)

Love , Dogs , Idea , Time

“Now men, who from the beginning have been gifted with reason above all animals, which is a great advantage for the conservation of their fellowship and community, and for the end on account of which each one of them exists. Indeed, having come to understand what is necessary through rational discourse, they were moved by a natural instinct to unite with one another and, once they were living together, to construct villages and towns. And if man had not discovered the rules for preserving peace against the corrupt inclinations of many, union would not have been enough to save him. And it is for this reason that cities were established, in which the citizens are united, and there are laws to preserve that unity and agreement by the common consent of all, and there are also guardians over them all, with the power to do as much as is necessary for the public good.”

Nicholas of Cusa book De concordantia catholica

De concordantia catholica (The Catholic Concordance) (1434)

Men , Peace , Law , Communication

“If I were an animal, I would be a fish or a bird. It's the peace and beauty of ocean, the silent language of it. It seems like a womb, protective. The sky too. I love all colors, but blue mainly, because it's transparent like the water and the sky.”

Nastassja Kinski (1961) German actress

As quoted in Denise Worrell (1989), Icons: Intimate Portraits.

Love , Peace , Beauty , Color

“All my life I have been attracted by Catholicism. But what attracted me was not its Christianity, but its paganism. The Scholastic Philosophers entertained me not because they were apologists for Jesus but because they were refinements of Aristotle. The liturgical life of the Church moved me because it echoes the most ancient responses to the turning of the year and the changing seasons, and the rhythms of animal and human life. For me the Sacraments transfigured the rites of passage, the physical facts of the human condition — birth, adolescence, sexual intercourse, vocation, sickness and death, communion, penance. Catholicism still provides a structure of acts, individual and at the same time communal, physical responses to life.”

Kenneth Rexroth (1905–1982) American poet, writer, anarchist, academic and conscientious objector

"Monastic Interlude" http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/autobio/4.htm
An Autobiographical Novel (1991)

Life , Death , Communication , Birth

“Transform the Animal into the Driver of the herds; let all thyself be Krishna. This is thy goal.”

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

Thoughts and Glimpses (1916-17)

“Becoming aware of the intense suffering of billions of animals, and of our own participation in that suffering, can bring up painful emotions: sorrow and grief for the animals; anger at the injustice and deception of the system; despair at the enormity of the problem; fear that trusted authorities and institutions are, in fact, untrustworthy; and guilt for having contributed to the problem. Bearing witness means choosing to suffer. Indeed, empathy is literally “feeling with.” Choosing to suffer is particularly difficult in a culture that is addicted to comfort—a culture that teaches that pain should be avoided whenever possible and that ignorance is bliss. We can reduce our resistance to witnessing by valuing authenticity over personal pleasure, and integration over ignorance.”

Melanie Joy book Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows

Source: Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows (2010), pp. 142-143

Pain , Pleasure , Fear , Feeling

“Human beings are, by nature, the kind of animal that falls in love. The cross-cultural record also suggests that humans are also the kind of animal that commonly provides biparental care for its young. In 95% to 97% of mammalian species, only the females care for the young. We would no more expect males in these species to invest in their offspring than we would expect them to get pregnant or lactate. Humans are not like that.”

Steve Stewart-Williams (1971)

Source: The Ape that Thought It Was a Peacock: Does Evolutionary Psychology Exaggerate Human Sex Differences? (2013), p. 147

Love , Nature

“Inspiration is pervasive but not a power.
It's a peaceful thing.
It is a consolation even to plants and animals.
Do not think that it is unique.
If it were unique no one would be able to respond to your work.”

Agnes Martin (1912–2004) American artist

Source: 1970's, The Untroubled Mind', 1972, p. 62

Peace , Thinking

“In a Thumbnail Sketch here is [the Multiple Drafts theory of consciousness] so far:There is no single, definitive "stream of consciousness," because there is no central Headquarters, no Cartesian Theatre where "it all comes together" for the perusal of a Central Meaner. Instead of such a single stream (however wide), there are multiple channels in which specialist circuits try, in parallel pandemoniums, to do their various things, creating Multiple Drafts as they go. Most of these fragmentary drafts of "narrative" play short-lived roles in the modulation of current activity but some get promoted to further functional roles, in swift succession, by the activity of a virtual machine in the brain. The seriality of this machine (its "von Neumannesque" character) is not a "hard-wired" design feature, but rather the upshot of a succession of coalitions of these specialists.The basic specialists are part of our animal heritage. They were not developed to perform peculiarly human actions, such as reading and writing, but ducking, predator-avoiding, face-recognizing, grasping, throwing, berry-picking, and other essential tasks. They are often opportunistically enlisted in new roles, for which their talents may more or less suit them. The result is not bedlam only because the trends that are imposed on all this activity are themselves part of the design. Some of this design is innate, and is shared with other animals. But it is augmented, and sometimes even overwhelmed in importance, by microhabits of thought that are developed in the individual, partly idiosyncratic results of self-exploration and partly the predesigned gifts of culture. Thousands of memes, mostly borne by language, but also by wordless "images" and other data structures, take up residence in an individual brain, shaping its tendencies and thereby turning it into a mind.”

Daniel Dennett book Consciousness Explained

Source: Consciousness Explained (1991), p. 253–4.

Reading , Success , Parting

“I’m sorry Andrea Dworkin started a sexual revolution that she ended up repudiating. She never got to see people like me, Carol, and the rest of us little protégées who took her inspiration and flew to a new dimension. She got stuck, and then she got sick, and when you’re famous for one thing, no one wants to see you change unless you reject it all, like a pathetic sinner seeking redemption. She was too stubborn and too old-fashioned for that. Andrea Dworkin never would have admitted that she was a SuperStar. She was the animator of the ultimate porno horror loop, where the Final Girl never gets a chance to slay the monster, she only dies, dies, dies, with the cries of the angry mourners to remember her.”

Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005) Feminist writer

" Andrea Dworkin Has Died http://susiebright.blogs.com/susie_brights_journal_/2005/04/andrea_dworkin_.html" by Susie Bright, Susie Bright's Journal (blog), April 11, 2005.
About

People , Girl , Fashion , Change

“Pig, n. An animal (Porcus omnivorus) closely allied to the human race by the splendor and vivacity of its appetite, which, however, is inferior in scope, for it sticks at pig.”

Ambrose Bierce book The Devil's Dictionary

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

“It may be presumed that all animals which feed on various substances possess the sense of taste, and this is certainly the case with worms.”

Charles Darwin book The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms

Source: The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms (1881), Chapter 1: Habits of Worms, p. 32. http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=47&itemID=F1357&viewtype=image

Sense

“I am amazed when I see young people eating meat. It seems to me so much thing from other times! The carnivore youth is not with the times, it has a stomach of the nineteenth century, who carnivorized Europe… Eating pieces of slaughtered animals is an anomaly, out of a vegetarian diet there is no real youth. Meat is mostly an anguished habit of old people. Requiring meat dishes, talking about it, remembering it, it's a thing of old people, old and unable to rejuvenate with a decidedly alternative diet.”

Guido Ceronetti Insetti senza frontiere

Mi stupisco, quando vedo gente giovane mangiare carne. Mi sembra talmente cosa d'altre epoche! La gioventù carnivora non è coi tempi, ha uno stomaco da secolo XIX, che carnivorizzò l'Europa... Cibarsi di pezzi di animali macellati è un'anomalia, fuori della dieta vegetariana non c'è giovinezza vera. La carne è per lo più un'angosciata abitudine dei vecchi. Richiedere piatti di carne, parlarne, ricordarli è cosa da vecchi, e da vecchi incapaci di svecchiarsi con una dieta decisamente alternativa.
Insects without Borders: Thoughts of the Unknown Philosopher (Insetti senza frontiere: Pensieri del filosofo ignoto), Milan: Adelphi, 2009, § 34.

People , Youth , Time

“As a moral guide, [the Bible] utterly fails, because much of the original Hebrew scriptures were written by ignorant and bigoted savages who condoned and promoted animal cruelty, incest, slavery, abuse of slaves, spousal abuse, child abuse, child molestation, abortion, pillage, murder, cannibalism, genocide, and prejudice against race, nationality, religion, sex, and sexual orientation.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

"2nd Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFrkjEgUDZA&list=PL126AFB53A6F002CC&index=2, Youtube (November 24, 2007)
Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

Religion , Sex

“I decided to become Vegan simply because if you care about animals and people, there is no other choice but to be vegan. It’s a very simple equation — meat and dairy = animal and human suffering. … When you know the truth about meat and dairy the hard thing would be to continue to eat them.”

Chris DeRose (1948) American actor and activist

"Chris DeRose: Vegan Easy Challenge Ambassador", interview with VeganEasy.org (2011) https://web.archive.org/web/20111012130026/http://veganeasy.org/Chris-DeRose.

People , Truth , Suffering

“We're animals. We're born like every other mammal and we live our whole lives around disguised animal thoughts.”

Barbara Kingsolver Animal Dreams

Animal Dreams, page 118.
Animal Dreams (1990)

“As I learned more about veganism, and animal farms and the way animals were treated, it just disgusted me to the point where I could never imagine eating animals again.”

Daniel Negreanu (1974) Canadian poker player

“Kid Poker – Vegan Daniel Negeanu Dominates the Card Scene,” interview with Sophie Jackson of PokerListings.com, reported in VeganLifeMag.com (7 August 2016) https://www.veganlifemag.com/daniel-negeanu-vegan-poker/.

Way , Imagination , Learning

“I have tried to suggest that injustice is not necessary economics; that the economics can work, and has often worked, when the constituency for it is animated. The politics of equality - that is a little harder.”

Robert Kuttner (1943) American journalist

Epilogue: Politics, p. 278 (Last text lines...)
The Economic Illusion (1984)

“They were going to look at war, the red animal — war, the blood-swollen god. And they were deeply engrossed in this march.”

Stephen Crane book The Red Badge of Courage

Source: The Red Badge of Courage (1895), Ch. 3
Context: The line, broken into moving fragments by the ground, went calmly on through fields and woods. The youth looked at the men nearest him, and saw, for the most part, expressions of deep interest, as if they were investigating something that had fascinated them. One or two stepped with overvaliant airs as if they were already plunged into war. Others walked as upon thin ice. The greater part of the untested men appeared quiet and absorbed. They were going to look at war, the red animal — war, the blood-swollen god. And they were deeply engrossed in this march.

God , War

“It does not require very great optimism to assume that from us human beings something better and higher may evolve. Far from seeing in man the irrevocable and unsurpassable image of God, I assert – more modestly and, I believe, in greater awe of the Creation and its infinite possibilities – that the long-sought missing link between animals and the really humane being is ourselves!”

Konrad Lorenz book On Aggression

Source: On Aggression (1963), Ch. XII : On the Virtue of Scientific Humility
Context: We are the highest achievement reached so far by the great constructors of evolution. We are their "latest" but certainly not their last word. The scientist must not regard anything as absolute, not even the laws of pure reason. He must remain aware of the great fact, discovered by Heraclitus, that nothing whatever really remains the same even for one moment, but that everything is perpetually changing. To regard man, the most ephemeral and rapidly evolving of all species, as the final and unsurpassable achievement of creation, especially at his present-day particularly dangerous and disagreeable stage of development, is certainly the most arrogant and dangerous of all untenable doctrines. If I thought of man as the final image of God, I should not know what to think of God. But when I consider that our ancestors, at a time fairly recent in relation to the earth's history, were perfectly ordinary apes, closely related to chimpanzees, I see a glimmer of hope. It does not require very great optimism to assume that from us human beings something better and higher may evolve. Far from seeing in man the irrevocable and unsurpassable image of God, I assert – more modestly and, I believe, in greater awe of the Creation and its infinite possibilities – that the long-sought missing link between animals and the really humane being is ourselves!

God , Optimism

“He demonstrated that many fossil teeth found in Tuscany belonged to a species of shark; and he dissected, for the purpose of comparison, one of these fish recently taken from the Mediterranean. That the remains of shells and marine animals found petrified were not of animal origin was still a favorite dogma of many, who were unwilling to believe that the earth could have been inhabited by living beings long before many of the mountains were formed.”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

Chpt.3, p. 31
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1
Context: The most remarkable work of that period was published by Steno... The treatise bears the quaint title of 'De Solido intra Solidum contento naturaliter (1669,)' by which the author intended to express 'On Gems, Crystals, and organic Petrifactions enclosed within solid Rocks.'... Steno had compared the fossil shells with their recent analogues, and traced the various gradations from the state of mere calcification, when their natural gluten only was lost, to the perfect substitution of stony matter. He demonstrated that many fossil teeth found in Tuscany belonged to a species of shark; and he dissected, for the purpose of comparison, one of these fish recently taken from the Mediterranean. That the remains of shells and marine animals found petrified were not of animal origin was still a favorite dogma of many, who were unwilling to believe that the earth could have been inhabited by living beings long before many of the mountains were formed.

Mountain , Fish

“We must not suppose that, because a man is a rational animal, he will, therefore, always act rationally; or, because he has such or such a predominant passion, that he will act invariably and consequentially in pursuit of it.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) British statesman and man of letters

19 December 1749
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)
Context: We must not suppose that, because a man is a rational animal, he will, therefore, always act rationally; or, because he has such or such a predominant passion, that he will act invariably and consequentially in pursuit of it. No, we are complicated machines; and though we have one main spring that gives motion to the whole, we have an infinity of little wheels, which, in their turns, retard, precipitate, and sometime stop that motion.

Passion

“We identify with the powerless and the vulnerable—the victims, all those dominated, oppressed, and exploited. And it is the nonhuman animals whose suffering is the most intense, widespread, expanding, systematic, and socially sanctioned of all.”

Henry Spira (1927–1998) American activist

Context: We identify with the powerless and the vulnerable—the victims, all those dominated, oppressed, and exploited. And it is the nonhuman animals whose suffering is the most intense, widespread, expanding, systematic, and socially sanctioned of all. What can be done? What are the patterns underlying effective social struggles?

Suffering

“Physical evils are in nature inseparable from animal life, they commenced existence with it, and are its concomitants through life; so that the same nature which gives being to the one, gives birth to the other also; the one is not before or after the other, but they are coexistent together, and contemporaries; and as they began existence in a necessary dependance on each other, so they terminate together in death and dissolution.”

Ethan Allen (1738–1789) American general

Source: Reason: The Only Oracle Of Man (1784), Ch. III Section IV - Of Physical Evils
Context: Physical evils are in nature inseparable from animal life, they commenced existence with it, and are its concomitants through life; so that the same nature which gives being to the one, gives birth to the other also; the one is not before or after the other, but they are coexistent together, and contemporaries; and as they began existence in a necessary dependance on each other, so they terminate together in death and dissolution. This is the original order to which animal nature is subjected, as applied to every species of it. The beasts of the field, the fowls of the air, the fishes of the sea, with reptiles, and all manner of beings, which are possessed with animal life; nor is pain, sickness, or mortality any part of God's Punishment for sin. On the other hand sensual happiness is no part of the reward of virtue: to reward moral actions with a glass of wine or a shoulder of mutton, would be as inadequate, as to measure a triangle with sound, for virtue and vice pertain to the mind, and their merits or demerits have their just effects on the conscience, as has been before evinced: but animal gratifications are common to the human race indiscriminately, and also, to the beasts of the field: and physical evils as promiscuously and universally extend to the whole, so "That there is no knowing good or evil by all that is before us, for all is vanity." It was not among the number of possibles, that animal life should be exempted from mortality: omnipotence itself could not have made it capable of externalization and indissolubility; for the self same nature which constitutes animal life, subjects it to decay and dissolution; so that the one cannot be without the other, any more than there could be a compact number of mountains without valleys, or that I could exist and not exist at the same time, or that God should effect any other contradiction in nature...

Life , Death , Birth , Nature

“Shiva is that master, and this world is His garden, and there are two sorts of gardeners here; the one who is lazy, hypocritical, and does nothing, only talking about Shiva's beautiful eyes and nose and other features; and the other, who is taking care of Shiva's children, all those that are poor and weak, all animals, and all His creation.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Address at the Rameswaram Temple on Real Worship
Context: A rich man had a garden and two gardeners. One of these gardeners was very lazy and did not work; but when the owner came to the garden, the lazy man would get up and fold his arms and say, "How beautiful is the face of my master", and dance before him. The other gardener would not talk much, but would work hard, and produce all sorts of fruits and vegetables which he would carry on his head to his master who lived a long way off. Of these two gardeners, which would be the more beloved of his master? Shiva is that master, and this world is His garden, and there are two sorts of gardeners here; the one who is lazy, hypocritical, and does nothing, only talking about Shiva's beautiful eyes and nose and other features; and the other, who is taking care of Shiva's children, all those that are poor and weak, all animals, and all His creation. Which of these would be the more beloved of Shiva? Certainly he that serves His children. He who wants to serve the father must serve the children first. He who wants to serve Shiva must serve His children — must serve all creatures in this world first. It is said in the Shâstra that those who serve the servants of God are His greatest servants. So you will bear this in mind.

Children , World , Beauty

“He identifies with the mountains and the streams, he sees something of his own soul in the plants and the animals and the birds of the field.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

The Manual of the Warrior of Light (1997)
Context: Every Warrior of the Light has suffered for the most trivial of reasons. Every Warrior of the Light has, at least once, believed he was not a Warrior of the Light.
Every Warrior of the Light has failed in his spiritual duties.
Every Warrior of the Light has said "yes" when he wanted to say "no."
Every Warrior of the Light has hurt someone he loved.
That is why he is a Warrior of the Light, because he has been through all this and yet has never lost hope of being better than he is.
Each stone, each bend cries welcome to him. He identifies with the mountains and the streams, he sees something of his own soul in the plants and the animals and the birds of the field.
Then, accepting the help of God and of God's signs, he allows his personal legend to guide him toward the tasks that life has reserved for him.
On some nights, he has nowhere to sleep, on others he suffers from insomnia. "That's just how it is," thinks the warrior. "I was the one who chose to walk this path."
In these words lies all his power: He chose the path along which he is walking and so has no complaints.

Soul , Mountain , Bird

“Who taught us to be so mean, and nasty and vicious and hateful, or indifferent towards animals when they used to be our friends? These are innocent beings, who have done nothing wrong to us.”

Gary Yourofsky (1970) animal rights activist

Part of the speech to the students of the Georgia Institute of Technology (Summer 2010)
Context: My goal is simple. All I want to do is re-connect people with animals. Awaken some emotions and some feelings and some logic, that is been buried and suppressed, intentionally, by our society. And the reason why I say re-connect it's because each and every person in this room used to be a real animal rights person at one time, a true animal lover, and a real friend to the animal kingdom. And it's when we were kids! When we were young... When we were kids! We used to be in awe of animals."They used to make us laugh, and giggle and smile. They made us pretty happy! And there was a time in our lives, when we would do just about anything in the world to make them happy as well. To protect them from cruelty! Or to, at least, acknowledge the cruelty they were receiving. I mean, if somebody was mean to an animal in front of us when we were little, we would have screamed and cried. And that's because we all used to understand right from wrong, when it came to the treatment of animals. Until somebody told us, and taught us differently. You better believe that somebody told us to ignore their suffering! To mock and excuse, their pain, and their misery. To make fun of their very existence. And this is something I want you to focus on - today, tomorrow and beyond... What in the hell happened along the way?! Who taught us to be so mean, and nasty and vicious and hateful, or indifferent towards animals when they used to be our friends? These are innocent beings, who have done nothing wrong to us.

Hate , Indifference

“So long as Geology had not lifted up a part of the veil… it was easy to treat these questions as too transcendental… But it is no longer possible to restrain curiosity from attempting to pry into the relations which connect the present state of the animal and vegetable worlds”

Charles Lyell (1797–1875) British lawyer and geologist

Source: The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man (1863), Ch.20, p. 388
Context: So long as Geology had not lifted up a part of the veil... it was easy to treat these questions as too transcendental... But it is no longer possible to restrain curiosity from attempting to pry into the relations which connect the present state of the animal and vegetable worlds, as well as of the various races of mankind, with the state of the fauna and flora which immediately preceded.

World , Question , Parting

“There is no prescription for how to practice random kindness. It comes from the heart. Your gift might be to pick up litter in your neighborhood, make an anonymous contribution to a charity, send some cash in an unmarked envelope to make someone experiencing financial stress breathe a little easier, save an animal by bringing it to an animal rescue agency, or get a volunteer position feeding hungry people at a church or shelter. You may want to do all these things, and more. The point is, giving is fun and it doesn't have to be expensive.”

Richard Carlson (1961–2006) Author, psychotherapist and motivational speaker

Lesson 34, Practice Random Acts of Kindness
Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff…and it’s all Small Stuff (1997)

People , Heart

“I do not consider myself a religious person in the usual sense, but there is a religious aspect to some highs. The heightened sensitivity in all areas gives me a feeling of communion with my surroundings, both animate and inanimate. Sometimes a kind of existential perception of the absurd comes over me and I see with awful certainty the hypocrisies and posturing of myself and my fellow men.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

Essay as "Mr. X" (1969)
Context: I do not consider myself a religious person in the usual sense, but there is a religious aspect to some highs. The heightened sensitivity in all areas gives me a feeling of communion with my surroundings, both animate and inanimate. Sometimes a kind of existential perception of the absurd comes over me and I see with awful certainty the hypocrisies and posturing of myself and my fellow men. And at other times, there is a different sense of the absurd, a playful and whimsical awareness. Both of these senses of the absurd can be communicated, and some of the most rewarding highs I've had have been in sharing talk and perceptions and humor. Cannabis brings us an awareness that we spend a lifetime being trained to overlook and forget and put out of our minds. A sense of what the world is really like can be maddening; cannabis has brought me some feelings for what it is like to be crazy, and how we use that word "crazy" to avoid thinking about things that are too painful for us. In the Soviet Union political dissidents are routinely placed in insane asylums. The same kind of thing, a little more subtle perhaps, occurs here: "did you hear what Lenny Bruce said yesterday? He must be crazy."

Men , Feeling , Sense , Personality

“Looked at in that light it may well turn out that money spent on proper pollution control, urban and rural planning and the control of exploitation of wild stocks of plants or animals on land and in the sea, is the less expensive alternative in the long run… The conservation of nature, the proper care for the human environment and a general concern for the long-term future of the whole of our planet are absolutely vital if future generations are to have a chance to enjoy their existence on this earth.”

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (1921) member of the British Royal Family, consort to Queen Elizabeth II

The Australian Conservation Foundation, Canberra (April 1970)
The Environmental Revolution: Speeches on Conservation, 1962–77 (1978)
Context: A new criterion has been added, the conservation of the environment so that in the long run life, including human life, can continue. This new consideration must be taken into account at all levels and in all departments of government and in the boardrooms of every industrial enterprise. It is no longer sufficient simply to quantify the elements of existence as in old-fashioned material economics; conservation means taking notice of the quality of existence as well... The problem is of course to give some value to that quality and perhaps the only way to do this is to try and work out the cost in terms of loss of amenities, loss of holiday and recreation facilities, loss of property values, loss of contact with nature, loss of health standards and loss of food resources, if proper conservation methods are not used. Looked at in that light it may well turn out that money spent on proper pollution control, urban and rural planning and the control of exploitation of wild stocks of plants or animals on land and in the sea, is the less expensive alternative in the long run... The conservation of nature, the proper care for the human environment and a general concern for the long-term future of the whole of our planet are absolutely vital if future generations are to have a chance to enjoy their existence on this earth.

Money , Nature , Light , Chance

“Monsters remain human beings. In fact, to reduce them to a subhuman level is to exonerate them of their acts of terrorism and mass murder — just as animals are not deemed morally responsible for killing. Insisting on the humanity of terrorists is, in fact, critical to maintaining their profound responsibility for the evil they commit.”

Andrew Sullivan (1963) Journalist, writer, blogger

"The Abolition of Torture" http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?pt=dcGGvZpeEnhgPCp2PwTGAy%3D%3D, The New Republic (19 December 2005)
Context: Monsters remain human beings. In fact, to reduce them to a subhuman level is to exonerate them of their acts of terrorism and mass murder — just as animals are not deemed morally responsible for killing. Insisting on the humanity of terrorists is, in fact, critical to maintaining their profound responsibility for the evil they commit.
And, if they are human, then they must necessarily not be treated in an inhuman fashion. You cannot lower the moral baseline of a terrorist to the subhuman without betraying a fundamental value. That is why the Geneva Conventions have a very basic ban on "cruel treatment and torture," and "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment" — even when dealing with illegal combatants like terrorists. That is why the Declaration of Independence did not restrict its endorsement of freedom merely to those lucky enough to find themselves on U. S. soil — but extended it to all human beings, wherever they are in the world, simply because they are human.

Evil

“I know that in early ages men did form degraded notions of the Almighty, painting Him like themselves, extreme only in all their passions : they thought He could he as lightly irritated as themselves, and that they could appease His anger by wretched offerings of innocent animals.”

James Anthony Froude book The Nemesis of Faith

Letter X
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)
Context: I know that in early ages men did form degraded notions of the Almighty, painting Him like themselves, extreme only in all their passions : they thought He could he as lightly irritated as themselves, and that they could appease His anger by wretched offerings of innocent animals. From such a feeling as this to the sense of the value of a holy and spotless life and death — from the sacrifice of an animal to that of a saint — is a step forward out of superstition quite immeasurable. That between the earnest conviction of partial sight, and the strong metaphors of vehement minds, the sacrificial language should have been transferred onwards from one to the other, seems natural to me; perhaps inevitable. On the other hand, through all history we find the bitter fact that mankind can only be persuaded to accept the best gifts which Heaven sends them, in persecuting and destroying those who are charged to be their bearers.

Men , Age , Passion , Painting

“God is the only lover and He loves in different forms - parents, husband, wife, friend, children, animals. All are His forms and He, Himself, has no form.”

Baba Hari Dass (1923–2018) master yogi, author, builder, commentator of Indian spiritual tradition

Source: Silence Speaks, from the chalkboard of Baba Hari Dass, 1977, p.9

Love , God , Children , Lovers

“We must earn life once it has been awarded us. Life asks for rewards back because it has favored us with animation.
So while our art cannot, as we wish it could, save us from wars, privation, envy, greed, old age, or death, it can revitalize us amidst it all.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

Preface to Zen in the Art of Writing (1990)
Context: And what, you ask, does writing teach us?
First and foremost, it reminds us that we are alive and that it is gift and a privilege, not a right. We must earn life once it has been awarded us. Life asks for rewards back because it has favored us with animation.
So while our art cannot, as we wish it could, save us from wars, privation, envy, greed, old age, or death, it can revitalize us amidst it all.

Life , Death , War , Age

Quotes about animals page 27

Quotes about animals
page 27