Quotes about animals (3122 quotes, page 7)

“Repetition is important in the training not only of animals but also of humans." Yann Martel in Life of Pi, Page 25”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi

Life , Training

“EXTINCTATHON, Monitored by MaddAddam. Adam named the living animals, MaddAddam names the dead ones. Do you want to play?”

Margaret Atwood book Oryx and Crake

Source: Oryx and Crake

Dead

“Cats were the gangsters of the animal world, living outside the law and often dying there. There were a great many of them who never grew old by the fire.”

Stephen King Pet Sematary

Source: Pet Sematary

World , Law , Cats

“Reality - Dreams = Animal Being
Reality + Dreams = A Heart-Ache (usually called Idealism)
Reality + Humor = Realism (also called Conservatism)
Dreams - Humor = Fanaticism
Dreams + Humor = Fantasy
Reality + Dreams + Humor = Wisdom”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living

Wisdom , Dreams , Reality , Heart

“Like some winter animal the moon licks the salt of your hand,
Yet still your hair foams violet as a lilac tree
From which a small wood-owl calls.”

Johannes Bobrowski (1917–1965) German author

Tree , Winter

“What do you do when you see an endangered animal that eats only endangered plants?”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

“Gideon was an untamed animal behind closed doors, a lover who bared me to the soul every time he made love to me.”

Sylvia Day (1973) American writer

Source: Entwined with You

Love , Soul , Lovers , Time

“An animal's eyes have the power to speak a great language.”

Martin Buber book I and Thou

I and Thou (1923)

“Was he an animal, that music could move him so? He felt as if the way to the unknown nourishment he longed for were coming to light.”

Franz Kafka book The Metamorphosis

Source: The Metamorphosis (1915)

Music , Way , Light

“The animals have no need for speech, why talk when you are a word.”

Margaret Atwood book Surfacing

Source: Surfacing

“English is so hierarchical. In Cree, we don't have animate-inanimate comparisons between things. Animals have souls that are equal to ours. Rocks have souls, trees have souls. Trees are 'who,' not 'what.”

Tomson Highway (1951) Canadian and Cree writer

Soul , Tree

“A million years of evolution, Eric said bitterly, and what are we? Animals.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

“For a long time that's all I could do, howl and scream and cry like the wild animal of the night that I'd become.”

Darren Shan book The Vampire's Assistant

Source: The Vampire's Assistant

Time , Cry , Night

“The spirit who inhabits her animates us all. Destroy the host, you destroy the power. The young die first; the old wither slowly; the eldest perhaps would go last. But she is the Queen of the Damned, and the Damned can't live without her.”

Anne Rice book The Queen of the Damned

Source: The Queen of the Damned

“The only thing that separates us from the animals… is we have pornography.”

Chuck Palahniuk (1962) American novelist, essayist

“A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Writings on Civil Disobedience and Nonviolence (1886)

Life , Food

“Humankind differs from the animals only by a little and most people throw that away.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

People

“I love things made out of animals. It's just so funny to think of someone saying, "I need a letter opener. I guess I'll have to kill a deer.”

David Sedaris (1956) American author

Interview with Robert David Sullivan
Context: "I love things made out of animals," Sedaris says, holding a knife with a hoof for a handle. "It's just so funny to think of someone saying, 'I need a letter opener. I guess I'll have to kill a deer.'"

Love , Thinking

“He thought how sad it was to be an Animal who had never had a bunch of violets picked for him.”

A.A. Milne (1882–1956) British author

Sadness

“Socially inferior animals are the ones that make the most strenuous, resourceful efforts to get to know their keepers. They prove to be the ones most faithful to them…it is a fact commonly known in the trade.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi

Faith , Effort

“He moved like a dancer, which is not surprising; a horse is a beautiful animal, but it is perhaps most remarkable because it moves as if it always hears music.”

Mark Helprin book Winter's Tale

Source: Winter's Tale

Beauty , Music , Horse

“Animators Inc., where our motto was.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Skin Trade

Source: Skin Trade

“Humans are animals of habit.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

“Jem spoke with enormous care; talking to Will about anything personal was like trying not to startle away a wild animal.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

Personality

“If an animal has to be sacrificed when a new bridge is built, what will it take to build a whole new world?”

Ismail Kadare book Chronicle in Stone

Source: Chronicle in Stone

World

“Only when I heard her bedroom door open and close did I give in to my beast instincts and do a wild animal dance around the room.”

Alex Flinn book Beastly

Source: Beastly

Dance

“No sense of the irony of human experience, that we are the highest form of life on earth, and yet ineffably sad because we know what no other animal knows, that we must die.”

Don DeLillo book White Noise

Source: White Noise (1984)

Life , Sadness , Sense

“The queen!" someone shouted in alarm, and the King erupted like a wild animal caught in a snare.”

Megan Whalen Turner The King of Attolia

Source: The King of Attolia

“Whatever we call it - mind, character, soul - we like to think we possess something that is greater than the sum of our neurons and that animates us.”

Susanna Kaysen (1948) American writer

Soul , Thinking

“Is a vegetarian permitted to eat animal crackers?”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

“Let us remember that animals are not mere resources for human consumption. They are splendid beings in their own right, who have evolved alongside us as co-inheritors of all the beauty and abundance of life on this planet”

Marc Bekoff (1945) American biologist

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

Life , Beauty

“Animals have no unconscious, because they have a territory. Men have only had an unconscious since they lost a territory.”

Jean Baudrillard book Simulacra and Simulation

Source: Simulacra and Simulation

Men

“The happiness and unhappiness of the rational, social animal depends not on what he feels but on what he does; just as his virtue and vice consist not in feeling but in doing.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book IX, 16

Feeling , Dependency , Happiness

“Sexual freedom, sexual liberation. A modern delusion. We are hierarchical animals. Sweep one hierarchy away, and another will take its place, perhaps less palatable than the first.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 3

Freedom

“The final product is a man-plant-animal symbiote that is admirably adapted for survival on this disaster world. No emotions to cause complications or desires that might interfere with pure survival. Complete ruthlessness—mankind has always been strong on this anyway, so it didn’t take much of a push.”

Harry Harrison book Planet of the Damned

Source: Planet of the Damned (1962), Chapter 15

World , Strong

““If you want him defined, here he is: a prime, well-fed beast such as takes medals at the cattle shows, and nothing more,” he said, with a tone of vexation that interested her.
“No; how so?” she replied. “He's seen a great deal, anyway; he's cultured?”
“It's an utterly different culture—their culture. He's cultivated, one sees, simply to be able to despise culture, as they despise everything but animal pleasures.””

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Vronky and Anna discussing the visiting Prince, Part 4, Chapter 3
Anna Karenina (1875–1877; 1878)

Pleasure

“Society is indeed a contract. Subordinate contracts for objects of mere occasional interest may be dissolved at pleasure — but the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, calico or tobacco, or some other such low concern, to be taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties. It is to be looked on with other reverence; because it is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are to be born. Each contract of each particular state is but a clause in the great primaeval contract of eternal society, linking the lower with the higher natures, connecting the visible and the invisible world, according to a fixed compact sanctioned by the inviolable oath which holds all physical and all moral natures, each in their appointed place. This law is not subject to the will of those, who by an obligation above them, and infinitely superior, are bound to submit their will to that law. The municipal corporations of that universal kingdom are not morally at liberty at their pleasure, and on their speculations of a contingent improvement, wholly to separate and tear asunder the bands of their subordinate community, and to dissolve it into an unsocial, uncivil, unconnected chaos of elementary principles. It is the first and supreme necessity only, a necessity that is not chosen, but chooses, a necessity paramount to deliberation, that admits no discussion, and demands no evidence, which alone can justify a resort to anarchy. This necessity is no exception to the rule; because this necessity itself is a part too of that moral and physical disposition of things, to which man must be obedient by consent or force: but if that which is only submission to necessity should be made the object of choice, the law is broken, nature is disobeyed, and the rebellious are outlawed, cast forth, and exiled, from this world of reason, and order, and peace, and virtue, and fruitful penitence, into the antagonist world of madness, discord, vice, confusion, and unavailing sorrow.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

Pleasure , World , Peace , Law

“Animals that kill usually have far more social relationships than those they prey upon.”

Gilles Dauvé (1947) French writer

"Letter on Animal Liberation" (1999)

“With hearts fortified with these animating reflections, we most solemnly, before God and the world, declare that, exerting the utmost energy of those powers, which our beneficent Creator hath graciously bestowed upon us, the arms we have been compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverance employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live as slaves.”

John Dickinson (1732–1808) American politician

From The Declaration upon taking up Arms, before Congress, July 6th, 1775: as cited in A Conspectus of American Biography, Volume 1, ed. George Derby, J. T. White (1906), p. 239

God , World , Heart , Perseverance

“It is important for human beings and animals to drink healthy water. Chemically purified water, chlorinated or ozonated water is no longer living and healthy water. Good water, full of life and rich in energy, is synonymous with strong and healthy life. Bad water is synonymous with sick life. No water is the same as no life.”

Viktor Schauberger (1885–1958) austrian philosopher and inventor

Alick Bartholomew: The Schauberger Keys

Life , Drink , Strong , Water

“He [the naturalist] looks upon every species of animal and plant now living as the individual letters which go to make up one of the volumes of our earth's history; and, as a few lost letters may make a sentence unintelligible, so the extinction of the numerous forms of life which the progress of cultivation invariably entails will necessarily render obscure this invaluable record of the past.”

Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913) British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist and biologist

(1863) "On the physical geography of the Malay Archipelago." The Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London 33:217-234.

Life , History , Past

“I was born a vegetarian. … I feel there is no need to cause another living thing pain or harm. There are so many other things we can eat. I have never eaten meat in my life, and I’m 5 foot 10 and not exactly wasting away. A wise man once said, ‘Animals are my friends, and I’m not in the habit of eating my friends.’ That is exactly how I feel.”

Joss Stone (1987) English singer and actress

Reported in "Introducing Joss Stone’s Vegetarian PSA", in peta2.com (13 March 2007) http://www.peta2.com/heroes/introducing-joss-stone-vegetarian-psa/. Also quoted in "Soul diva Stone in veggie ad", in Mirror.co.uk (15 March 2007) http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/soul-diva-stone-in-veggie-ad-458507.

Life , Pain , Feeling

“Human beings are the only animals who have the capacity to envisage something that is not present or something that does not yet exist but which is merely possible. The imagination has thus been the cause of our major achievements in science and technology as well as in art and religion.”

Karen Armstrong book A History of God

Source: A History of God (1993), Chapter 7, God of the Mystics

Religion , Art , Imagination , Science

“Europeans are awakening more and more to a sense that beasts have rights, in proportion as the strange notion is being gradually overcome and outgrown, that the animal kingdom came into existence solely for the benefit and pleasure of man. This view, with the corollary that non-human living creatures are to be regarded merely as things, is at the root of the rough and altogether reckless treatment of them, which obtains in the West.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book On the Basis of Morality

Part III, Ch. VIII, 7, p. 225 https://archive.org/stream/basisofmorality00schoiala#page/225/mode/2up
On the Basis of Morality (1840)

Pleasure , Sense

“Poet: “Straton wanders among the Scythian nomads, but has no linen garment. He is sad at only wearing an animal's pelt and no tunic.” Do you get what I mean?
Pisthetaerus: I understand that you want me to offer you a tunic. Hi! you (To the acolyte.) take off yours; we must help the poet.”

Aristophanés The Birds

tr. O'Neill 1938, Perseus http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text.jsp?doc=Aristoph.+Birds+941
Birds, line 941-947 (our emphasis on 947)
Birds (414 BC)

Sadness , Understanding , Help

“The word " economy" has latterly been used in various senses; the Germans give it a very indefinite signification.
Judging from its etymology and original signification, the Greeks seem to have understood by it the establishment and direction of the menage, or domestic arrangements.
Xenophon, in his work on economy, treats of domestic management, the reciprocal duties of the members of a family and of those who compose the household; and only incidentally mentions agriculture as having relation to domestic affairs. This word is never applied to agriculture by Xenophon, nor, indeed, by any Greek author; they distinguish it by the terms, georgic geoponic.
The Romans give a very extensive and indefinite signification to the word "economy." They understand by it, the best method of attaining the aim and end of some particular thing; or the disposition, plan, and division of some particular work. Thus, Cicero speaks of oeconomia causae, oeconomia orationis; and by this he means the direction of a law process, the arrangement of an harangue. Several German authors use it in this sense when they speak of the oekonomie eines schauspiels, or eines gedichtes, the economy of a play or poem. Authors of other nations have adopted all the significations which the Romans have attached to this word, and understand by it the relation of the various parts of any particular thing to each other and to the whole—that which we are accustomed to term the organization. The word "economy" only acquires a real sense when applied to some particular subject: thus, we hear of "the economy of nature," "the animal economy," and " the economy of the state" spoken of. It is also applied to some particular branch of science or industry; but, in the latter case, the nature of the economy ought to be pointed out, if it is not indicated by the nature of the subject.”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

Source: The Principles of Agriculture, 1844, Section II. The Economy, Organization and Direction of an Agricultural Enterprise, p. 54-55.

Family , Law , Understanding , Nature

“She was goddess because of her force; she was the animated dynamo; she was reproduction — the greatest and most mysterious of all energies; all she needed was to be fecund.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

“And another reason to make sure we're not doing atrocious things at the slaughter plant is that if it is too easy to do something really atrocious to an animal; with the poor animal screaming and everything; the person who could do that might not have any problem torturing people. I remember one of the reasons that St. Thomas Aquinas said that we have to treat animals right is so that people themselves don't get corrupted.”

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

Source: http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/mcdonalds/grandin5.html

People , Problem , Personality

“There was no last animal I treated. When young farm lads started to help me over the gate into a field or a pigpen, to make sure the old fellow wouldn't fall, I started to consider retiring. The great moment was one day when I was stitching up a cow's teats--they often get cut, you know--and my glasses were sliding down my nose. Suddenly I thought, Wight, you're too old for this. But it was a gradual transition. I just did less and less. It must be terrible to have a job you very much love chopped off.”

James Herriot (1916–1995) veterinary surgeon and writer

Love , Help

“My dreams are the problems of the day stepped up to absurdity, a little like men dancing, wearing the horns and masks of animals.”

John Steinbeck book The Winter of Our Discontent

The Winter of Our Discontent (1961), unplaced by chapter

Men , Dreams , Problem , Dance

“Just as the Bible teaches the Golden Rule — “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you” — the Mahabharata (5.39.57), predating the Bible, teaches a similar truth, and in almost the exact same wording. Yogis and spiritual adepts in India extend the teaching to its logical limits, showing kindness to all species of life — and this, of course, means vegetarianism. It is hard to be kind to animals if you are eating them. In other words, if you don't want someone eating your entrails, don't eat the entrails of others.”

Steven J. Rosen (1955) American editor, author on Vaishnavism

“The New Carnivores”, in The Agni and the Ecstasy (London: Arktos, 2012), p. 100 https://books.google.it/books?id=fYjX7W6SCLMC&pg=PA100.

Life , Truth

“When we ask ourselves by what means a certain moral level can be maintained in a human or animal society, we find only three such means: the repression of anti-social acts; moral teaching; and the practice of mutual help itself. And as all three have already been put to the test of practice, we can judge them by their effects.
As to the impotence of repression — it is sufficiently demonstrated by the disorder of present society and by the necessity of a revolution that we all desire or feel inevitable. In the domain of economy, coercion has led us to industrial servitude; in the domain of politics — to the State, that is to say, to the destruction of all ties that formerly existed among citizens, and to the nation becoming nothing but an incoherent mass of obedient subjects of a central authority.”

Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, scientist, revolutionary, economist, activist, geogr…

Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal (1896)

Feeling , Help

“The free movement of the moral impulse to establish justice for animals generally and the claim of their rights from mankind are hidden in a natural psychic sensibility in the deeper layers of the Torah. In the ancient value system of humanity … the moral sense had risen to a point of demanding justice for animals. … Just as the democratic aspiration will reach outward through the general intellectual and moral perfection … so will the hidden yearning to act justly towards animals emerge at the proper time. What prepares the ground for this state is the commandments, those intended specifically for this area of concern. There is indeed a hidden reprimand between the lines of the Torah in the sanction to eat meat.”

Abraham Isaac Kook (1865–1935) first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of the British Mandatory Palestine

"Fragments of Light: A View as to the Reasons for the Commandments," in The Lights of Penitence, The Moral Principles, Lights of Holiness, Essays, Letters, and Poems, trans. Ben Zion Bokser (New York: Paulist Press, 1978), pp. 317-318.

Justice , Nature , Sense , Time

“May those in distress become happy, May the sins of animate and inanimate beings disappear, may the evils of the universe be destroyed.”

Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar (1919–1974) Indian writer

At the conclusion of his speech on Indian tradition he recited a passage from Matsyapurana, quoted in "Jayachamaraja Wodeyar – A Princely scholar".

Universe , Evil , Happiness

“If that impression does not remain on this intrepid and powerful people, into whose veins all nations pour their mingling blood, it will be our immense calamity. Public action, without it, will lose the dignity of consecration. Eloquence, without it, will miss what is loftiest, will give place to a careless and pulseless disquisition, or fall to the flatness of political slang. Life, without it, will lose its sacred and mystic charm. Society, without it, will fail of inspirations, and be drowned in an animalism whose rising tides will keep pace with its wealth.”

Richard Salter Storrs (1821–1900) American Congregational clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 23.

Life , People , Wealth

“[Why do animals] undergo in the course of their growth a series of complicated changes, during which they acquire organs which have no function, and which, after remaining visible for a short time, disappear without leaving a trace... The explanation of such facts is obvious. The stage when the tadpole breathes by gills is a repetition of the stage when the ancestors of the frog had not advanced in the scale of development beyond a fish.”

Francis Maitland Balfour (1851–1882) British biologist

Comparative Embryology, p. 702. (1880)

Fish , Change , Time

“It is not within our province to inquire by what process, and in what condition the Almighty brought matter into existence-what the space was which it occupied, or what the forms were which it assumed. Of such things we know nothing. In the depths of primeval time, the globe we inhabit may have a planetary existence, wheeling along its ethereal railway without a breathing passenger to count its periods, and without a living plant to measure the day by its opening and closing blossoms, or to mark the rolling seasons by the yearly increments of its stem. Or it may have been the theatre on which vast cycles of animal and vegetable life have been run- now its birthplace, and now its grave: But we have no data to guide us in our conjectures, and even imagination fails us if we call it to our aid. Whatever may have been, had ceased to be at the commencement of our history, when the primary rocks, forming the moten nucleus of the globe, were first exposed to the action of the elements.”

David Brewster (1781–1868) British astronomer and mathematician

Review of Vestiges (1845)

Life , Imagination , History , Time

“Man is a mimic animal, happiest acting a part, needing a mask to tell the truth.”

Subhash Kak (1947) Indian computer scientist

The Prajna Sutra (2007)

Truth , Parting

“I do not know why it distressed me so much to see an animal die when human death did not move me. Perhaps because they were more beautiful, and there is no corruption in them, while in the best of men there can always be found some guilt or wickedness which seems to have earned him death.”

Tanith Lee book The Birthgrave

Book Two, Part IV “War March”, Chapter 3 (p. 246)
The Birthgrave (1975)

Death , Men , Beauty

“Demanding that wolf populations be allowed to continue to increase is not only a false conservation goal, but also a counterproductive tactic that is bound for short-term failure. It is strategically preferable to promote wolf range expansion and to accept reduction of unacceptable levels of conflict through scientifically planned and managed culling rather than through uncontrolled poaching. Full protection of wolf populations living near, or interspersed with, human settlements leads sooner or later to surplus wolves being killed, legally or illegally. Opposing wolf killing altogether implies accepting that all wolves will eventually be removed from these areas, whereas accepting some wolf control will allow wolves over much larger ranges. This vision requires a fundamental shift in the way wolves are perceived by folks who consider every wolf a symbol of the conservation battle or an animal with special rights among all other species. In the end, this approach probably will yield many more wolves than we could afford to keep in a few fully protected areas, no matter how large.”

L. David Mech (1937) American Biologist , Ecologist

Wolves: Behavior, Ecology and Conservation (2003)

Way , Failure , Wolf , Falseness

“Bottom trawls—large bag-shaped nets towed over the sea floor—account for more of the world's catch of fish, shrimp, squid, and other marine animals than any other fishing method. But trawling also disturbs the sea floor more than any other human activity, with increasingly devastating consequences for the world's fish population.”

Carl Safina (1955) American biologist

[Scorched-Earth Fishing, Issues in Science and Technology, 14, 3, Spring 1998, 33–36, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43313863]

World , Fish , Sea

“Physiological experiment on animals is justifiable for real investigation; but not for mere damnable and detestable curiosity.”

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection"

letter http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?itemID=F2113&viewtype=text&pageseq=7 to E. Ray Lankester, quoted in his essay "Charles Robert Darwin" in C.D. Warner, editor, Library of the World's Best Literature: Ancient and Modern (R.S. Peale & J.A. Hill, New York, 1896) volume 2, pages 4835-4393, at page 4391
Other letters, notebooks, journal articles, recollected statements

“It seems reasonable to suppose that conflict does exhibit many general patterns, that the patterns of conflict in industrial relations, international relations, interpersonal relations, and even animal life are not wholly different from one another, and that it is, therefore, worth looking for the common element. On the other hand, we should be surprised if there were no differences; the pattern of conflict in international relations, for instance, is not the same as in industrial or interpersonal relations. Just as it is important to perceive the similarities in different situations, so it is important to perceive the differences. These differences cannot be perceived, however, without a general theory to serve as a standard of comparison.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1960s, Conflict and defense: A general theory, 1962, p. 2, partly cited in: Dennis Sandole (1998) A Comprehensive Mapping Of Conflict And Conflict. Resolution: A Three Pillar Approach http://www.gmu.edu/programs/icar/pcs/sandole.htm

Life

“Clyde: You're telling me. What about those first three nights, we had to light fires to keep the animals away.”

Jack Benny (1894–1974) comedian, vaudeville performer, and radio, television, and film actor

The Jack Benny Program (Radio: 1932-1955), The Jack Benny Program (Television: 1950-1965)

Light , Night

“I think that’s just a throwaway line, because most people don’t really care if they are being true to their original nature. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be wearing clothes and driving cars, but out picking berries and eating bark. If you study anthropology — which most people don’t — and you start to learn about our intestinal structure, our teeth, our digestive system, our mouth structure, you begin to realize that maybe we aren’t meant to be eating animals after all.”

Ingrid Newkirk (1949) British-American activist

Montreal Mirror http://web.archive.org/20020703023107/www.montrealmirror.com/ARCHIVES/2002/032102/news3.html
In response to people who say it is natural to eat meat

People , Cars , Nature , Thinking

“Early artists considered the human body, that forked radish, that defenseless starfish, a poor vehicle for the expression of energy, compared to the muscle-rippling bull and the streamlined antelope. Once more it was the Greeks, by their idealization of man, who turned the human body into an incarnation of energy, to us the most satisfying of all, for although it can never attain the uninhibited physical flow of the animal, its movements concern us more closely. Through art we can relive them in our own bodies, and achieve thereby that enhanced vitality which all thinkers on art, from Goethe to Berenson, have recognized as one of the chief sources of aesthetic pleasure.”

Kenneth Clark (1903–1983) Art historian, broadcaster and museum director

Source: The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form (1951), Ch. V: Energy

Pleasure , Art

“A work upon the plan originally contemplated by the Author seems still to be required, to initiate the young and uninstructed in the study of those MEDALS 0F CREATION—those electrotypes of nature—the mineralized remains of the plants and animals which successively flourished in the earlier ages of our planet, in periods incalculably remote, and long antecedent to all human history and tradition. With this conviction the present volumes are offered… as a guide for the Student and the Amateur Collector of fossil remains; for the intelligent Observer who may desire to possess a general knowledge of the subject, without intending to pursue Geology as a science; and for the Tourist who may wish, in the course of his travels, to employ profitably a leisure hour in quest of those interesting memorials of the ancient physical revolutions of our globe, which he will find everywhere presented to his observation.”

Gideon Mantell (1790–1852) British scientist and obstetrician

Preface to the First Edition
The Medals of Creation or First Lessons in Geology (1854)

Age , Travel , History , Intelligence

“They call my people 'Spics' in New York. These are poor people struggling to make a living and should be treated like people and not animals.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

Interviewed in September 1972, as quoted in "Clemente Legend Growing" by Bob Addie, in The Washington Post (Wednesday, May 23, 1973), p. E5
Other, <big><big>1970s</big></big>, <big>1972</big>

People

“The next superstar could very well be ET!!! Sincerely, at that point in the history of Hollywood, there were no stars. Paul Newman has said on record, ‘What’s the point in my being an actor? The three greatest hits have been mechanical gadgets!’ There was a shark in Jaws that crashed the box-office, there was this peculiar animal in ET and there was that robot in Star Wars. I saw it millions of times. And everytime I see ET I find it’s a lovable person. So maybe you don’t need an actor, it’s going to be a computer! Look, one of the poignant scenes in 2001 Space Odyssey was the death of the computer. The computer on board is programmed to take the spaceship to a particular planet and also manage everything, right to the food of the astronauts. Then they realize that this very same computer is actually programmed to sabotage the mission. So this astronaut unscrews the computer. It dies with the voice going fainter ‘Don’t kill … me … don’t … kill me’. If just mechanical gadgets are going to be moving us to tears, then Paul Newman is right. What is the need for actors?”

Amitabh Bachchan (1942) Indian actor

Quotable quotes by Amitabh Bachchan.

Death , War , Food , History

“One might almost say that the plant is the framework, the foundation of the animal, and that to form the animal it sufficed to cover this foundation with a system of organs fitted to establish relations consists forms with the world outside. It follows of the succession substance of the animal form two quite distinct classes. One class in a continual into its own assimilation molecules that the functions and of excretion; through these functions the animal incessantly transsurrounding bodies, later to reject these molecules when they have become heterogeneous to it. Through this first class of functions the animal exists only within itself; through the other class it exists outside; it is an inhabitant of the world, and not, like the plant, of the place which saw its birth. The animal feels and perceives its surroundings, reflects its sensations, moves of its own will under their influence, and, as a rule, can communicate by its voice its desires and its fears, its pleasures or its pains. I call organic life the sum of the functions of the former class, for all organised creatures, plants or animals, possess them to a more or less marked degree, and organised structure is the sole condition necessary to their exercise. The combined functions of the second class form the ' animal' life named because it is the exclusive attribute of the animal kingdom.”

Marie François Xavier Bichat (1771–1802) French anatomist and physiologist

Original: (fr) On dirait que le végétal est l'ébauche, le canevas de l'animal, et que, pour former ce dernier, il n'a fallu que revêtir ce canevas d'un appareil d'organes extérieurs, propres à établir des relations. Il résulte de là que les fonctions de l'animal forment deux classes très-distinctes. Les unes se composent d'une succession habituelle d'assimilation et d'excrétion ; par elles il transforme sans cesse en sa propre substance les molécules des corps voisins, et rejette ensuite ces molécules, lorsqu'elles lui sont devenues hétérogènes. Il ne vit qu'en lui, par cette classe de fonctions ; par l'autre il existe hors de lui : il est l'habitant du monde, et non, comme le végétal, du lieu qui le vit naître. Il sent et aperçoit ce qui l'entoure, réfléchit ses sensations, se meut volontairement d'après leur influenc, et le plus souvent peut communiquer par la voix, ses désirs et ses craintes, ses plaisirs ou ses peines. J'appelle vie organique l'ensemble des fonctions de la première classe, parce que tous les êtres organisés, végétaux ou animaux, en jouissent à un degré plus ou moins marqué, et que la texture organique est la seule condition nécessaire à son exercice. Les fonctions réunies de la seconde classe forment la vie animale, ainsi nommée, parce qu'elle est l'attribut exclusif du règne animal. Recherches Physiologiques sur la Vie et la Mort (1800) Translation: [Russell, E. S., Form and Function: A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology, 1916, London, 28,

https://archive.org/details/formfunctioncont00russ/page/n5/mode/2up]

Ref: en.wikiquote.org - Xavier Bichat / Quotes

Birth , World , Pain , Feeling

“Air, fire, water and the earth evolve out of the spiritual and material staminibus in periodic cycles of time. Diverse connections of water, air, and light precede the emergence of the seed of the simplest plant, for instance moss. Many plants had to come into being, then die away before an animal emerged. Insects, birds, water animals, and night animals preceded the present animal forms; until finally the crown of earthly organization appeared—the human being, microcosm. He is the son of all the elements and beings, Nature’s most carefully chosen conception and the blossom of creation. He must be the youngest child of Nature; many evolutions and revolutions must have preceded his formation.”

Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) German philosopher, theologian, poet, and literary critic

Book 1, as cited in Frank Teichmann (tr. Jon McAlice), "The Emergence of the Idea of Evolution in the Time of Goethe" http://www.waldorfresearchinstitute.org/pdf/BAIdeaEvolTeich.pdf
Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (1784-91)

Nature , Bird , Light , Water

“Adam set the bar so high for portraying the role of Batman, He was wonderful, spot on, with a twinkle in his eye. He had it all -- looks, charm, intelligence, I could go on and on. In conversation, he was very animated and once told me that Batman was the father that everyone wanted! I never thought of it that way! He had a great way of playing that 'tongue-in-cheek' nature in so much of the dialogue. I had a long, engaging conversation with him and his wife, Marcelle, about their life in Montana, If I had to describe him in a word or two, they would be 'stellar' and 'exemplar,' qualities that we want to encourage in ourselves and in young people.”

Julie Newmar (1933) American actress

'Batman' Co-Star Julie Newmar Remembers Adam West: 'He Had It All' http://www.etonline.com/news/219389_batman_star_julie_newmar_remembers_adam_west/ (June 10, 2017)

Life , People , Way , Intelligence

“When I was a small child and adults asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I always beamed and said, ‘A vegetarian’. And that’s exactly what I became. Despite growing up with parents who lived on meals of meat and two veg, eating animals never made sense to me. … I grew up surrounded by dogs and cats and couldn’t understand why we protected these animals, played with them, encouraged them to sleep in our beds, and called them ‘pets’ while labelling other equally interesting, cuddly, and sentient animals ‘dinner’.”

Sadie Frost (1965) English actress and producer

“Sadie Frost opens up about how vegetarianism changed her life”, in Marie Claire (19 May 2017) http://www.marieclaire.co.uk/life/food-drink/sadie-frost-vegetarian-507329#RikeLQmB184kEcJP.99.

Dogs , Cats , Understanding , Parent

“The whole train of animated beings, from the simplest and oldest up to the highest and most recent, are, then, to be regarded as a series of advances of the principle of development, which have depended upon external physical circumstances, to which the resulting animals are appropriate.”

Robert Chambers (publisher, born 1802) book Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation

Source: Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844), p. 203

Dependency , Training

“Abstain rigorously from eating the flesh of cows and all beneficent animals, lest you be made to face a strict reckoning in this world and the next; for by eating the flesh of cows and other domestic animals, you involve your hand in sin, and thereby think, speak, and do what is sinful; for though you may eat but a mouthful, you involve your hand in sin, and though a camel be slain by another person in another place, it is as if you who eat its flesh had slain it with your own hand.”

Adurbad-i Mahrspandan Iranian philosopher

Sayings of Adarbad Mahraspandan, as quoted in Rachel MacNair, Religions and Nonviolence (2015), p. 88 https://books.google.it/books?id=KvL3CQAAQBAJ&pg=PA88, adapted from R. C. Zaehner, The Teachings of the Magi (1956), p. 110.

World , Thinking , Personality

“You do not believe that souls are assigned, first to one body and then to another, and that our so-called death is merely a change of abode? You do not believe that in cattle, or in wild beasts, or in creatures of the deep, the soul of him who was once a man may linger? You do not believe that nothing on this earth is annihilated, but only changes its haunts? And that animals also have cycles of progress and, so to speak, an orbit for their souls, no less than the heavenly bodies, which revolve in fixed circuits? Great men have put faith in this idea; therefore, while holding to your own view, keep the whole question in abeyance in your mind. If the theory is true, it is a mark of purity to refrain from eating flesh; if it be false, it is economy. And what harm does it do to you to give such credence? I am merely depriving you of food which sustains lions and vultures.”

Sotion (Pythagorean) ancient greek philosopher

Quoted in Seneca the Younger, Moral letters to Lucilius, CVIII, 20-21.

Death , Men , Faith , Food

“Moslems everywhere behave with equal savagery. They behead criminals, stone to death female — only female — adulteresses, throw acid in the faces of women who refuse to wear the chador, mutilate the genitals of young girls and ritually abuse animals.”

Robert Kilroy-Silk (1942) British politician

Daily Express, 15 January 1995

Death , Women , Girl

“The carnistic schema, which twists information so that nonsense seems to make perfect sense, also explains why we fail to see the absurdities of the system. Consider, for instance, advertising campaigns in which a pig dances joyfully over the fire pit where he or she is to be barbecued, or chickens wear aprons while beseeching the viewer to eat them. And consider the Veterinarian's Oath of the American Veterinary Medical Association, “I solemnly swear to use my … skills for the … relief of animal suffering,” in light of the fact that the vast majority of veterinarians eat animals simply because they like the way meat tastes. Or think about how people won't replace their hamburgers with veggie burgers, even if the flavor is identical, because they claim that, if they try hard enough, they can detect a subtle difference in texture. Only when we deconstruct the carnistic schema can we see the absurdity of placing our preference for a flawless re-creation of a textural norm over the lives and deaths of billions of others.”

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

Source: Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows (2010), p. 133

Death , People , Way , Thinking

“If someone were to discover, for instance, that under hitherto unobserved circumstances stones were able to speak, it would take only a few pages to describe and explain so earth-shattering a phenomenon. On the other hand, one can always write yet another book about positive thinking, and this is far from being of only academic interest, since it involves a method that makes it impossible ever to arrive at a clear resolution of life's most important questions. Human activities might be graded by the quantity of words required: the more words, the worse their character. All the knowledge that has led our species from wearing animal skins to people flying, complete with proofs, would fill a handful of reference books, but a bookcase the size of the earth would not suffice to hold all the rest, quite apart from the vast discussions that are conducted not with the pen but with the sword and chains. The thought suggests itself that we carry on our human business in a most irrational manner when we do not use those methods by which the exact sciences have forged ahead in such exemplary fashion.”

Robert Musil book The Man Without Qualities

The Man Without Qualities (1930–1942)

Life , People , Books , Fashion

“…but who can know the heart of a man? Not even he himself, I suspect. A man is the easiest animal to put on a leash, and the hardest to keep leashed. Even when he chooses it himself.”

Robert Jordan The Dragon Reborn

Siuan Sanche
The Dragon Reborn (15 October 1991)

Heart

“I’m a huge lover of animals. My mother wasn’t the best, but despite an abusive childhood, we always had a lot of pets growing up. I was basically raised on a farm with horses, chickens, ducks and cats. We did a lot of rescuing. At early age, I became a vegetarian. There was a lot of resistance from family — “It will stunt your growth. It can’t be healthy.””

Corey Feldman (1971) American actor

… Going vegetarian at such a young age, it was a stance for myself.
"Corey Feldman brings Lost Boys Ball, Truth Movement to House of Blues" https://lasvegasweekly.com/blogs/luxe-life/2010/oct/21/corey-feldman-brings-lost-boys-ball-truth-movement/, interview with the Las Vegas Weekly (October 21, 2010).

Age , Family , Cats , Lovers

“People did not proceed, as the theory of evolution really requires by demythologizing their symbolism about animals and the downward direction. Instead they resisted evolution at all costs, or accepted it with the provisio that the future was to lift them out of the degrading company that admittedly contaminated their past. The Future was seen as leading many away from the rest of nature as fast as possible, as giving him the hope of escaping continuity with it after all. Those who felt a sense of pollution at the thought of kinship with other animals could dwell on the hope of becoming less like them.”

Mary Midgley (1919–2018) British philosopher and ethicist

Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (1979). 198.

People , Hope , Nature , Sense

“Never, never be afraid to do what's right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. Society's punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

A Usenet post https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/alt.animals.ethics.vegetarian/dx5B6E7Px5Y/BqpR-Wun--IJ ( additional archive http://archive.is/nMSX8), from 15 Jan 2006, with Message-Id: YVuyf.2919$2x4.2240@trndny05 , from "penny", contains the full text of the quote, with NO mention of it being a quote, or MLK, or anything of the sort. That strongly suggests it is the original source, which was later mis-attributed to Martin Luther King, Jr.
Misattributed

Way , Soul , Personality

“I had wished to visit a slaughter-house, in order to see with my own eyes the reality of the question raised when vegetarianism is discussed. But at first I felt ashamed to do so, as one is always ashamed of going to look at suffering which one knows is about to take place, but which one cannot avert; and so I kept putting off my visit. But a little while ago I met on the road a butcher … He is not yet an experienced butcher, and his duty is to stab with a knife. I asked him whether he did not feel sorry for the animals that he killed. He gave me the usual answer: 'Why should I feel sorry? It is necessary.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

But when I told him that eating flesh is not necessary, but is only a luxury, he agreed; and then he admitted that he was sorry for the animals.
Source: The First Step (1892), Ch. IX

Feeling , Question , Reality , Suffering

“It doesn't seem to me that this fantastically marvelous universe, this tremendous range of time and space and different kinds of animals, and all the different planets, and all these atoms with all their motions, and so on, all this complicated thing can merely be a stage so that God can watch human beings struggle for good and evil — which is the view that religion has. The stage is too big for the drama.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

statement (1959), quoted in Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman (1992) by James Gleick, p. 372

God , Religion , Universe , Evil

“Man created in the divine image, the protagonist of a great drama in which his soul was at stake, was replaced by man the wealth-seeking and –consuming animal.”

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

Source: Ideas have Consequences (1948), p. 6.

Soul , Wealth

“The more I examined my emotions, the more I was able to put that in my writing. I wanted to concentrate more on human emotions and internal feelings in the characters, inasmuch as I could in an animated cartoon show—ostensibly one for a young audience. There were times when I felt I couldn’t put the depth of feeling that I wanted to in the cartoons at that time, because it’s for kids and you have to keep it kind of upbeat. But I did it where I could. And I put it in my other work as well, when I was writing things like comics and screenplays.”

Paul Dini (1957) writer

Harley Quinn co-creator Paul Dini discusses how Batman helped him heal https://www.dailydot.com/parsec/paul-dini-batman-dark-night-harley-quinn-interview/ (June 21, 2016)

Feeling , Time

“I feel, Sir, at this instant, how much I had been animated in my childhood by a recital of England's victories:—I was taught, Sir, by one whose memory I shall ever revere, that at the close of a war, far different indeed from this, she had dictated the terms of peace to submissive nations. This, in which I place something more than a common interest, was the memorable aera of England's glory. But that aera is past…the visions of her power and pre-eminence are passed away…Let us examine what is left, with a manly and determined courage…Let us feel our calamities—let us bear them too, like men.”

William Pitt the Younger (1759–1806) British politician

Speech in the House of Commons (21 February 1783), reprinted in W. S. Hathaway (ed.), The Speeches of William Pitt in the House of Commons. Volume I (London: 1817), pp. 31-32.

Men , War , Peace , Feeling