Quotes about animal (3130 quotes, page 22)

“I had time after time watched the progression across the plain of the giraffe, in their queer, inimitable, vegetative gracefulness as if it were not a herd of animals but a family of rare, long stemmed spackled gigantic flowers slowly advancing. It was, in giant size, the border of a very old, infinitely precious Persian carpet in the dyes of green, yellow and black-brown”

Karen Blixen book Out of Africa

Out of Africa (1937)

Family , Flowers , Time , Animals

“Whenever men began to talk about too many people, they are paving the way for their destruction. It represents a suicidal element in man. For children are the aspects of man’s dominion. Moreover another aspect of that dominion is dominion over every living thing. Over the animal world. Man is thus created with a relationship towards animals established as normative with healthy psychology.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Audio lectures, Creationism and Psychology (n. d.)

Men , Children , People , World

“I was just always really into having pets and felt a real connection with animals, and I guess as I became aware … from where it was coming to my plate it's just I couldn't eat it—it was disgusting. I stopped eating read meat … but I still ate chicken for a long time, and we were on tour and saw a chicken truck go by with these chickens that were just bleeding—it was just disgusting. And that was it. I haven't had a piece of it since. … We're not actually born ready to eat meat, it's something you have to develop and it's not something that you need to develop. The issue with the whole thing is just education and information. You know, most people don't think about it.”

Chris Adler (1972) American drummer

“Lamb of God interview,” by Peta2.com, on YouTube (19 February 2007) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D91k1aOy1tY.

People , Education , Thinking , Time

“[About the 1991 film Diet for a New America narrated by John Robbins] It just changed my life, to see that film. When I saw it, I pledged to become vegetarian immediately, with the plan of becoming vegan. … My goal was always to become vegan, but it was a longer road. … I envy the kids going vegan now; they have so many different resources. … I think, at first, it struck me from an animal perspective, but the argument for the environment and for your own health also struck a cord with me. So it hit me on three different levels.”

Emily Deschanel (1976) American actress, television producer, and film producer

"Isn't she lovely". Interview by Stacy Gueraseva for Laika magazine, issue 4, 2014, page 51.

Life , Health , Thinking , Change

“One type of medical research involves ascertaining whether certain pathological conditions in humans can be alleviated or cured by certain drugs. Animals are used as "models" upon which to test these treatments. To do this it is necessary for the animal subject to have the condition in question, and in order to bring this about healthy animals are made sick. … It turns out, however, that the conditions artificially induced have little in common with the naturally occurring diseases in animals (when these exist) and much less in common with the diseases in man.”

Deborah Mayo American philosopher

Source: Against a Scientific Justification of Animal Experiments, pp. 343-344

Disease , Question , Nature , Animals

“Through symbolism based on killing animals, we encounter politically laden images of absorption, control, domain, and the necessity of violence. This message of male dominance is conveyed through meat eating—both in its symbolism and reality.”

Carol J. Adams book The Sexual Politics of Meat

The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory (New York: Continuum, 1990), p. 189.

Reality , Animals

“Brambles, in particular, protect and nourish young fruit trees, and on farms bramble clumps (blackberry or one of its related cultivars) can be used to exclude deer and cattle from newly set trees. As the trees (apple, quince, plum, citrus, fig) age, and the brambles are shaded out, hoofed animals come to eat fallen fruit, and the mature trees (7 plus years old) are sufficiently hardy to withstand browsing. Our forest ancestors may well have followed some such sequences for orchard evolution, assisted by indigenous birds and mammals.”

Bill Mollison (1928–2016) Australian permaculturist

Source: Permaculture: A Designers' Manual (1988), chapter 12.7

Age , Bird , Tree , Animals

“Vegetarians and vegans are not morally superior to everyone else. We're simply healthier, and a hell of a lot better for the environment around us. Of course, just because we're not morally superior doesn't mean we're not on the side of the angels. I believe we are. After all, we're practitioners of a diet that's better for people, better for animals, and better for the environment.”

Howard F. Lyman (1938) American activist

Source: No More Bull! (2005), Ch. 5: Message for My Meat-Eating Friends, p. 78

People , Angels , Hell , Animals

“When a woman responds to mistreatment by protesting "I'm a human being!" or "I want to be treated with respect, not like some animal," what is she suggesting about the acceptable ways of treating other animals? Perhaps because comparisons between women and nonhuman animals so often entail sexism, many women are anxious to distance themselves from other animals. Feminists, especially, recognize that negative "animal" imagery has advanced women's oppression. However, if our treatment and view of other animals became caring, respectful, and just, nonhuman-animal metaphors would quickly lose all power to demean. Few women have confronted how closely they mirror patriarchal oppressors when they too participate in other species' denigration. Women who avoid acknowledging that they are animals closely resemble men who prefer to ignore that women are human.”

Joan Dunayer American activist

" Sexist Words, Speciesist Roots https://books.google.it/books?id=iJSuTkFlpyIC&pg=PA11", in Animals and Women: Feminist Theoretical Explorations, edited by Carol J. Adams and Josephine Donovan (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995), p. 19.

Women , Men , Way , Animals

“[M]an when not stimulated by hope or necessity is naturally a lazy animal.”

George Trumbull Ladd (1842–1921) American psychologist, educator and philosopher

In Korea with Marquis Ito (1908), page 292

Hope , Nature , Animals

“For the next few years times will not be normal. Perhaps people have used the words 'economic crisis' too often in the past. They have shouted 'wolf, wolf' when the animal was more akin to a rather disagreeable Yorkshire terrier. But not now. The crisis that faces us is infinitely more serious than any of the crises we have faced over the past 20 years…With its usual spirit of patriotism and its tradition of service to the community's needs, it is coming to realize that, for the time being at least, the party is over…We are not calling for a headlong retreat. But we are calling for a standstill.”

Anthony Crosland (1918–1977) British politician

Speech in Manchester Town Hall (9 May 1975), quoted in Christopher Warman, 'Councils are told to curb rise in spending', The Times (10 May 1975), p. 1

People , Communication , Wolf , Time

“Populations interact, some decline to extinction, and some expand. In an ice age the tundra advances on the forest, but in no sense is there a "struggle" between them. As the temperature gets colder, the forest species decline and the tundra species increase; that is all. There is neither effort nor fight. As we move toward the more complex animals, of course, both effort and fighting become more common, but even in the predator-prey relationship, there is catching and eating rather than fighting.”

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

Source: 1970s, Ecodynamics: A New Theory Of Societal Evolution, 1978, p. 110

Age , Sense , Effort , Animals

“Symbioses are central in the evolution of complexity; have evolved many times and are critical to the lifestyles of many animals and plants and also to whole ecosystems, in which symbiotic organisms are key players. The primary reason that symbiosis research is suddenly active, after decades at the margins of mainstream biology, is that DNA technology and genomics give us enormous new ability to discover symbiont diversity, and more significantly, to reveal how microbial metabolic capabilities contribute to the functioning of hosts and biological communities.”

Nancy A. Moran (1954) American biologist

[Nancy A. Moran, Election Year: 2004, Member Directory, National Academy of Sciences, http://www.nasonline.org/member-directory/members/2538196.html]

Communication , Time , Animals

“The first class contains four, which, we are informed, may be properly called beasts for hunting; namely, the hare, the hart, the wolf, and the wild boar. The second class contains the names of the beasts of the chase, and they are five; that is to say, the buck, the doe, the fox, the martin, and the roe. In the third class we find three, that are said to afford "greate dysporte" in the pursuit, and they are denominated, the grey or badger, the wild-cat and the otter…The reader may possibly be surprised, when he casts his eye over the foregoing list of animals for hunting, at seeing the names of several that do not exist at this time in England, and especially of the wolf, because he will readily recollect the story so commonly told of their destruction during the reign of Edgar.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 17
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Animals

Cats , Wolf , Time , Animals

“We have heard from the opposite Bench several very animated appeals to this House, and several constitutional lectures as to our duties. The noble Earl the late Foreign Secretary (the Earl of Clarendon) went so far, as I understood him, as to tell us that we must watch public opinion more closely, and pay greater attention to the majorities in the other House of Parliament. My Lords, it occurs to me to ask the noble Earl whether he has considered for what purpose this House exists, and whether he would be willing to go through the humiliation of being a mere echo and supple tool of the other House in order to secure for himself the luxury of mock legislation? I agree with my noble Friend the noble Earl (the Earl of Derby) below me that it were better not to be than submit to such a slavery.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1868/jun/26/debate-resumed-second-night in the House of Lords (26 June 1868)
1860s

Animals , Housing

“The greater part of the time I spent, when I talked at all, talking to men. I liked to take luncheon in some pub or other, sitting on a high stool at the snack-counter, barons of beef, hams, salads and dishes of pickle spread before me, the server in his tall white cap carving with skill. Other male eaters would be wedged against me, champing over newspapers, and there were a peculiar animal content in being among warm silent men, raising glasses in smacking silent toasts to themselves, the automatic ‘ah’ after the draught, the forkful of red beef and mustard pickle. Sitting with my gin or whisky afterwards I would often manage to get into conversation with some lonely man or other – usually an exile like myself – and the talk would be about the world, air-routes and shipping-lines, drinking-places thousands of miles away. Then I felt happy, felt I had come home, because home to people like me is not a place but all places, all places except the one we happen to be in at the moment.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Right to an Answer (1960)

Men , People , World , Home

“Piety, then, needs a counterpoise, something to prevent it from being exercised in an excessively rigid way; and this it has, in most intellectual temperaments, in the quality I would call playfulness. We speak of the play of the mind; and certainly the intellectual relishes the play of the mind for its own sake, and finds in it one of the major values in life. What one thinks of here is the element of sheer delight in intellectual activity. Seen in this guise, intellect may be taken as the healthy animal spirits of the mind, which come into exercise when the surplus of mental energies is released from the tasks required for utility and mere survival. “Man is perfectly human,” said Schiller, “only when he plays.” And it is this awareness of an available surplus beyond the requirements of mere existence that his maxim conveys to us. Veblen spoke often of the intellectual faculty as “idle curiosity”—but this is a misnomer in so far as the curiosity of the playful mind is inordinately restless and active. This very restlessness and activity gives a distinctive cast to its view of truth and its discontent with dogmas.”

Richard Hofstadter (1916–1970) American historian

Source: Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1974), p. 30

Life , Truth , Way , Exercises

“No one can deny the suffering, fear, or panic, the terror or fright that can seize certain animals and that we humans can witness. … No doubt either, then, of there being within us the possibility of giving vent to a surge of compassion, even if it is then misunderstood, repressed, or denied, held at bay. … The two centuries I have been referring to somewhat casually in order to situate the present in terms of this tradition have been those of an unequal struggle, a war (whose inequality could one day be reversed) being waged between, on the one hand, those who violate not only animal life but even and also this sentiment of compassion, and, on the other hand, those who appeal for an irrefutable testimony to this pity. War is waged over the matter of pity. This war is probably ageless but, and here is my hypothesis, it is passing through a critical phase. We are passing through that phase, and it passes through us. To think the war we find ourselves waging is not only a duty, a responsibility, an obligation, it is also a necessity, a constraint that, like it or not, directly or indirectly, no one can escape. Henceforth more than ever. And I say “to think” this war, because I believe it concerns what we call “thinking.””

Jacques Derrida book The Animal That Therefore I Am

The animal looks at us, and we are naked before it. Thinking perhaps begins there.
Specters of Marx (1993), The Animal That Therefore I Am, 1997

Life , War , Fear , Thinking

“I wanted to do a show about a character that was an innocent, and so I focused on a sea sponge because it's a funny animal, a strange one, I thought he was a funny, nerdy, squeaky-clean square.”

Stephen Hillenburg (1961–2018) American marine biologist, cartoonist, animator, storyboard artist, director, producer, and writer

Animals , Sea

“[A]n electro-mechanical creature which behaves so much like an animal that it has been known to drive a not usually timid lady upstairs to lock herself in her bedroom, an interesting blend of magic and science.”

William Grey Walter (1910–1977) American-born British neuroscientist and roboticist

Source: The Living Brain (1953), p. 82 : Description of the behavior of his first autonomous turtle robots, called Tortoise or Machina speculatrix.

Science , Animals

“Dig if U will the picture
Of U and I engaged in a kiss.
The sweat of your body covers me.
Can U my darling,
Can U picture this?Dream if U can a courtyard,
An ocean of violets in bloom.
Animals strike curious poses;
They feel the heat,
The heat between me and U.”

Prince (1958–2016) American pop, songwriter, musician and actor

When Doves Cry
Song lyrics, Purple Rain (1984)

Dreams , Feeling , Kiss , Animals

“Man alone of animals plays the ape to his dreams.”

James Branch Cabell (1879–1958) American author

Manuel, in Book Four : Coth at Porutsa, Ch. XXV : Last Obligation upon Manuel
The Silver Stallion (1926)

Dreams , Animals

“Say you've been to MGM (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) Disney Studios in Orlando, you'll know that there's an animation studio where you actually walk out of the back door of the animation studio and you're in a theme park. Now you say, hey, that's pretty cool. Could any animation studio have a sort of situation like that that is any cooler? And you think not. Well, you're wrong, I'd say, because here at Big Idea when we walk out our back door, We have the Timework button, we push the button, we open the door[…] and, we're in a mall. Disney has nothing on this. You can be animating one moment, buying candy by the pound the next, or taking a ride on a little train, or going to the food court.”

Phil Vischer (1966) American puppeter

From Disc Two; Behind the Scenes: Big Idea Tour (00:08:57-00:09:36)
Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie DVD (2002)

Food , Idea , Thinking , Animals

“Even if animal experiments did result in a cure for AIDS, of which there is no chance, I’d be against it on moral grounds.”

Ingrid Newkirk (1949) British-American activist

McGraw, Michael, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. "PETA and AIDS research" http://www.cnsnews.com/letterstotheeditor/letters_archive/2006/letters20060515.asp, Letters to the Editor, CNSNews.com, May 15, 2006.
On animal research and activism against it

Chance , Animals

“War. What was it about the prospect of some bloody enterprises that reduced men to the level of animals?”

David Gemmell book Legend

Source: Drenai series, Legend, Pt 1: Against the Horde, Ch. 1

Men , War , Animals

“Probably the profoundest difference between human and animal needs is made by one piece of human awareness, one fact that is not present to animals, because it is never learned in any direct experience: that is our foreknowledge of death. The fact that we ourselves must die is not a simple and isolated fact. It is built on a wide survey of facts that discloses the structure of history as a succession of overlapping brief lives, the patterns of youth and age, growth and decline; and above all that, it is built on the logical insight that one’s own life is a case in point. Only a creature that can think symbolically about life can conceive of its own death. Our knowledge of death is part of our knowledge of life.”

Susanne K. Langer (1895–1985) American philosopher

Philosophical Sketches, Ayer (1979)

Life , Death , Youth , Age

“Modern natural history deals only incidentally with the identity of plants and animals, and only incidentally with their habits and behaviors. It deals principally with their relations to each other, their relation to the soil and water in which they grow, and their relations to the human beings who sing about 'my country' but see little or nothing of its inner workings. This new science of relationships is called ecology, but what we call it matters nothing. The question is, does the educated citizen know he is only a cog in an ecological mechanism? That if he will work with that mechanism his mental wealth and his material wealth can expand indefinitely? But that if he refuses to work with it, it will ultimately grind him to dust? If education does not teach us these things, then what is education for?”

Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) American writer and scientist

"Natural History: The Forgotten Science" [1938]; Published in Round River, Luna B. Leopold (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1966, p. 63-64.
1930s

Education , Behavior , History , Question

“It would appear that practical morality consists in making the meeting of men and women as casual as that of animals.”

George Moore (novelist) (1852–1933) Irish novelist, short-story writer, poet, art critic, memoirist and dramatist

Apologia Pro Scriptis Meis.
Memoirs of My Dead Life http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8mmdl10.txt (1906)

Women , Men , Appearance , Animals

“The Vice-President's Chamber is adjacent to the Senate Chamber, and so small that to survive it is necessary to keep the door open in order to obtain the necessary cubic feet of air. When the vice-president is in the room [the Capitol Guides] go by with their guests, stop and point him out, as though he were a curiosity.I stood this for about as long as I could, and then went to the door one day, and said: "If you look on me as a wild animal, be kind enough to throw peanuts at me; but if you are really desirous of seeing me, come in and shake hands." In that way I think I restored myself to the position I have always desired to occupy; that of an American, who looks up to nobody, looks down upon nobody, but tries to keep a conscience clean enough that he can look everybody in the face.”

Thomas R. Marshall (1854–1925) American politician who served as the 28th Vice President of the United States

Recollections of Thomas R. Marshall: A Hoosier Salad (1925), Chapter XVII

Way , Thinking , Animals

“In early 1981 one of the most important moments in my life occurred. I entered a vivisection lab … In one of the cages, I saw a young Alaskan malamute … The dog tried to lick my face through the bars. Maybe he thought I had come to save him. I saw the infected stitches in the belly, oozing pus and blood. I saw the filthy, encrusted tube that was draining fluid out of his stomach. And as I held him, I saw the rotted stitches start to come apart and his guts start to spill out. As gently as I could, I let him down onto the floor of the cage and placed my hand on him, trying to comfort him in those last few moments of his life. I was still holding him when at last he took his final struggling breaths and died. It seemed to take a lifetime. I was close to tears as I looked at the body, and I thought, this isn’t science — this is madness. Standing there, looking at that gentle animal lying dead in a bloody cage, I made a promise to him and to myself, that I would never forget him, that I would keep on fighting vivisection until it was ended.”

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.

Life , Dogs , Lying , Tear

“On the 7th azar I went to see and shoot on the tank of Pushkar, which is one of the established praying-places of the Hindus, with regard to the perfection of which they give (excellent) accounts that are incredible to any intelligence, and which is situated at a distance of three kos from Ajmir. For two or three days I shot waterfowl on that tank, and returned to Ajmir. Old and new temples which, in the language of the infidels, they call Deohara are to be seen around this tank. Among them Rana Shankar, who is the uncle of the rebel Amar, and in my kingdom is among the high nobles, had built a Deohara of great magnificence, on which 100,000 rupees had been spent. I went to see that temple. I found a form cut out of black stone, which from the neck above was in the shape of a pig's head, and the rest of the body was like that of a man. The worthless religion of the Hindus is this, that once on a time for some particular object the Supreme Ruler thought it necessary to show himself in this shape; on this account they hold it dear and worship it. I ordered them to break that hideous form and throw it into the tank. After looking at this building there appeared a white dome on the top of a hill, to which men were coming from all quarters. When I asked about this they said that a Jogi lived there, and when the simpletons come to see him he places in their hands a handful of flour, which they put into their mouths and imitate the cry of an animal which these fools have at some time injured, in order that by this act their sins may be blotted out. I ordered them to break down that place and turn the Jogi out of it, as well as to destroy the form of an idol there was in the dome”

Jahangir (1569–1627) 4th Mughal Emperor

Ajmer, Pushkar (Rajasthan) , Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri, translated into English by Alexander Rogers, first published 1909-1914, New Delhi Reprint, 1978, Vol. I, pp. 254-55.

Men , Religion , Fools , Intelligence

“Oswald Cabal: Little animals. And if we’re no more than animals, we must snatch each little scrap of happiness, and live, and suffer, and pass, mattering no more than all the other animals do or have done. It is this, or that. All the universe or nothing. Which shall it be, Passworthy? Which shall it be?”

H. G. Wells book The Shape of Things to Come

Things to Come (1936)

Suffering , Universe , Animals , Happiness

“The same nutritive elements exist in both vegetable and animal foods, and … within certain limits, the two classes of food are interchangeable.”

Edward Smith (physician) (1819–1874) British physician, born 1819

Source: Foods, Ch. XIX, p. 143

Food , Animals

“To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary influence of example.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

Life of Milton
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Faith , Religion , Hope , Distant

“People might think that boxers are all animals and nasty people. But at the end of the day, we're all brothers: black or white, yellow or pink. We are all in the same business, and after the fight we are hugging each other like we're gay.”

Frank Bruno (1961) British boxer

1990 Interview with Des Lynam https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duOUcH7xFrg]

People , Business , Thinking , Animals

“It will rightly be asked: What is the synthetic principle on which this obviously highly important product of y-methylcyclopentenophenanthrene is built up in nature, and why is it that this particular type which, as founda tion of many substances indispensable to life and of extreme physiological and biological importance, plays such a vital role in the vegetable and animal kingdoms? However, the time has not yet come when we can give an answer to questions so fundamental and so important to an understanding of the workings of Nature. But I am firmly convinced that this problem - like all others - will eventually be solved.”

Otto Diels (1876–1954) German chemist

"Description and Importance of the Aromatic Basic Skeleton of the Steroids" (Nobel Lecture), 1950.

Life , Understanding , Question , Nature

“Man is the animal with a soul who thinks and builds; his penetrating insights into the laws of nature are there for any child to learn, and his impressive mastery of the materials of the earth stands ready to be imitated by anyone, but the home he has built for his own kind is still a lonely and impoverished place for many people. There is nothing about that loneliness that wisdom cannot change; there is nothing in that poverty that strength cannot overcome. Separated from each other, the thinker is a stranger in his own house, and the builder is a beggar at his own door. Together, they can bring the warmth of love and the helpfulness of power into the daily market place of living, taking a human position that is eternal and without compromise. In the midst of the obvious and the commonplace, and only in this birthplace of human contentment and happiness, the thinker and builder can leave the monastic cell and relinquish barracks mobility to claim the world in the name of human beings. When they do so, man can expect a human harvest equal to his dreams, and measured to the nobility of his posture.”

Paul Rosenfels (1909–1985) American sociologist

Psychoanalysis and Civilization

Love , Wisdom , People , World

“It speaks for the spirit animating the rulers of independent India that even the roads named after Curzon and Hastings in New Delhi have been renamed.”

Girilal Jain (1924–1993) Indian journalist

page 38, The Hindu Phenomenon, ISBN 81-86112-32-4.
On Peoples, On narrowmindedness of rulers of Independent India

Animals

“When I stopped eating meat, I noticed that it was easier for me to focus, and I was really proud of myself for being green also. … I had a plethora of reasons for going vegetarian. I was eating meat and didn’t know how it affected my health …. I just felt better and brighter and lighter, and I had more energy …. It was a big deal to me, being an animal lover, that I realised what I was eating, and I didn’t separate myself from, say, my animals, my pets.”

Christian Serratos (1990) American actress

"‘Twilight’ Star Hits Graveyard In Sexy, Dark PETA Ad" https://www.peta.org.uk/media/news-releases/twilight-star-hits-graveyard-in-sexy-dark-peta-ad/, interview with PETA (November 2012).

Health , Lovers , Animals

“Human beings are tool-making animals. Since the prehistoric era, we have created and used a wide variety of objects. But now a significant change is about to occur. In the near future, we will simply become another object that can be monitored, tracked and controlled within a vast machine.”

John Twelve Hawks American writer

From Interviews

Change , Future , Animals

“I am often asked if I would have liked to have been involved with Jurassic Park. The plain answer is no. Although excellent, it is not with all its dollars what I would have wished to do with my career. I was always a loner and worked best that way. Since the very beginning I fought and struggled under constant pressure to keep the design and final result within my hands. As time moved on this became more difficult, until I was forced to bow to the fact that my method of working, in the financial sense, was no longer practical. Model animation has been relegated to a reflection, or a starting point for creature computer effects that has reached a high few could have anticipated. However, for all the wonderful achievements of the computer, the process creates creatures that are too realistic and for me that makes them unreal because they have lost one vital element - a dream quality. Fantasy, for me, is realizing strange beings that are so removed from the 21st century. These beings would include not only dinosaurs, because no matter what the scientists say, we still don't know how dinosaurs looked or moved, but also creatures of the mind. Fantastical creatures where the unreal quality becomes even more vital. Stop-motion supplies the perfect breath of life for them, offering a look of pure fantasy because their movements are beyond anything we know.”

Ray Harryhausen (1920–2013) American animator

Ray Harryhausen & Tony Dalton (2003), An Animated Life, Aurum Press, p. 8

Life , Dreams , Way , Sense

“My own life has convinced me that the limitations most of us encounter in our relations with other animals reflect not their shortcomings, as we so often assume, but our own narrow views about who they are and the kinds of relationships we can have with them. And so I conclude by urging anyone with an interest in animal rights to open your heart to the animals around you and find out for yourself what it's like to befriend a nonhuman person.”

Barbara Smuts (1950) American anthropologist

Source: Reflections (1999), p. 120

Life , Heart , Animals , Personality

“Animals are not just herbivores or carnivores. They are, in the nice coinage of the psychologist George Miller, informavores.”

Daniel Dennett (1942) American philosopher

Kinds of Minds (1996)

Animals

“The restraints we are seeking to impose are ones which can only be opposed by a failure in empathy towards non-human animals which constitutes an irrational blindness to the fact of the basic sameness of suffering in whatever species of animal it occurs; an irrationality incompatible with clear thought about the issue.”

Timothy Sprigge (1932–2007) British philosopher

Source: The Animal Welfare Movement and the Foundations of Ethics, p. 95

Failure , Suffering , Animals

“I do believe that man is a rope between animal and superman. But the superman I'm thinking of isn't Nietzsche's. The real superhuman, man or woman, is the person who's rid himself of all prejudices, neuroses, and psychoses, who realizes his full potential as a human being, who acts naturally on the basis of gentleness, compassion, and love, who thinks for himself and refuses to follow the herd. That's the genuine dyed-in-the-wool superman.”

Philip José Farmer (1918–2009) American science fiction writer

Source: The Riverworld series, The Dark Design (1977), Ch. 31

Love , Nature , Thinking , Animals

“[In my family] we read books on the subject—a lot of them—and came to the conclusion that, because of the number and amounts of hormones now used to fatten animals, meat isn't healthy. … [Vegetarianism] helped my cycling some, but the diet is more important over the long run and later in life.”

Wayne Stetina (1953) American cyclist

"They Hunger for Success" https://www.si.com/vault/1977/02/28/560840/they-hunger-for-success, interview with Sports Illustrated (February 28, 1977).

Life , Books , Family , Reading

“Benevolence is not a commodity that needs to be distributed sparingly like cake or chocolate. It is away of being, an attitude, an intention to do good for those who enter our sphere of attention and the wish to alleviate their suffering. Loving animals also does not mean loving humans less. In fact, by also loving animals we love people better, because our benevolence is then vaster and therefore of better quality. Someone who loves only a selection of sentient beings, even of humanity, is the possessor of only fragmentary and impoverished benevolence.”

Matthieu Ricard (1946) French writer and Buddhist monk

Source: A Plea for the Animals (2014), Chapter 5, p. 98

Love , People , Suffering , Animals

“Some people are little more than herd animals, flocking together whenever the world becomes uncomfortable for any reason, seeking the comfort of those who agree with them, do not contradict them, and take care of their emotions. I am not one of those people. If I had a motto, it would probably be Herd thither, me hither.”

Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer

Ungregarious News http://ungregarious.org/2004/

People , World , Animals

“In my own researches and findings I have always insisted on plastic and sculptural values, and also on what I call a poetic climate. The object, whether it is a book, a bottle, or a human body, once it is visualized and expressed by means of clay, stone, or wood, ceases to be a document and becomes an animated object in stone, wood, or bronze and lives its independent life..”

Ossip Zadkine (1890–1967) French sculptor

Quote of Zadkine from New York, early 1944; as cited in: Artists on Art – from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, p. 430
1940 - 1960

Life , Books , Animals

“As we survey the various stages of evolution, from the simplest one-cell creatures up to man. we see a steady improvement in the methods of learning and adaptation to a hostile world. Each step in learning ability gives better adaptation and greater chance of survival. We are carried a long way up the scale by innate reflexes and rudimentary muscular learning faculties. Habits indeed, not rational thought, assist us to surmount most of life's obstacles. Most, but by no means all; for learning in the high mammals exhibits the unexplained phenomenon of "insight," which shows itself by sudden changes in behavior in learning situations -- in sudden departures from one method of organizing a task, or solving a problem, to another. Insight, expectancy, set, are the essentially "mind-like" attributes of communication, and it is these, together with the representation of concepts, which require physiological explanation. At the higher end of the scale of evolution, this quality we call "mind" appears more and more prominently, but it is at our own level that learning of a radically new type has developed -- through our powers of organizing thoughts, comparing and setting them into relationship, especially with the use of language. We have a remarkable faculty of forming generalizations, of recognizing universals, of associating and developing them. It is our multitude of general concepts, and our powers of organizing them with the aid of language in varied ways, which forms the backbone of human communication, and which distinguises us from the animals.”

Colin Cherry (1914–1979) British scientist

Source: Hebb, D. O., The Organization of Behavior, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, 1949.
Source: On Human Communication (1957), On Cognition and Recognition, p. 304

Life , Hostility , World , Way

“I always felt that Uncle Remus should be played by a living person, as should also the young boy to whom Harris' old Negro philosopher relates his vivid stories of the Briar Patch. Several tests in previous pictures, especially in The Three Caballeros, were encouraging in the way living action and animation could be dovetailed. Finally, months ago, we 'took our foot in hand,' in the words of Uncle Remus, and jumped into our most venturesome but also more pleasurable undertaking.”

Walt Disney (1901–1966) American film producer and businessman

As quoted in "The Movie: Background". Song of the South.net. Retrieved 2007-01-18.

Pleasure , Way , Boy , Animals

“As the shell, the pith and the kernel of the fruit are all produced form one parent seed of the tree, so from the one Lord is produced the whole of creation, animate and inanimate, spiritual and material.”

Ramakrishna (1836–1886) Indian mystic and religious preacher

Source: Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna (1960), p. 867

Parent , Tree , Animals

“Liberals have developed a utopian vision of how nature should behave. It must remain in perfect balance. To that end, they’ll exterminate harmless critters that violate the liberal idea of Order; of species correctness. While animals may not migrate illegally, or disrupt the preordained ‘natural’ order—liberal social engineers encourage non-indigenous peoples to mess with the social habitat of historic, host populations. Provided they’re white.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"The Curious Case of America's Waning Whites" http://dailycaller.com/2016/12/08/the-curious-case-of-americas-waning-whites/ The Daily Caller, December 8, 2016
2010s, 2016

People , Idea , Nature , Animals

“I'm standing on the shoulders of Nina Duchess of Hamilton and Miss Lind-af-Hageby and the people who fought for the animals in the previous generation. Their period of life on earth is gone, but people carry on their work. As I said, my husband and I stood on their shoulders, but there are lots who will stand on our shoulders.”

Muriel Dowding, Baroness Dowding (1908–1993) British noble

Source: Interview by Rynn Berry, p. 149

Life , People , Animals

“Dinosaurs seem strange, but that is just because we are mammals biased toward assuming the modern fauna is familiar and normal, and past forms are exotic and alien. Consider that elephants are bizarre creatures with their combination of big brains, massive limbs, oversized ears, teeth turned into tusks, and noses elongated into hose-like trunks. Nor were dinosaurs part of an evolutionary progression that was necessary to set the stage for mammals culminating into humans. What dinosaurs do show is a parallel world, one in which mammals were permanently subsidiary, whereas the dinosaurs show what largely diurnal land animals that evolved straight from similarly day-loving ancestors should actually look like. Modern mammals are much more peculiar, having evolved from nocturnal beasts that came into their own only after the entire elimination of nonavian dinosaurs. While dinosaurs dominated the land, small nocturnal mammals were just as abundant and diverse as they are in our modern world. If not for the accident of the later even, dinosaurs would probably still be the global norm.”

Gregory Scott Paul book The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs

Gregory S. Paul (2010) The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs, Princeton University Press, p. 14
The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs

Love , World , Past , Animals

“The power which causes the several portions of the plant to help each other, we call life. Much more is this so in an animal. We may take away the branch of a tree without much harm to it; but not the animal's limb. Thus, intensity of life is also intensity of helpfulness — completeness of depending of each part on all the rest. The ceasing of this help is what we call corruption; and in proportion to the perfectness of the help, is the dreadfulness of the loss. The more intense the life has been, the more terrible is its corruption.”

John Ruskin book Modern Painters

Volume V, part VIII, chapter 1, section 4 (1860).
Modern Painters (1843-1860)

Life , Tree , Loss , Help

“(Luciano Rossi) was strange, albeit in a very friendly way. I remember an incident, when the two of us were going downtown, and he suddenly had to stop at the post office. He wrote out a big cheque for a society for the prevention of cruelty against animals. And the day before he had declined an offer to get a bigger suite at the hotel because he didn't like the thought of spending so much money for himself. That's a very nice twist in the story, I think.”

Donald O'Brien (actor) (1930–2003) Italian film and TV actor

Euro Trash Cinema magazine interview (March 1996)

Money , Way , Thinking , Animals

“After so many great men have worked on this subject, I almost do not dare to say that I have discovered the universal principle upon which all these laws are based, a principle that covers both elastic and inelastic collisions and describes the motion and equilibrium of all material bodies.
This is the principle of least action, a principle so wise and so worthy of the supreme Being, and intrinsic to all natural phenomena; one observes it at work not only in every change, but also in every constancy that Nature exhibits. In the collision of bodies, motion is distributed such that the quantity of action is as small as possible, given that the collision occurs. At equilibrium, the bodies are arranged such that, if they were to undergo a small movement, the quantity of action would be smallest.
The laws of motion and equilibrium derived from this principle are exactly those observed in Nature. We may admire the applications of this principle in all phenomena: the movement of animals, the growth of plants, the revolutions of the planets, all are consequences of this principle. The spectacle of the universe seems all the more grand and beautiful and worthy of its Author, when one considers that it is all derived from a small number of laws laid down most wisely. Only thus can we gain a fitting idea of the power and wisdom of the supreme Being, not from some small part of creation for which we know neither the construction, usage, nor its relationship to other parts. What satisfaction for the human spirit in contemplating these laws of motion and equilibrium for all bodies in the universe, and in finding within them proof of the existence of Him who governs the universe!”

Pierre Louis Maupertuis (1698–1759) French mathematician, philosopher and man of letters

Les Loix du Mouvement et du Repos, déduites d'un Principe Métaphysique (1746)

Wisdom , Men , Law , Beauty

“Macy Nulman, The Encyclopedia of Jewish Prayer, article Anim Zemirot”

Yehuda he-Hasid (1140–1217) German philosopher

References

Animals

“In their evolution, we see that the earliest pterosaurs were small, and yet still unnecessarily heavy and clumsy, both in the air and on the ground, but 160 million years of refinement has honed their abilities to the limit of incidental engineering. Despite their enormity, they were unbelievably lightweight; even the biggest ones were estimated at less than 500 lbs. They had hollow pneumatic bones of large diameter but only millimeters thick, making a strut-supported tubular frame that's surprisingly strong and highly resistant to the stresses of aeronautics. They also had extraordinarily powerful wing muscles, and this made them capable of vaulting airborne in a single bolt. Once in the air, muscle strands and tendons in the membrane of the wing itself worked with a network of pycnofibres to give them all the data they needed for subtle adjustments to the shape of the wing. The portions of the brain which were dedicated to flight, balance and visual gaze stabilization in birds are all larger and more adapted in pterosaurs. In fact, scientists are now convinced that these animals had such a mastery of flight, that the larger ones could even cross oceans, going 80 mph at 15,000 feet for thousands of miles on a single launch.”

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

Youtube, Other, Pterosaurs are Terrible Lizards https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_htQ8HJ1cA (December 3, 2013)

Support , Bird , Strong , Animals

“Maine should be pleased that its animal
is not a waverer, and rather
than fight, lets the primed quill fall.
Shallow oppressor, intruder,
insister, you have found a resister.”

Marianne Moore (1887–1972) American poet and writer

Of the porcupine, in "Apparition of Splendor"
The Poems of Marianne Moore (2003)

Animals , Fight

“For me, the essence of veganism is compassion … not just compassion for animals, but all the way around.”

Victoria Moran (1950) American writer

Compassion, the Ultimate Ethic: An Exploration of Veganism (Wellingborough: Thorsons, 1985), p. 44.

Way , Animals

“[Asked who inspired him to be a vegetarian] I used to sell books, when I was about 18 …. We were selling books, and right next to us was an old man. I mean, he had to be about 80 years old, and he was a nutritionist, but he was a holistic nutritionist, and he was talking to us about how you shouldn’t really eat animals and things of that nature … and he pulled up his shirt and the man had the abs of a 15-year-old. He says to us, “Touch ’em. Punch me,”—whatever—and he’s like, “How old do you think I am?” And we thought he was about 50 years old, and he’s like, “I’m 86 years old.””

Jeru the Damaja (1972) American Hip Hop artist

… We looked at each other, me and my friends, and we were, like, when we’re 86, we want to be like that …. So that’s what started it.
" Jeru the Damaja http://www.peta2.com/heroes/jeru-the-damaja/", interview by Peta2, having just released his album Divine Design (2003).

Books , Nature , Thinking , Animals

“Each time I dip a living creature into the bath of burning pain, I say: 'This time I will burn out all the animal; this time I will make a rational creature of my own!' After all, what is ten years? Men have been a hundred thousand in the making.”

H. G. Wells book The Island of Doctor Moreau

Source: The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), Ch. 14: Doctor Moreau Explains

Men , Pain , Time , Animals

“I have discovered in the Hebrew Bible teachings of righteousness, humaneness, and human dignity—at the source of my parents' teachings of mentschlichkeit—undreamt of in my prior philosophizing. In the idea that human beings are equally God-like, equally created in the image of the divine, I have seen the core principle of a humanistic and democratic politics, respectful of each and every human being, and a necessary correction to the uninstructed human penchant for worshiping brute nature or venerating mighty or clever men. In the Sabbath injunction to desist regularly from work and the flux of getting and spending, I have discovered an invitation to each human being, no matter how lowly, to step outside of time, in imitatio Dei, to contemplate the beauty of the world and to feel gratitude for its—and our—existence. In the injunction to honor your father and your mother, I have seen the foundation of a dignified family life, for each of us the nursery of our humanization and the first vehicle of cultural transmission. I have satisfied myself that there is no conflict between the Bible, rightly read, and modern science, and that the account of creation in the first chapter of Genesis offers "not words of information but words of appreciation," as Abraham Joshua Heschel put it: "not a description of how the world came into being but a song about the glory of the world's having come into being"—the recognition of which glory, I would add, is ample proof of the text's claim that we human beings stand highest among the creatures. And thanks to my Biblical studies, I have been moved to new attitudes of gratitude, awe, and attention. For just as the world as created is a world summoned into existence under command, so to be a human being in that world—to be a mentsch—is to live in search of our summons. It is to recognize that we are here not by choice or on account of merit, but as an undeserved gift from powers not at our disposal. It is to feel the need to justify that gift, to make something out of our indebtedness for the opportunity of existence. It is to stand in the world not only in awe of its and our existence but under an obligation to answer a call to a worthy life, a life that does honor to the special powers and possibilities—the divine-likeness—with which our otherwise animal existence has been, no thanks to us, endowed.”

Leon R. Kass (1939) American academic

Looking for an Honest Man (2009)

Life , Men , God , World

“No doubt, God alone has become all these objects, animate and inanimate, but in the relative world all beings act and suffer according to their past Karma and innate tendencies.”

Sarada Devi (1853–1920) Hindu religious figure, spiritual consort of Ramakrishna

[Swami Tapasyananda, Swami Nikhilananda, Sri Sarada Devi, the Holy Mother; Life and Conversations, 361]

God , World , Suffering , Past

“Only on the superficies of the globes is plainly seen the host of souls and of animate existences, and their great and delightful diversity the Creator taketh pleasure”

William Gilbert (astronomer) book De Magnete

As quoted in Gilbert, William. 2013 ed. De Magnete https://books.google.com.mx/books?id=QsLDAgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false. Courier Corporation, pp. 311.
De Magnete (1600)

Pleasure , Soul , Animals

“The power of God is redefined in Jesus as practical costly service extending to those who are beyond the normal boundaries of human concern: the diseased, the poor, the oppressed, the outcast. If humans are to claim a lordship over creation, then it can only be a lordship of service. There can be no lordship without service. According to the theological doctrine of animal rights, then, humans are to be the servant species — the species given power, opportunity, and privilege to give themselves, nay sacrifice themselves, for the weaker, suffering creatures.”

Andrew Linzey (1952) British theologian and divine

Source: Animal Gospel: Christian Faith as if Animals Mattered (1998), p. 39

God , Disease , Suffering , Animals

“When a man has been the lover of a woman as that man had been hers, with the vibrating communion of a voluptuousness unbroken for two years, that woman maintains a sort of physiological, quasi-animal instinct. A gesture, the accent of a word, a sigh, a blush, a pallor, are signs for her that her intuition interprets with infallible certainty. How and why is that instinct accompanied by absolute oblivion of former caresses? It is a particular case of that insoluble and melancholy problem of the birth and death of love.”

Paul Bourget (1852–1935) French writer

Source: Cosmopolis (1892), Ch. 5 "Countess Steno"

Love , Death , Lovers , Birth

“What makes you think human beings are sentient and aware? There's no evidence for it. Human beings never think for themselves, they find it too uncomfortable. For the most part, members of our species simply repeat what they are told-and become upset if they are exposed to any different view. The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity, and the characteristic result is religious warfare. Other animals fight for territory or food; but, uniquely in the animal kingdom, human beings fight for their 'beliefs.' The reason is that beliefs guide behavior which has evolutionary importance among human beings. But at a time when our behavior may well lead us to extinction, I see no reason to assume we have any awareness at all. We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion. Next question.”

Michael Crichton book The Lost World

The Lost World (1995)

Food , Behavior , Question , Thinking

“I had always dreamed of being involved in a job where I could do anything related to animals and nature. A vet maybe. But later I came to understand that it was just a temporary interest and that music was more important to me.”

Tarkan (1972) Turkish singer

Tarkan Q & A, Tarkan Translations, April 10, 2003 http://tarkantr.blogspot.com/2005/05/q.html,

Dreams , Music , Understanding , Nature

“Animal lovers often tend to be misanthropes or loners, and so they transfer their affection to the creature in their control.”

Paul Theroux (1941) American travel writer and novelist

Living With Geese http://smithsonianmag.com/issues/2006/december/geese.php?page=1, Smithsonian Magazine (December 2006).

Lovers , Animals

“The main difficulty in using either lazo or bolas, is to ride so well, as to be able at full speed, and while suddenly turning about, to whirl them so steadily round the head, as to take aim: on foot any person would soon learn the art. One day, as I was amusing myself by galloping and whirling the balls round my head, by accident the free one struck a bush; and its revolving motion being thus destroyed, it immediately fell to the ground, and like magic caught one hind leg of my horse; the other ball was then jerked out of my hand, and the horse fairly secured. Luckily he was an old practised animal, and knew what it meant; otherwise he would probably have kicked till he had thrown himself down. The Gauchos roared with laughter; they cried they had seen every sort of animal caught, but had never before seen a man caught by himself.”

Charles Darwin book The Voyage of the Beagle

Source: The Voyage of the Beagle (1839), chapter III: "Montevideo — Maldonado, etc.", page 51 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=70&itemID=F11&viewtype=image

Art , Jerk , Laughter , Learning

“[Concerning the love La Fontaine felt for animals] He follows their emotions, he represents their reasonings, he becomes tender, he becomes gay, he participates in their feelings. The factis, he lived in them. […] The animals contain all the materials of man-sensations, judgments, images.”

Hippolyte Taine (1828–1893) French critic and historian

La Fontaine et ses Fables (1853–1861), Hachette, 1911, p. 166 and 107; as quoted in Matthieu Ricard, A Plea for the Animals, trans. Sherab Chödzin Kohn, Shambhala Publications, 2016, p. 102.

Love , Feeling , Animals

“If it’s anything that’s going to result in suffering to animals or people, then I don’t think [the end] justifies the means. … Yeah; but then again if you could hurt ten people to save 100 people and there was no option, what would you do? I can’t really address that.”

Ingrid Newkirk (1949) British-American activist

Satya, January, 2001 http://www.satyamag.com/jan01/newkirk.html.
On animal research and activism against it

People , Thinking , Suffering , Animals

“If a man abuses his spouse, do we ask him to stop, or do we throw our hands up in exasperation, saying that if he’s going to do it, he should at least not hit so damn hard? Similarly, if a person is going to eat meat, do we ask her to stop, or do we throw our hands up in exasperation, saying instead if one is going to eat meat, at least eat free-range? … Welfarism is accepting defeat before we’ve even begun the battle. It accepts as a premise, that genuine vegan and abolitionist outreach can’t be and aren’t effective enough … Veganism is living abolition in your daily life. Not only a consumptive practice, veganism is also an overt political act illustrating how the consumption and abuse of animals is unacceptable. Unlike welfarist measures, veganism is not at conflict with the ends of our movement: it is living what we want our world to be.”

Bob Torres American podcaster

"The Odd Logic of Welfarism" http://www.satyamag.com/sept06/torres.html, Satya magazine (September 2006).

Life , World , Animals , Personality

“[As a vegetarian] I feel better, I have more energy on and off the set, and I have the satisfaction of knowing that I’m doing something to help stop animal suffering.”

Maggie Q (1979) American actress

“Maggie Q’s Beautiful New Ads,” by PETA (29 September 2007) https://www.peta.org/blog/maggie-qs-beautiful-new-ads/.

Feeling , Suffering , Help , Animals

“It cannot be doubted, I think, that Mr. Darwin has satisfactorily proved that what he terms selection, or selective modification, must occur, and does occur, in nature; and he has also proved to superfluity that such selection is competent to produce forms as distinct, structurally, as some genera even are. If the animated world presented us with none but structural differences, I should have no hesitation in saying that Mr. Darwin has demonstrated the existence of a true physical cause, amply competent to account for the origin of living species, and of man among the rest.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

Source: 1860s, Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature (1863), Ch.2, p. 126

World , Nature , Thinking , Animals

“The animals laugh from the dark of the wilderness.”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground (2002)

Animals

“I should wish, however, to know what this reason is, through which we are more excellent than all the tribes of animals. Is it because we have made for ourselves houses, by which we can avoid the cold of winter and heat of summer? What! do not the other animals show forethought in this respect? … But if nature, which gave them life, had chosen to give to them also hands to help them, they too would, without doubt, raise lofty buildings and strike out new works of art. Yet, even in those things which they make with beaks and claws, we see that there are many appearances of reason and wisdom which we men are unable to copy, however much we ponder them, although we have hands to serve us dexterously in every kind of work.”

Arnobius (255–327) Christian apologist

Book II, § 17
Adversus Nationes

Life , Wisdom , Men , Art

“Up to eight feet long and as heavy as a lioness, the adult Komodo dragon brandishes steak-knifelike teeth - sharp, recurved blades with serrated cutting edges. Showing the same sagacity found in veteran Nile crocodiles, fully adult dragons know their hunting territory from years of experience. They know where to lie along hilly game trails, awaiting the light footsteps of a deer. Attacks are instant successes or failures because the ora has no stamina, and if it misses on the first short rush, it has little sustained speed for a long pursuit. When an attack succeeds, the cruel rows of slashing teeth cut fearful wounds on the rump and thigh of ambushed animals and the stricken prey may die of massive infection days later even if it manages to break free from the dragon's mouth. Tethered livestock suffer truly terrible cuts across the legs when an ora slinks into the compound under cover of the warm Indonesian nights. Several humans, both native and European visitors, have died in savage daylight attacks. The victims simply had no warning sign that the ora was waiting patiently a few feet from the trail's edge.”

Robert T. Bakker book The Dinosaur Heresies

The Dinosaur Heresies: A Revolutionary View of Dinosaurs (1986), Longman Scientific & Technical, p. 62-63
The Dinosaur Heresies (1986)

Lie , Fear , Game , Failure

“Really the best way to understand anything about dinosaurs is by looking at living animals. You look at birds and then look at the closest living ancestor of birds, which is the crocodile. If you look at characteristics that birds and crocodiles have in common, the explanation is that the trait was in the common ancestor that birds and crocodiles had at one time.”

Mark Norell (1957) American paleontologist

As quoted in "How Dinosaurs Loved: An Interview with Dr. Mark Norell on Dino Relations" http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/t-rexxx-how-dinosaurs-lived-loved-and-tasted-q-a-with-dr-mark-norell-american-museum-of-natural-history, Vice (March 20, 2012)

Way , Understanding , Bird , Time

“Man is head, chest and stomach. Each of these animals operates, more often than not, individually. I eat, I feel, I even, although rarely, think…. This jungle crawls and teems, is hungry, roars, gets angry, devours itself, and its cacophonic concert does not even stop when you are asleep.”

René Daumal (1908–1944) French poet and writer

Vol. 2, Essais et Notes
The Lie of the Truth (1938)

Feeling , Thinking , Animals

“When people ask me why I don’t eat meat or any other animal products, I say because they are unhealthy and they are the product of a violent and inhumane industry. Chickens, cows, and pigs in factory farms spend their whole lives in filthy, cramped conditions only to die a prolonged and painful death.”

Casey Affleck (1975) American actor

From a PETA video (6 February 2013) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSuLrvwLoLA, reported in "Casey Affleck’s ‘Go Vegan’ PSA", in peta2.com http://www.peta2.com/heroes/casey-afflecks-go-vegan-psa/.

Death , Pain , People , Animals

““It's been such a short visit, I haven't had time to make sense of why you have become so intense about the animal business.”
She watches the wipers wagging back and forth. “A better explanation,” she says, “is that I have not told you why, or dare not tell you. When I think of the words, they seem so outrageous that they are best spoken into a pillow or into a hole in the ground, like King Midas.”
“What is it you can't say?”
“It's that I no longer know where I am. I seem to move around perfectly easily among people, to have perfectly normal relations with them. Is it possible, I ask myself, that all of them are participants in a crime of stupefying proportions? Am I fantasizing it all? I must be mad! Yet every day I see the evidences. The very people I suspect produce the evidence, exhibit it, offer it to me. Corpses. Fragments of corpses that they have bought for money. It is as if I were to visit friends, and to make some polite remark about the lamp in their living room, and they were to say, ‘Yes, it's nice, isn't it? Polish-Jewish skin it's made of, we find that's best, the skins of young Polish-Jewish virgins.’ And then I go to the bathroom and the soap-wrapper says, ‘Treblinka— 100% human stearate.’ Am I dreaming, I say to myself?””

J.M. Coetzee book The Lives of Animals

Source: The Lives of Animals (1999), p. 69

Money , People , Dreams , Business

“To the extent that we accept this view, we effectively mistake ourselves for highly dimorphic animals such as peacocks or deer.”

Steve Stewart-Williams (1971)

Source: The Ape that Thought It Was a Peacock: Does Evolutionary Psychology Exaggerate Human Sex Differences? (2013), p. 153

Animals

“A religious spirit animates the infancy of our literature, and must continue to gloe in its maturity. The public taste calls for this quality, and would relish no work in which it might be supplanted by a principle of infidelity. Our best authors have written under the influence of Christian feeling; but had they been destitute of this sentiment, they would have found it necessary to accommodate themselves to the opinions of the people, and follow Christian precedents. The beneficent influence of religion on literature, is like that of our evening sun, when it awakens in the clouds those beautiful and burning tints, which clothe the firmament in gold and purple. It constitutes the heart of learning - the great source of its moral power. Religion addresses itself to the highest and holiest of our sentiments - benevolence and veneration, and their excitement stirs up the imagination, strengthens the undeerstanding, and purifies the taste. Thus, both in the mind of the author and the reader, Christianity and literature act and react on each other, with the effect of elevating both, and carrying the human character to the highest perfection which it is destined to reach. Learning should be proud of this companionship, and exert all her wisdom to render it perpetual.”

Daniel Drake (1785–1852) American physician and writer

Daniel Drake (1834). Discourse on the History, Character, and Prospects of the West: Delivered to the Union Literary Society of Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, at Their Ninth Anniversary, September 23, 1834. Truman and Smith. p. 31

Wisdom , People , Religion , Beauty

“Nothing can be more shocking and horrid than one of our kitchens sprinkled with blood, and abounding with the cries of expiring victims, or with the limbs of dead animals scattered or hung up here and there. It gives one the image of a giant's den in a romance, bestrewed with scattered heads and mangled limbs.”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

Spence's Anecdotes and The Guardian (21 May 1713); as quoted in The Ethics of Diet: A Catena of Authorities Deprecatory of the Practice of Flesh-eating https://archive.org/stream/ethicsofdietcate00will/ethicsofdietcate00will#page/n3/mode/2up by Howard Williams (London: F. Pitman, 1883), p. 132.

Animals , Dead

“My talents are not those of Kan Pao, elegant explorer of the records of the Gods; I am rather animated by the spirit of Su Tung-P'o, who loved to hear men speak of the supernatural. I get people to commit what they tell me to writing, and subsequently I dress it up in the form of a story; thus in the lapse of time my friends from all quarters have supplied me with quantities of material, which, from my habit of collecting, has grown into a vast pile.”

Pu Songling (1640–1715) Chinese writer

"Author's Own Record", trans. Herbert Allen Giles in Gems of Chinese Literature (1922), p. 235 Variant translation: With time And my love of hoarding, The matter sent me by friends From the four corners Has grown into a pile. "Author's Preface", lines 28–32, trans. John Minford in Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio (Penguin, 2006), pp. 30–31
/ Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio (1740)

Love , Men , Animals , People

“When I first began working with baboons, my main problem was learning to keep up with them while remaining alert to poisonous snakes, irascible buffalo, aggressive bees, and leg-breaking pig holes. Fortunately, these challenges eased over time, mainly because I was traveling in the company of expert guides—baboons who could spot a predator a mile away and seemed to possess a sixth sense for the proximity of snakes. Abandoning myself to their far superior knowledge, I moved as a humble disciple, learning from masters about being an African anthropoid. Thus I became (or, rather, regained my ancestral right to be) an animal, moving instinctively through a world that felt (because it was) like my ancient home.”

Barbara Smuts (1950) American anthropologist

Source: Reflections (1999), p. 109

World , Travel , Home , Knowledge

“On the Indian front, [the Hindutva movement] should spearhead the revival, rejuvenation and resurgence of Hinduism, which includes not only religious, spiritual and cultural practices springing from Vedic or Sanskritic sources, but from all other Indian sources independently of these: the practices of the Andaman islanders and the (pre-Christian) Nagas are as Hindu in the territorial sense, and Sanâtana in the spiritual sense, as classical Sanskritic Hinduism. (…) A true Hindutvavadi should feel a pang of pain, and a desire to take positive action, not only when he hears that the percentage of Hindus in the Indian population is falling due to a coordination of various factors, or that Hindus are being discriminated against in almost every respect, but also when he hears that the Andamanese races and languages are becoming extinct; that vast tracts of forests, millions of years old, are being wiped out forever; that ancient and mediaeval Hindu architectural monuments are being vandalised, looted or fatally neglected; that priceless ancient documents are being destroyed or left to rot and decay; that innumerable forms of arts and handicrafts, architectural styles, plant and animal species, musical forms and musical instruments, etc. are becoming extinct; that our sacred rivers and environment are being irreversibly polluted and destroyed…”

Shrikant Talageri (1958) Indian author

Talageri in S.R. Goel (ed.): Time for Stock-Taking, p.227-228.

Pain , Art , Music , Feeling

“It has got to the point in this country where men believe they are men, just because that is their birthright. If that is true, then, by the same logic, an animal held captive in a zoo is still a free wild beast.”

William Powell (author) book The Anarchist Cookbook

Source: The Anarchist Cookbook (1971), Chapter Three: "Natural, Nonlethal, and Lethal Weapons", p. 93.

Men , Animals , Country

“Every system of law is a system of education, and, in extending legal sanction to the scientific torture of animals, the State educates the nation in a false view of the relations of man to the lower creatures, encourages selfishness and cruelty and the disregard of the rights of the weak by the strong.”

Frances Power Cobbe (1822–1904) Irish writer, social reformer, anti-vivisection activist and leading suffragette

Source: The Modern Rack (1889), Ch. XV: Four Reasons for Total Prohibition of Vivisection, pp. 223-224

Education , Law , Strong , Animals

“[Walter even gave the tortoises a mock-biological name, Machina speculatrix] because they illustrate particularly the exploratory, speculative behaviour that is so characteristic of most animals.”

William Grey Walter (1910–1977) American-born British neuroscientist and roboticist

Source: An imitation of life (1950), p. 43 as cited in: Owen Holland (2003) " The ﬁrst biologically inspired robots http://robotics.cs.tamu.edu/dshell/cs689/papers/holland02first.pdf"

Animals

“…The fortress of Badalgarh, which lies below the fortress of Gwaliar, a very lofty structure, was taken from Rai Man Singh and fell into the hands of the Muslims, and a brazen animal which was worshipped by the Hindus also fell into their hands, and was sent by them to Agra, whence it was sent by Sultan Ibrahim to Dihli, and was put over the city gate. The image was removed to Fathpur in the year AH 992 (AD 1584), ten years before the composition of this history, where it was seen by the author of this work. It was converted into gongs, and bells, and implements of all kinds.”

`Abd al-Qadir Bada'uni book Muntakhab-ut-Tawarikh

Sultan Ibrahim Lodi (AD 1517-1526) Gwalior (Madhya Pradesh)
Muntakhab-ut-Tawarikh

History , Animals

“The desire to protect animals derives inevitably from better acquaintance with them, from the realization that they are sensitive and intelligent creatures, affectionate and seeking affection, powerless in a cruel and incomprehensible world, exposed to all the whims of the master species. According to the animal haters, those who are fond of animals are sick people. To me it seems just the other way around, that the love for animals is something more, not something less. As a rule, those who protect animals have for them the same feeling as for all the other defenseless or abused creatures: the battered or abandoned children, the sick, the inmates of penal or mental institutions, who are so often maltreated without a way of redress. And those who are fond of animals don't love them for their "animality" but for their "humanity" — their "human" qualities. By which I mean the qualities humans display when at their best, not at their worst. Man's love for the animal is, at any rate, always inferior in intensity and completeness to the love the animal has for the human being that has won its love. The human being is the elder brother, who has countless different preoccupations, activities and interests. But to the animal that loves a human being, this being is everything. That applies not only to the generous, impetuous dog, but also to the more reserved species, with which it is more difficult to establish a relationship without personal effort and plenty of patience.”

Hans Ruesch (1913–2007) Swiss racing driver

Source: Slaughter of the Innocent (1978), pp. 45-46

Love , Children , People , World

“Neither in any if the stars, nor in the sun, nor in the planets that are most operant in the world, can organs be disntinguished or imagined by us; nevertheless, they live and endow with life small bodies at the earth's elevated points. If there is aught of which man may boast, that of a surety is soul, is mind; and the other animals, too, are ennobled by soul; even God, by whose rod all things are governed, is soul.”

William Gilbert (astronomer) book De Magnete

As quoted in Gilbert, William. 2013 ed. De Magnete https://books.google.com.mx/books?id=QsLDAgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false. Courier Corporation, pp. 130-131.
De Magnete (1600)

Life , God , World , Soul

“I love what I've learned from my parents, and what I continue here – wandering, Sunday trips out of town, mindfulness with which you can look at plants and animals. I am not interested in that professionally and I have no ambition to classify flora and fauna, but I am enthusiastic about amateur love for nature. Light, air, clouds, landscapes only seem harsh. A lot of beauty can be found in this rawness.”

Tomasz Vetulani (1965) Polish artist

Tomasz Vetulani o Holandii, niskim kraju http://www.nto.pl/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110605/REPORTAZ01/762330357, nto.pl, 5 June 2011 (in Polish)

Love , Beauty , Nature , Parent

“My mom was always my biggest teacher, my inspiration, my role model. My mom was just the most amazing person. She was like a bon vivant in that she just lived each day to the fullest. As soon as I became a vegetarian, she became a vegetarian. … I was actually inspired by a book she was reading that I picked up off the nightstand when I was about 13. It was a Norman Mailer book [Miami and the Siege of Chicago] and it had a very graphic scene of the slaughterhouses in Chicago. So I read that and I said, "I love animals. I don't want to be a part of that system."”

Christie Brinkley (1954) American model

“Christie Brinkley on Skin Care and the Secret to Staying Young”, interview with Elle (5 March 2015) http://www.elle.com/beauty/makeup-skin-care/news/a27143/christie-brinkley-on-skincare-and-the-secret-to-staying-young/.

Love , Books , Moms , Teachers

“In the world of action, we know that it is disastrous to treat animals or human beings as though they were stocks and stones. Why should we suppose this treatment to be any less mistaken in the world of ideas?”

Max Horkheimer book Eclipse of Reason

Source: Eclipse of Reason (1947), p. 21.

World , Idea , Animals

Quotes about animal page 22

Quotes about animal
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