Quotes about animal (3130 quotes, page 31)

“[I]f suffering is bad for animals when we cause it, it is also bad for them when other animals cause it. That suffering is bad for those who experience it is not a human prejudice; nor is an effort to prevent wild animals from suffering a moralistic attempt to police the behavior of other animals. Even if we are not morally required to prevent suffering among animals in the wild for which we are not responsible, we do have a moral reason to prevent it, just as we have a general moral reason to prevent suffering among human beings that is independent both of the cause of the suffering and of our relation to the victims. The main constraint on the permissibility of acting on our reason to prevent suffering is that our action should not cause bad effects that would be worse than those we could prevent.”

Jeff McMahan (philosopher) (1954) American philosopher

" The Meat Eaters http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/the-meat-eaters/", The New York Times, 19 Sept. 2010

Bad luck , Suffering , Animals , Relation ships

“Viewed from a distance, the natural world often presents a vista of sublime, majestic placidity. Yet beneath the foliage and hidden from the distant eye, a vast, unceasing slaughter rages. Wherever there is animal life, predators are stalking, chasing, capturing, killing, and devouring their prey. Agonized suffering and violent death are ubiquitous and continuous.”

Jeff McMahan (philosopher) (1954) American philosopher

" The Meat Eaters http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/the-meat-eaters/", The New York Times, 19 Sept. 2010

Suffering , Nature , Animals , Distant

“The relationship between a woman and a man is built on the basis of mutual respect .. The woman is not required to bury herself in life because the man is unable to control his instincts like animals .. The woman raises the man's face, hair, height, width, smell, and even the voice of her is roughened, but the woman has learned to control her instincts. The man is also required to rise to the level of the woman.”

Habib Bourguiba (1903–2000) Tunisian politician

Animals , Life , Learning

“At first sight, domesticated animals may seem much better off than their wild cousins and ancestors. Wild buffaloes spend their days searching for food, water and shelter, and are constantly threatened by lions, parasites, floods and droughts. Domesticated cattle, by contrast, enjoy care and protection from humans. People provide cows and calves with food, water and shelter, they treat their diseases, and protect them from predators and natural disasters. True, most cows and calves sooner or later find themselves in the slaughterhouse. Yet does that make their fate any worse than that of wild buffaloes? Is it better to be devoured by a lion than slaughtered by a man? Are crocodile teeth kinder than steel blades?”

Yuval Noah Harari (1976) Israeli historian

" Industrial farming is one of the worst crimes in history https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/sep/25/industrial-farming-one-worst-crimes-history-ethical-question", The Guardian, 25 Sept. 2011

Food , Fate , Search , People

“1. We are morally obligated to alleviate unjustified animal suffering that it is in our power to prevent without occasioning as much or more unjustified suffering.
2. Innocent animals suffer when they are preyed upon by other animals.
3. Therefore, we are morally obligated to prevent predation whenever we can do so without occasioning as much or more unjustified suffering than the predation would create, and we are also morally obligated to attempt to expand the number of such cases.”

Steve F. Sapontzis (1945)

"Saving the Rabbit from the Fox", p. 247
Morals, Reason, and Animals (1987)

Animals , Suffering

“Aristotle thought that men were naturally superior to women and Greeks naturally superior to other races; Victorians thought white men had to shoulder the burden of being superior to savages; and Nazis thought Aryans were a master race. We have come to reject these and many other supposedly natural hierarchies; the history of what we consider moral progress can be viewed as, in large part, the replacement of hierarchical worldviews with a presumption in favor of forms of egalitarianism. This substitution places the burden of proof on those who would deny equal consideration to the interests of all concerned, rather than on those who seek such consideration. Consequently, some reason is needed to justify the fairness of maintaining a hierarchical worldview when we are dealing with animals.”

Steve F. Sapontzis (1945)

Source: Morals, Reason, and Animals (1987), p. 107

History , Nature , Women , Animals

“When healthy animals, whose prospects include the possibility of lives that are worth living, are killed, then they suffer the loss of those prospects, even if they do not suffer pain or anxiety in the killing process. So, the mass killing or "slaughter" of animals for food always involves mass suffering. If the phrase "humane slaughter" is supposed to indicate a killing process without suffering, it is a false label.”

Steve F. Sapontzis (1945)

" Morals, Reason and Animals: Steve Sapontzis Interviewed by Claudette Vaughan https://web.archive.org/web/20100114161007/http:/www.abolitionist-online.com/08_steve_sapontzis.shtml", Abolitionist Online (2009)

Loss , Pain , Food , Suffering

“On the other hand, refusing to accept and affirm, avoidable suffering, unfair distributions of goods, uninhibited aggression, and so forth, are refusals which have long been and continue to be part of everyday morality. As such, they are a well-established part of life as it is. Animal liberation extends such concerns, which have traditionally been focused on the human world and on human life, to include equal consideration for animals. In this way, animal liberation is simply carrying on the business of everyday moral practice. Therefore, it does not loathe or deny life as it is. Rather, unlike Callicott's proposed retreat to the wilderness, animal liberation is participating in life and, hopefully, in its continuing moral evolution.”

Steve F. Sapontzis (1945)

Steve Sapontzis, " Article Review of Animal Liberation: A Triangular Affair https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1244&context=ethicsandanimals", Ethics and Animals, Vol. 5, Iss. 4 (1984), p. 120

Business , Suffering , Animals , World

“Where we can prevent predation without occasioning as much or more suffering than we would prevent, we are obligated to do so by the principle that we are obligated to alleviate avoidable animal suffering. Where we cannot prevent or cannot do so without occasioning as much or more suffering than we would prevent, that principle does not obligate us to attempt to prevent predation.”

Steve F. Sapontzis (1945)

Steve Sapontzis, " Predation https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1220&context=ethicsandanimals", Ethics and Animals, Vol. 5, Iss. 2, Art. 4 (1984), p. 36

Animals , Suffering

“Winning is everything, but the trick is to know where the winning really is.... We're political animals, Ibram. Through us, if we do our job properly, the black and white of war is tempered. We are the interpreters of combat, the translators. We give meaning to war, subtlety, purpose even. Killing is the most abhorrent, mindless profession known to man. Our role is to fashion the killing machine of the human species into a positive force. For the Emperor's sake. For the sake of our own consciences.”

Dan Abnett (1965) British comic book writer, novelist

Commissar-General Delane Oktar:
Warhammer 40,000 Works, Gaunt's Ghosts (novel series), First & Only

Animals , War , Fashion

“Few people seem to perceive fully as yet that the most far-reaching consequence of the establishment of the common origin of all species is ethical; that it logically involved a readjustment of altruistic morals, by enlarging, as a necessity of rightness, the application of what has been called the 'Golden Rule' from the area of mere mankind to that of the whole animal kingdom. Possibly Darwin himself did not quite perceive it. While man was deemed to be a creation apart from all other creations, a secondary or tertiary morality was considered good enough to practise towards the 'inferior' races; but no person who reasons nowadays can escape the trying conclusion that this is not maintainable. And though we may not at present see how the principle of equal justice all round is to be carried out in it entirety, I recognize that the League is grappling with the question.”

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) English novelist and poet

Letter to the Humanitarian League (1910)

Justice , Question , Personality , People

“By this time, the era of cut-and-run economics ought to be finished. Such an economy cannot be rationally defended or even apologized for. The proofs of its immense folly, heartlessness, and destructiveness are everywhere. Its failure as a way of dealing with the natural world and human society can no longer be sanely denied. That this economic system persists and grows larger and stronger in spite of its evident failure has nothing to do with rationality or, for that matter, with evidence. It persists because, embodied now in multinational corporations, it has discovered a terrifying truth: If you can control a people’s economy, you don’t need to worry about its politics; its politics have become irrelevant. If you control people’s choices as to whether or not they will work, and where they will work, and what they will do, and how well they will do it, and what they will eat and wear, and the genetic makeup of their crops and animals, and what they will do for amusement, then why should you worry about freedom of speech? In a totalitarian economy, any "political liberties" that the people might retain would simply cease to matter. If, as is often the case already, nobody can be elected who is not wealthy, and if nobody can be wealthy without dependence on the corporate economy, then what is your vote worth? The citizen thus becomes an economic subject.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

"Conserving Forest Communities"
Another Turn of the Crank (1996)

Time , Dependency , Freedom , People

“Whether France or Italy or Germany or England has made the greatest contribution in the history of modern civilisation—however that speculative controversy may be settled, this at least is certain, that those are not wrong who hold that Germany's high and strict standard of competency, the purity and vigour of her administration of affairs, her splendid efforts and great success in all branches of science, her glories—for glories they are—in art and literature, and the fixed strength of character and duty in the German people entitle her national ideals to a supreme place among the greatest-ideals that now animate and guide the world. Do not let us forget all that. German ambition is a perfectly intelligible and even lofty ambition.”

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) British Liberal statesman, writer and newspaper editor

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1911/nov/28/morocco#column_384 in the House of Lords during the Agadir Crisis (28 November 1911)
1910s

History , Success , Forgetting , Intelligence

“I remember the birds and the animals and going down to the river with my dog to play…My grandparents and uncles who farmed in Puerto de Luna were so beautiful, I wanted to keep them around, to contain them.”

Rudolfo Anaya (1937) Novelist, poet

On his childhood in “Rudolfo Anaya: Man of visions” https://www.abqjournal.com/1074636/man-of.html in Albuquerque Journal (2017 Oct 7)

Animals , Bird , Dogs , Beauty

“It is our disregard for nature and our disrespect of the animals we should share the planet with that has caused this pandemic, that was predicted long ago.”

Jane Goodall (1934) British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist

" Jane Goodall says 'disrespect for animals' caused pandemic https://news.yahoo.com/jane-goodall-says-disrespect-animals-caused-pandemic-091036641.html", Yahoo News, April 11, 2020.

Animals , Nature

“Human exploitation of animals is horrific and needs to be stamped out, but we should consider taking action against another considerable source of pain and suffering for wild animals — nature itself.”

Jacy Reese (1992) American social scientist

[Wild animals endure illness, injury, and starvation. We should help., December 14, 2015, Vox, https://www.vox.com/2015/12/14/9873012/wild-animals-suffering]

Animals , Pain , Suffering , Nature

“Many years from now, our descendants will look back on the use of animals for food—particularly the intense animal suffering in factory farms—as a moral atrocity.”

Jacy Reese (1992) American social scientist

[Why It's Time to End Factory Farming, October 20, 2018, Quillette, https://quillette.com/2018/10/20/why-its-time-to-end-factory-farming/]

Animals , Suffering , Food

“The vast majority of people eat animal products not because of how they’re produced, but in spite of it.”

Jacy Reese (1992) American social scientist

The End of Animal Farming: How Scientists, Entrepreneurs, and Activists Are Building an Animal-Free Food System (2018)

Animals , People

“A big reason for optimism about the end of animal farming is that it doesn't have to be the end of meat.”

Jacy Reese (1992) American social scientist

The End of Animal Farming: How Scientists, Entrepreneurs, and Activists Are Building an Animal-Free Food System (2018)

Animals , Optimism

“Should I say, that the river (in this place) from shore to shore, and perhaps near half a mile above and below me, appeared to be one solid bank of fish, of various kinds, pushing through this narrow pass of San Juan's into the little lake, on their return down the river, and that the alligators were in such incredible numbers, and so close from shore to shore, that it would have easy to have walked across on their heads, had the animals been harmless? What expressions can sufficiently declare the shocking scene that for some minutes continued, whilst this mighty army of fish were forcing the pass? During this attempt, thousands, I may say hundreds of thousands, of them were caught and swallowed by the devouring alligators. I have seen an alligator take up out of the water several great fish at a time, and just squeeze them betwixt his jaws, while the tails of the great trout flapped about his eyes and lips, ere he had swallowed them. The horrid noise of their closing jaws, their plunging amidst the broken banks of fish, and rising with their prey some feet upright above the water, the floods of water and blood rushing out of their mouths, and the clouds of vapor issuing from their wide nostrils, were truly frightful.”

William Bartram (1739–1823) American naturalist

[Van Doren, Mark, The travels of William Bartram, An American Bookshelf, volume 3, 118–119, 1928, New York, Macy-Masius, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$b281934&view=1up&seq=124]
Travels of William Bartram (1791)

Time , Animals , Water , Appearance

“...man is the animal that moralizes. Man is also the animal that complains about being one, and says that there is an animal, a beast inside him — that he is brother to dragons.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

He is certainly a brother to wolves, and to pandas too, but he is father to dragons, not brother: they, like many gods and devils, are inventions of his.

“On the Underside of the Stone”, p. 177
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

Animals

“The science of inoculation is purely physical in origin, and concerns only the animal body. This latter science will shortly be superseded by a higher technique, but the time is not yet.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: A Treatise on the Seven Rays: Volume 4: Esoteric Healing (1953), Vaccines, p. 322/4

Animals , Science , Time

“I found for me personally the easiest way to think about things [in the transition to veganism] was to not actually think about the products I was boycotting as food, but for what they actually were—for instance, the flesh of an animal or the embryo of a chicken.”

Jona Weinhofen (1983) Australian singer

"Bring Me The Horizon’s Vegan Warrior" https://www.peta2.com/news/jona-weinhofen-vegan-peta2-ad/, interview with PETA (11 November 2011).

Food , Personality , Animals , Thinking

“It is these very conditions that facilitate the emergence of new infectious diseases and that also inflict horrific harms on animals — being kept in confined conditions and then butchered. Simply put, the coronavirus pandemic is a result of our gross maltreatment of animals.”

David Benatar (1966) South African philosopher

"Our Cruel Treatment of Animals Led to the Coronavirus" https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/13/opinion/animal-cruelty-coronavirus.html, The New York Times, April 13, 2020.

Animals , Disease

“Much more seriously, in those traditional eco-systems that we chose to retain, millions of non-human animals will continue periodically to starve, die horribly of thirst and disease, or even get eaten alive. This is commonly viewed as "natural" and hence basically OK. It would indeed be comforting to think that in some sense this ongoing animal holocaust doesn't matter too much. We often find it convenient to act as though the capacity to suffer were somehow inseparably bound up with linguistic ability or ratiocinative prowess. Yet there is absolutely no evidence that this is the case, and a great deal that it isn't.”

David Pearce (philosopher) (1959) British transhumanist

1.9 The Taste of Depravity https://www.hedweb.com/hedethic/hedon1.htm#taste
The Hedonistic Imperative https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/514875 (1995)

Suffering , Nature , Animals , Thinking

“From the point of view of the moralist the animal world is on about the same level as a gladiator's show. The creatures are fairly well treated, and set to fight—whereby the strongest, the swiftest and the cunningest live to fight another day. The spectator has no need to turn his thumbs down, as no quarter is given.”

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

[The Struggle for Existence: A Programme, The Nineteenth Century, 23, February 1888, 161–180, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.a0012287587&view=1up&seq=173] (quote from p. 163)
1880s

Fight , Animals , World

“Why are there so many kinds of animals? Adaptive radiations like Darwin’s finches are the essence of the answer.”

Jonathan Weiner (1953) American nonfiction writer

Source: The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time (1994), Chapter 14, New Beings (p. 207)

Animals

“I dreamed I was an animal
In a human world;
Now when I hear big sounds
I cry like a little girl. I'm talking about connections
Between here and there;
All things exist at once
Seems more than we can bear.”

Happy Rhodes (1965) American singer-songwriter

"All Things (Mia ia io)" - Live performance at The Tin Angel, Philadelphia, PA (15 March 1997) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eACEYTQkoLA
Warpaint (1991)

Girl , Dreams , Animals , Cry

“And on the basis of criteria of this kind tribals were hacked off from Hindu society. One has but to read the descriptions of Animism which were relied upon to notice that they could well be describing a variety of Hindus.”

Arun Shourie book Missionaries in India

Source: Missionaries in India, 1994

Animals , Reading

“Those whose minds are merged in Samadhi, are not deluded by the external jugglery. They are quite fearless. Siddhas (God realized souls) are not afraid of the world. A tiger or a cobra, when they see such a person, become calm, forgetting their ferocity. Similarly, all animals become calm at their sight. Even enemies forget their enmity and become friendly. As soon as they see a sadhu, they become stone-still. What is the cause of this? It is because of their doubting nature. At the sight of a sadhu, there is no darkness. Mind gets purified, realizing the Satwa quality.”

Bhagawan Nityananda (1897–1961) Hindu guru and saint

280
The Chidakasha Gita (1927)

Soul , God , Forgetting , Personality

“There can be no full or even adequate understanding of the systemic problems of capitalist society, of the origins and dynamics of hierarchy, and of a future rational, autonomous, ethical, and ecological society until we address the 10,000-year legacy of speciesism and the barbaric exploitation of other animals.”

Steven Best (1955) American activist

Source: The Politics of Total Liberation: Revolution for the 21st Century (2014), Chapter 5 "Minding the Animals: Cognitive Ethology and the Obsolescence of Left Humanism" (p. 135)

Animals , Problem , Future , Understanding

“Attacking the new slave economy as it does, the animal liberation movement is a significant threat to global capital. Animal liberation challenges large sectors of the capitalist economy by assailing corporate agriculture and pharmaceutical giants and their suppliers. Far from being irrelevant to social movements, animal rights can form the basis for a broad coalition of progressive social groups and drive changes that strike at the heart of capitalist exploitation of animals, people, and the earth.”

Steven Best (1955) American activist

Source: The Politics of Total Liberation: Revolution for the 21st Century (2014), Chapter 4 "Rethinking Revolution: Veganism, Animal Liberation, Ecology, and the Left" (p. 103)

Animals , People , Heart , Change

“I don’t think most Americans realize that the way we raise animals is such a betrayal of the heritage of our grandparents. I don’t think they realize that … these big companies like Smithfield and Cargill and others have our American farmers now living like sharecroppers in constant debt, forced to follow their rules. I’ve watched the suffering in North Carolina of minority communities who live around Cafos and can no longer breathe their air … and I’ve seen workers in the meatpacking plants and how dangerous those plants are. Everybody is losing in this system – except for the massive corporations that have taken over the American food system.”

Cory Booker (1969) 35th Class 2 senator for New Jersey in U.S. Congress

'A savagely broken food system': Cory Booker wants radical reform ... now https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/15/a-savagely-broken-food-system-cory-booker-wants-radical-reform-now. The Guardian, September, 15 2020
2020

Betrayal , Food , Suffering , Communication

“However, efilism's claim that all life, human and non-human, should be ceased is a hubris I am not convinced humans have a right to exert. While the cessation of suffering humans cause is already manipulated in a way that could come under an efilist rubric, these 'management' tools usually come in the form of culling populations of nonhumans to redress an imagined environmental balance most usually caused by humans in the first place. Domestic efilism such a neutering rescue animals is necessary, especially when rescuing can involve the speciesism of feeding one slaughtered animal to sustain another, and neutering humans is the logical way to prevent the perpetuation of this practice as well”

Patricia MacCormack Australian Scholar

Embracing Death, p. 153
The Ahuman Manifesto: Activism for the End of the Anthropocene (2020)

Imagination , Suffering , Animals , Way

“The Church of Euthanasia has as its four stations of the cross sodomy, suicide, abortion and cannibalism. In their activism towards the end of human life on the planet, their posthumanism interestingly resonates with human minoritarian activism. Roughly, these correlate as sodomy with queer (where sodomy is defined as any non-reproductive sexual act, including masturbation, asexuality and heterosexual intercourse with no intention of procreation), abortion with female/feminist sexuate rights, cannibalism with animal rights, where human carcasses are used as a source of food instead of murdering animals, and suicide with agency over one's own life and thus death, including euthanasia with disability rights in reference to the right to die versus the enforcement of life on those who express a wish to die but cannot execute their own death. It shouldn't need to be pointed out that neither group advocates murder or eugenics (however ironically that may sit considering the murder advocated by sanctioned capital and war machines). These are two of the longest established of now many groups advocating human extinction.”

Patricia MacCormack Australian Scholar

Embracing Death, pp. 143-144
The Ahuman Manifesto: Activism for the End of the Anthropocene (2020)

Life , Food , War , Animals

“Human exceptionalism is using the Earth, exhausting the Earth, treating the Earth as if the Earth is for us as a resource. We don't act as if we are part of the Earth. And nonhuman animals are beneath us in this schema. And then certain animals are more valid than others. And our measure is based on the equivalence to us rather than on the fact that they are on the Earth … and then within human, we have a similar hierarchy, where white, heterosexual, usually rich men are at the top and then arguably, you know, the rest of us.”

Patricia MacCormack Australian Scholar

Why this professor's climate-crisis solution is rankling Twitter: 'The worst thing you can do is have a child' https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/why-professor-climate-crisis-solution-rankling-twitter-155305526.html (13 February 2020) Yahoo!Life

Animals , Parting , Men

“Not only does having a child really increase your carbon footprint, but we are living on an earth where there are a lot of organisms — human, non-human — that are in desperate need of care. And so, for me, if people want to care for children, for animals, whatever, there are cries for care everywhere. I’m asking us to reflect on this idea that we need to reproduce.”

Patricia MacCormack Australian Scholar

Why this professor's climate-crisis solution is rankling Twitter: 'The worst thing you can do is have a child' https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/why-professor-climate-crisis-solution-rankling-twitter-155305526.html (13 February 2020) Yahoo!Life

Animals , Idea , Children , People

“When business executives are making the artistic decisions and don't understand animation, things can go awry. Now they call in all of the authority figures they can find and hire them – the cost has gone up. The picture may or may not get better, but definitely, it gets more cumbersome. It's like trying to turn around an army of tanks, instead of being able to move lightly on your feet or being able to listen to what's going on inside of you – because that's what's telling you what to do. It gets bogged down.”

Don Bluth (1937) American animator

Interview with Don Bluth https://www.ign.com/articles/2000/06/13/interview-with-don-bluth-part-1-of-3 (June 13, 2000)

Understanding , Business , Animals , Decision

“My whole goal, besides trying to get more production value back into animation, was really to provide an environment like there was at Disney at one time, where you felt secure as an artist, filmmaker, contributor, animator. You could plan your life, have a place to raise your family, have a home and not worry about living like a gypsy. Personally, I can say I've been in the business for 28 years and have never been unemployed...though sometimes not paid. We've done our best to try to take care of our people. We've done our best to try to make good stories. How many people have gone out and hired sometimes over 500 people and come up with over $450,000 a week in salaries and still tried to create a quality product? It's not an easy thing to do...but it gives a great feeling of accomplishment.”

Gary Goldman (1944) American film director and producer

A Chat With Don Bluth And Gary Goldman https://www.awn.com/animationworld/chat-don-bluth-and-gary-goldman-part-i (June 1, 2000)

Family , Home , Time , Business

“God just put a love for it inside of me, I love telling stories, drawing and painting. Animation is a fairly solitary art form. But what happens when you sit in a theater with an audience and you hear their audible responses to your work—the crying, the laughter—there is nothing like it. I just love storytelling. I am a ham actor with a pencil. I love performing on canvas or on paper or right now on a digital screen.”

John Pomeroy (1951) animator

Animation professor returns to roots as illustrator of Disney biography https://www.lipscomb.edu/now/animation-professor-returns-roots-illustrator-disney-biography (May 8, 2019)

God , Drawing , Painting , Art

“Showing characters is where 3-D animation comes up short. It's hard to create lifelike figures that move in a realistic, believable manner-unless you're going to go into "dummy dolls."”

Rick Dyer (video game designer) American video game designer and writer

But when you take 3-D animation and put it into a first-person perspective and create a fly-through environment-well, that is where it shines. So what we're doing is using both mediums for their respective strengths.
Technician of Suspended Disbelief: Rick Dyer, Shadoan and the Frontier of Animated CD Entertainment https://www.awn.com/mag/issue1.1/articles/dyer.html (1996)

Animals

“Democracy for most of us is not an ism. It is a way of life. It does not represent any rigid form of state or national organization. It is something constantly developing and unfolding, changing from day to day, making mistakes, advancing in this direction and retreating in that, but always animated by a few fundamental ideas: that men have a right to live their own lives, provided they don’t tread too heavily on other people’s toes;…”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

Dorothy Thompson’s Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
Source: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
p. 31

Democracy , People , Animals , Way

“What we need to think about perhaps for Mission Blue is increasing the biologging capacity. How is it that we can actually take this type of activity elsewhere? And then finally -- to basically get the message home -- maybe use live links from animals such as blue whales and white sharks. Make killer apps, if you will. A lot of people are excited when sharks actually went under the Golden Gate Bridge. Let's connect the public to this activity right on their iPhone. That way we do away with a few internet myths. So we can save the bluefin tuna. We can save the white shark. We have the science and technology. Hope is here. Yes we can. We need just to apply this capacity further in the oceans.”

Barbara Block (1958) American marine biologist

Source: Tagging tuna in the deep ocean https://www.ted.com/talks/barbara_block_tagging_tuna_in_the_deep_ocean (April 2010)

Home , Hope , People , Animals

“If you intrust independent executive and legislative power to the Government of Ireland, can you say it will never be hostile? On the contrary...you know that a very considerable proportion of the population of Ireland is unfortunately at this time, and has been for generations past, animated with the most bitter sentiments against England. Well, is there any impediment to prevent them in case of some European war, where you might be fighting for your existence, is there anything to prevent the Government of an independent Ireland...from placing those splendid harbours which lie opposite you at the disposal of a foreign fleet?”

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

Source: Speech in Bristol (22 April 1889), quoted in The Times (24 April 1889), p. 6

Time , Hostility , War , Past

“It is obvious, that the people of England are at this moment animated against each other, with a spirit of hatred and rancour. It behoves you, in the first place, to find a remedy for these distempers which at present are predominant in the civil constitution.”

Robert Walpole (1676–1745) British statesman

Source: Speech https://historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1690-1715/member/walpole-robert-ii-1676-1745 in the House of Commons (10 January 1711)

Animals , People

“Who will find peace with the lands? The future of humankind lies waiting for those who will come to understand their lives and take up their responsibilities to all living things. Who will listen to the trees, the animals and birds, the voices of the places of the land? As the long forgotten peoples of the respective continents rise and begin to reclaim their ancient heritage, they will discover the meaning of the lands of their ancestors. That is when the invaders of the North American continent will finally discover that for this land, God is red.”

Vine Deloria Jr. (1933–2005) American writer

pg. ix
God Is Red (1973)

God , Peace , Tree , Waiting

“Journalism is just very structured…One day I turned in a story and [an editor] said to me, ‘You can’t compare inanimate objects with animate objects,’ and I realized I had to leave.”

Thanhha Lai (1965) American children's writer

On why she left journalism in “How former Register reporter Thanhha Lai turned childhood rage into a National Book Award” https://www.orangecoast.com/features/ha/ in Orange Coast Magazine (2012 Feb 11)

Animals

“The Vegetarians may confidently reckon that the new perfect man will not kill and devour other animals, nay, will not kill and devour vegetables, if it is cruel and wrong to do so. Should he after serious moral reflection conclude that vegetable life is as sacred as animal, he will doubtless be clever enough to derive plenty of wholesome food from the mineral kingdom; and should he deem it wrong to ravage even this for so vulgar a purpose as filling his belly, he will doubtless be able to nourish himself without devouring anything at all.”

James Thomson (B.V.) (1834–1882) Scottish writer (1834-1882)

"The Speedy Extinction of Evil and Misery", part V, pp. 79–80
Essays and Phantasies (1881)

Confidence , Food , Animals , Perfection

“The ignorant creature knows nothing of the wise doctrines of Malthus, but spawns forth as many children of all sorts as ever she can, without the least prudential restraint. She has consequently far more than she can properly feed and rear; so that a large part perishes in infancy (and we are told that none of these except the human sucklings will rise to another life; poor bereaved monkey and donkey mothers, for instance, being altogether without the precious consolations of immortality); a considerable part is eaten up by mankind and other hungry animals, and the remainder can seldom get food enough.”

James Thomson (B.V.) (1834–1882) Scottish writer (1834-1882)

"The Speedy Extinction of Evil and Misery", part II, p. 60
Essays and Phantasies (1881)

Food , Children , Animals , Life

“The animals [nature] brings forth (not to speak of the plants and the minerals) are in many cases ugly, unamiable, ferocious, and tormented with monstrous appetites, which can only be satisfied by devouring their fellow-creatures; nearly all of them are quite selfish and immoral; and the few of them that are philanthropic (such as surly old lions, tigers, wolves, sharks, vultures and other sweet carrion fowl; all genuine lovers of man) are almost as disagreeably so as our human philanthropists themselves.”

James Thomson (B.V.) (1834–1882) Scottish writer (1834-1882)

"The Speedy Extinction of Evil and Misery", part II, p. 60
Essays and Phantasies (1881)

Animals , Selfishness , Nature , Lovers

“We have to face the fact that we are the descendants of apelike ancestors. The truth, at first sight, is often ugly and repulsive to our personal feelings, but when it is the truth, its ultimate effects on us are always salutary. ...
... Man's brain does not stand as a thing apart; it is the culmination of an ascending series. There is no part of it and no function manifested by it that cannot be traced to humble beginnings lower in the animal scale. And what we postulate for man's brain we must in all justice apply to that of the ape, the dog, and all other beasts.”

Arthur Keith (1866–1955) anatomy, anthropology, geologist

[Chapter X, Living Philosophies, 149, 1931, Simon & Schuster]

Justice , Personality , Dogs , Animals

“A carnivorous animal is not an ideal animal, and never can be. The life of a carnivorous animal is a perpetual onslaught. Every meal is a murder. Eating is not the harmless activity it is to one who sits down to fruit and grains. The carnivore must kill somebody, or have somebody else do it for him, in order to eat. It cannot be otherwise. And an animal whose life is one unbroken succession of such necessities, whose stomach is the grave of hundreds and thousands, and even of tens of thousands, of his fellow-beings, may be meritorious in other respects — may preach the Golden Rule, decry war, give money to the missionary, and rail at the rich — but so long as he continues to fill himself every few hours with the blood and vitals of others, he is not only not an ideal animal, but has in reality no just claims on life. Flesh is a painful form of nutrition for any organism, but it is especially so for man, because it is unnecessary, and because man makes so many pretensions and occupies a position in the world of such exceptional responsibility.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: The New Ethics (1907), The Food of the Future, pp. 131–132

Money , Pain , Success , War

“The carnivorous life is denounced by the tenderer and more enlightened elements of mankind, and so those under indictment begin to rake and scrape to see what they can turn up in vindication of their beloved and imperilled rapacities. They find, happily, that Nature is 'red in tooth and claw,' that man has 'canine teeth,' and that human beings are without the five stomachs of the ruminantia. Of course, man is a carnivorous animal; couldn't be anything else if he wanted to be; would probably peter out if he attempted it; and it is not necessary to try to be anything else, anyway, if he could be, for he is in harmony with the all-wise and perfectly lovely regime of bloody Nature already. Mighty slim pegs on which to suspend a life of crime, considering that their substance is purely imaginary! But sufficient for those who have made up their minds beforehand to be satisfied with whatever there is.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: The New Ethics (1907), Is Man a Plant-Eater?, pp. 111–112

Nature , Animals , Love , Life

“[S]ince vegetal fat is identical chemically with animal fat, and vegetal protein with animal protein, since these substances are found abundantly in non-flesh products, and since the only other food substances used by man (starch and sugar) are not found except in plants and plant products, it may be asserted positively that from the standpoint of food-supply there is no reason why man should prey when he eats. The plant world contains all of the compounds necessary for human alimentation, it contains them abundantly, it contains them in forms of the highest delicacy and the greatest variety and economy, and it contains them in a much more prime condition than they are found in the diseased tissues of our mistreated servants.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: The New Ethics (1907), What Shall We Eat?, pp. 92–93

World , Animals , Disease , Food

“If one is born a political animal, it is most uncomfortable not to belong to a political party; cold and lonely and futile it is.”

John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) British economist

Am I a Liberal? (1925)

Animals

“Social scientists … have begun to think that “social animal” means “harmoniously belonging.””

Paul Goodman book Growing Up Absurd

They do not like to think that fighting and dissenting are proper social functions, nor that rebelling or initiating fundamental change is a social function. Rather, if something does not run smoothly, they say it has been improperly socialized; there has been a failure in communication. … But perhaps there has not been a failure in communication. Perhaps the social message has been communicated clearly to the young men and is unacceptable. … We must ask the question, “Is the harmonious organization to which the young are inadequately socialized perhaps against human nature, or not worthy of human nature, and therefore there is difficulty in growing up?”
Source: Growing Up Absurd (1956), pp. 10-11.

Animals , Thinking

“And then there are unthinking, animal types who seem to be satisfied with a purely physical sense of power”

Theodore Kaczynski book Industrial Society and Its Future

the good combat soldier, who gets his sense of power by developing fighting skills that he is quite content to use in blind obedience to his superiors
"Autonomy", paragraph 43
Industrial Society and Its Future (1995)

Animals , Sense

“I don’t use the word 'pet.' I think it’s speciesist language. I prefer 'companion animal.”

Ingrid Newkirk (1949) British-American activist

For one thing, we would no longer allow breeding. People could not create different breeds. There would be no pet shops. If people had companion animals in their homes, those animals would have to be refugees from the animal shelters and the streets. You would have a protective relationship with them just as you would with an orphaned child. But as the surplus of cats and dogs (artificially engineered by centuries of forced breeding) declined, eventually companion animals would be phased out, and we would return to a more symbiotic relationship — enjoyment at a distance.
The Harper's Forum Book, Jack Hitt, ed., 1989, p. 223.
1980s

Animals , Thinking

“One common strategy on which we should all be able to agree is to take steps to reduce the risk of human extinction when those steps are also highly effective in benefiting existing sentient beings. For example, eliminating or decreasing the consumption of animal products will benefit animals, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and lessen the chances of a pandemic resulting from a virus evolving among the animals crowded into today’s factory farms, which are an ideal breeding ground for viruses. That therefore looks like a high-priority strategy.”

Peter Singer book The Most Good You Can Do

Source: The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism Is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically (2015), Chapter 15: Preventing Human Extinction (p. 177)

Animals , Chance

“Art is contemplation. It is the pleasure of the mind which searches into nature and which there divines the spirit by which Nature herself is animated. It is the joy of the intellect which sees clearly into the Universe and which recreates it, with conscientious vision. Art is the most sublime mission of man, since it is the expression of thought seeking to understand the world and to make it understood.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Preface, p. 7-8
1910s, Art, 1912

Understanding , Search , Art , Pleasure

“God is in command of history. Each crisis has something to teach us; each crisis is overcome by particular virtues and by reference to particular truths. The way out of a crisis is often unexpected, and often combines a decisive historical intervention by God, and a new spirit in the Church, animating new movements and new thinking. With hindsight we can even see in some cases how the crisis itself solved intractable problems which could not be solved in any other way”

Joseph Shaw (academic) (1971) British academic

Interview with Dr. Joseph Shaw https://remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php/fetzen-fliegen/item/5036-interview-with-dr-joseph-shaw (August 28, 2020)

God , History , Animals , Truth

“The whole underside of our society has always been violence and still is. Churches, laws--everybody seems to think that man is a noble savage. But he's only an animal. A meat-eating, talking animal. Recognize it. He also has grace and love and beauty. But don't say to me we're not violent.”

Sam Peckinpah (1925–1984) American film director and screenwriter

Playboy, August 1972

Animals , Thinking , Law , Making love

“A lot of journalists give me a hard time about how I look, but I've never met a journalist I'd rather look like. And it's not just a performance thing. I don't drive around the countryside in full makeup because it would scare the animals, but I've been wearing makeup since I was a teenager, after I saw Bowie wearing it on Top of the Pops. I immediately borrowed someone's older sister's makeup and put it on. I loved how odd it made me look, and the fact that it upset people. You put on eyeliner and people start screaming at you. How strange, and how marvellous.”

Robert Smith (musician) (1959) English singer, songwriter and musician

Quoted in Grant Smithies, "Close encounter with Robert Smith" https://www.stuff.co.nz/sunday-star-times/features/profiles/earlier-profiles-26519/51564/The-Cures-Robert-Smith, Sunday Star-Times (July 29, 2007)

Animals , Time , Sister , Love

“Everybody needs to understand when you drink a glass of water you’re drinking the ocean. There’s only one water system. If you go up in the Alps or wherever on top of the mountains to go skiing, you’re skiing on the ocean. That water system is life for every plant, every animal, and we need to manage it like a business. We need to make sure it’s not polluted and we need to stop using the ocean ultimately as a universal sewer.”

Jean-Michel Cousteau (1938) French explorer and environmentalist; son of Jacques-Yves Cousteau

Exclusive: Jean-Michel Cousteau talks marine conservation & why education is key https://www.diveplanit.com/marine-environment/jean-michel-cousteau/ (April 14, 2019)

Drink , Understanding , Business , Mountain

“We are not animals. We are not a product of what has happened to us in our past. We have the power of choice.”

Stephen R. Covey (1932–2012) American educator, author, businessman and motivational speaker

Past , Animals

“Even an animal, if you show genuine affection, gradually trust develops... If you always showing bad face and beating, how can you develop friendship?”

Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet

Friendship , Animals

“False friendship, like the ivy, decays and ruins the walls it embraces; but true friendship gives new life and animation to the object it supports.”

Richard Burton (1925–1984) Welsh actor

Friendship , Support , Animals , Falseness

“There is a process known as parthenogenesis, literally virgin birth, by which a uniparental embryo can be created out of a normal egg. It’s been done with animals. The only reason no one ever did it with humans is because it seemed ethically dodgy, as well as completely unnecessary given the willingness of men to impregnate women every chance they got.”

Neal Stephenson book Seveneves

“Cleft” (pp. 552-553)
Seveneves (2015), Part Two

Birth , Chance , Animals , Women

“As the only black kid in my primary school playground, animals had become my friends. By 15 I was vegan, although I didn't give up honey until 16. For a while my mother thought it was just "a rasta phase."”

Benjamin Zephaniah (1958) English poet and author

… I can honestly say I've not been tempted to give up veganism in 27 years. I sometimes smell a chip shop and like the smell but then feel guilty because fish might be part of it. But I'll go home and make vegan chips. After all these years, my favourite food is my mother's butter bean stew with whole potatoes, yam and dasheen. I don't think I've ever made a meal for her, to be honest. I think she would consider it a failing of her motherhood and say "Boy, get out the kitchen."
"Interview: Benjamin Zephaniah" by John Hind, TheGuardian.com (18 July 2010) https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/jul/18/benjamin-zephaniah-life-on-a-plate

School , Animals

“The sound of your voice animates the beating of my heart.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Il suono della tua voce anima il battito del mio cuore.
Source: prevale.net

Heart , Animals

“…It was very purposeful that I included animals that I’ve never touched, never looked into their eyes. We should be able to care for creatures outside of [our immediate vicinity]. We should be able to care about plants and animals and people that we’ve never seen before.”

Aimee Nezhukumatathil (1974) American writer

On not encountering every single animal mentioned in her book World of Wonders in “Aimee Nezhukumatathil: What a Wonderful World” https://www.kirkusreviews.com/news-and-features/articles/aimee-nezhukumatathil-world-of-wonders-interview/ in Kirkus Reviews (2020 Dec 2)

People , Animals

“As writers we have to walk in the world in touch with that present, alert part of ourselves, that animal sense part that looks, sees, and notices - street signs, corners, fire hydrants, newspaper stands.”

Natalie Goldberg book Writing Down the Bones

Essay, "Be an animal". p.91
Writing Down the Bones (1986)

World , Animals , Sense , Parting

“Believe me, if there's an animal misbehaving on this planet, I know about it.”

Kees Moeliker (1960) Dutch biologist

How a dead duck changed my life https://www.ted.com/talks/kees_moeliker_how_a_dead_duck_changed_my_life (February 2013)

Animals

“By far the most dangerous animal on the planet was an invasive species of ape.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen (2016), Chapter 17 (p. 386)

Animals

“I have no faith in cats: they are a cold-blooded race; they are the politicians among domestic animals; they care little who is master, or what are the over-turnings, so their pickings are secure; and what are their midnight caucuses but primary meetings?”

Donald Grant Mitchell (1822–1908) American writer

Source: My Farm of Edgewood (1863), P. 49

Cats , Faith , Animals

“God had given men reason, by which they could find out things for themselves, but He had given animals knowledge which did not depend on reason, and which was much more prompt and perfect in its way, and by which they had often saved the lives of men.”

Anna Sewell book Black Beauty

Source: Black Beauty (1877), Ch. XII, p. 61

God , Dependency , Perfection , Knowledge