Quotes about zoo

A collection of quotes on the topic of zoo, animals, animal, anime.

Quotes about zoo

“IF THE ZOO BANS ME FOR HOLLERING AT THE ANIMALS I WILL FACE GOD AND WALK BACKWARDS INTO HELL”

Dril Twitter user

[ Link to tweet https://twitter.com/dril/status/205052027259195393] <br class="br">Tweets by year, 2012

“I know zoos are no longer in people's good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusions about freedom plague them both.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi

People, Religion, Problem, Freedom

“As for the soul: why did I say I would leave it out? I forget. And the truth is, one can't write directly about the soul. Looked at, it vanishes; but look at the ceiling, at Grizzle, at the cheaper beasts in the Zoo which are exposed to walkers in Regent's Pak, and the soul slips in. Mrs Webb's book has made me think a little what I could say of my own life. But then there were causes in her life: prayer; principle. None in mine. Great excitability and search after something. Great content – almost always enjoying what I'm at, but with constant change of mood. I don't think I'm ever bored. Yet I have some restless searcher in me. Why is there not a discovery in life? Something one can lay hands on and say 'This is it'? What is it? And shall I die before I can find it? Then (as I was walking through Russell Square last night) I see mountains in the sky: the great clouds, and the moon which is risen over Persia; I have a great and astonishing sense of something there, which is 'it' – A sense of my own strangeness, walking on the earth is there too. Who am I, what am I, and so on; these questions are always floating about in me. Is that what I meant to say? Not in the least. I was thinking about my own character; not about the universe. Oh and about society again; dining with Lord Berners at Clive's made me think that. How, at a certain moment, I see through what I'm saying; detest myself; and wish for the other side of the moon; reading alone, that is.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Saturday 27 February 1926
A Moment's Liberty (1990)

Life, Truth, Books, Soul

“Is it one wid this you'd be, Yank — black smoke from the funnels smudging the sea, smudging the decks — the bloody engines pounding and throbbing and shaking — wid divil a sight of sun or a breath of clean air — choking our lungs wid coal dust — breaking our backs and hearts in the hell of the stokehole — feeding the bloody furnace — feeding our lives along wid the coal, I'm thinking — caged in by steel from a sight of the sky like bloody apes in the Zoo!”

Eugene O'Neill The Hairy Ape

Paddy: Scene 1
The Hairy Ape (1922)

Hell, Thinking, Sun, Heart

“The zoo animal in a cage exhibits all these abnormalities that we know so well from our human companions. Clearly, then, the city is not a concrete jungle, it is a human zoo.”

Desmond Morris book The Human Zoo

Desmond Morris (2009), The Human Zoo, p. vii

Animals

“I have no idea of the extent of this zoo. I know only my corner and whatever passes before me.”

R. K. Narayan book A Tiger for Malgudi

A Tiger for Malgudi (1982)

Idea

“Their stupidity does not amaze me, its when they're smart that amazes me. It's baffling whenever you find someone who's smart — incredible. Soon you'll have zoos for such things.”

Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer

When asked what amazes him about people, in an interview with Grace Slick on Rockplace (11 February 1984) - YouTube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpcvJiZUbzI

“Life is a zoo in a jungle”

Peter de Vries (1910–1993) American editor and novelist

Life

“Your own space, man, it's so important. That's why we were doomed because we didn't have any. It is like monkeys in a zoo. They die. You know, everything needs to be left alone.”

George Harrison book I, Me, Mine

Source: I, Me, Mine

“To me, these people were as exotic as animals in a zoo. I'd never seen anything like them. I wasn't sure whether I wanted to be one of them or simply live among them taking notes and photographs.”

Augusten Burroughs (1965) American writer

People, Animals

“Children are not a zoo of entertainingly exotic creatures, but an array of mirrors in which the human predicament leaps out at us.”

John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic

Children

“Undressing her was an act of recklessness, a kind of vandalism, like releasing a zoo full of animals, or blowing up a dam.”

Michael Chabon book Wonder Boys

Source: Wonder Boys (1995)

Animals

“.. the most dangerous animal in a zoo is Man.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Variant: We commonly say in the trade that the most dangerous animal in a zoo is Man.
Source: Life of Pi

Animals

“Nature is to zoos as God is to churches.”

Margaret Atwood book Oryx and Crake

Source: Oryx and Crake

God, Nature

“Jeez, was that a lion? Please tell me it’s behind bars.”
“It’s a zoo, Iggy,” Nudge said, taking his arms and leading him. “Everything’s behind bars.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: The Angel Experiment

“Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed; if we permit the last virgin forests to be turned into comic books and plastic cigarette cases; if we drive the few remaining members of the wild species into zoos or to extinction; if we pollute the last clear air and dirty the last clean streams and push our paved roads through the last of the silence, so that never again will Americans be free in their own country from the noise, the exhausts, the stinks of human and automotive waste. And so that never again can we have the chance to see ourselves single, separate, vertical and individual in the world, part of the environment of trees and rocks and soil, brother to the other animals, part of the natural world and competent to belong in it. … We need wilderness preserved — as much of it as is still left, and as many kinds — because it was the challenge against which our character as a people was formed. The reminder and the reassurance that it is still there is good for our spiritual health even if we never once in ten years set foot in it.”

Wallace Stegner (1909–1993) American historian, writer, and environmentalist

Wilderness Letter http://wilderness.org/bios/former-council-members/wallace-stegner (1960) <br class="br">Source: The Sound of Mountain Water

People, Health, Books, World

“I think the discomfort that some people feel in going to the monkey cages at the zoo is a warning sign.”

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

Source: The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God

People, Feeling, Thinking

“A zoo is a good place to make a spectacle of yourself, as the people around you have creepier, more photogenic things to look at.”

David Sedaris When You Are Engulfed in Flames

Source: When You Are Engulfed in Flames

People

“I went to the zoo once and saw this thing they call an anteater. That was quite enough for me.”

Thomas Pynchon (1937) American novelist

“I view my own body as a petting zoo. I am the main attraction… And the only customer.”

Craig Ferguson (1962) Scottish-born American television host, stand-up comedian, writer, actor, director, author, producer and voice a…

The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson (2005–2014)

“Just been into the zoo, 'avin a look round an that. Went into the, er, into the aquarium. Mental, the amount of fish that are knockin' about”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

3 Minute Wonder, Episode 1
On Life

Fish

“If you were to take a plastic bag and place it inside a large bowl, and then, using a wooden spoon, stir the bag around, you could use the expression 'a mixed bag' to describe what you had in front of you, but you would not be using the expression in the same way I am about to use it now. Although 'a mixed bag' sometimes refers to a plastic bag that has been stirred in a bowl, more often, it is used to describe a situation that has both good parts and bad parts. An afternoon movie theater, for example, would be a mixed bag if your favorite movie were showing, but if you had to eat gravel instead of popcorn. A trip to the zoo would be a very mixed bag if the weather were beautiful, but all the man and woman-eating lions were running around loose.”

Daniel Handler book The Ersatz Elevator

Lemony Snicket
The Ersatz Elevator (2001)

Beauty, Way, Parting, Weather

“I never would have thought being high in a zoo would lead to that.”

Jim Breuer (1967) American actor and comedian

Talking about the character of Goat Boy, in an interview on Mancow's Morning Madhouse
Unsourced

“The story of the Narmada valley is nothing less than the story of Modern India. Like the tiger in the Belgrade zoo during the NATO bombing, we've begun to eat our own limbs.”

Arundhati Roy (1961) Indian novelist, essayist

Preface to The Cost of Living July 1999.
Articles

“Q: If you find so much that is unworthy of reverence in the United States, then why do you live here?
A: Why do men go to zoos?”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

Men

“One of the reasons I became so involved in activism for primate conservation was not just from the books and movie’s I saw, but from looking into the eyes of a chimpanzee in a zoo. I’ll never forget it… it changed my life.”

Charlotte Ross (1968) American actress

"Award-Winning Animal Activist—Actress Charlotte Ross—Campaigns for Great Apes", interview with National Geographic (24 November 2013) https://blog.nationalgeographic.org/2013/11/24/award-winning-animal-activist-actress-charlotte-ross-campaigns-for-great-apes/.

Life, Books, Change, Forgetting

“It could be said now that all animals live in zoos, whether it is a zoo in Regent's Park, London or a Nigerian Game Reserve. Perhaps what's left to argue is only the zoo's quality.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

From the introduction to the published script.
A Zed and Two Noughts

Game, Animals

“Ever since my extraordinary encounter with that big cream-colored wolf in the zoo near Thetford, I had wanted to see and know more about these creatures that had so preyed on my imagination as a child. I began reading natural history books, and a lot of what I had learned about foxes from years of watching them seemed applicable to what I was reading about wolves. Foxes were being cruelly and systematically persecuted because of a reputation I knew they didn't deserve; mankind had gone one further with wolves and exterminated them from most parts of the world. I began to wonder whether all the negative stories I had heard about wolves as I was growing up were any more reliable than the falsehoods I had been told about their small, red cousins.”

Shaun Ellis (1977) American football player, defensive end

The Man who lives with Wolves (2010)

Books, World, Color, Imagination

“Those chimps and orangutans [in our music video] get treated better than the ones in zoos. They’re loved, and they’re taken care of much better and cleaned much better. And they’re only allowed to work a certain amount of time every day. Plus, we had someone from Animal Protection there the entire time, making sure everything was cool. It’s really weird that people got pissed off about that. Those animals were treated quite well, probably better than most humans, and definitely better than animals in the zoo.”

Joe Trohman (1984) American musician

My Heart Will Always Be The B-Side To My Tongue (2004), Ultimate Guitar Interview (2008)

Love, People, Music, Time

“Confined within this catch-all concept, within this vast encampment of the animal, in this general singular, within the strict enclosure of this definite article (“the Animal” and not “animals”), as in a virgin forest, a zoo, a hunting or fishing ground, a paddock or an abattoir, a space of domestication, are all the living things that man does not recognize as his fellows, his neighbors, or his brothers.”

Jacques Derrida book The Animal That Therefore I Am

The Animal That Therefore I Am (1997)

Fish, Animals

“No, I don’t think it’s correct to define my writing as fables. There are themes, yes, but I’m not trying to offer some categorical cure-it-all to the problematic situation of Man. I’m neither theologian nor a politician. My concern in my first novel, The Zoo, was loss of inner life. After long years of writer’s block, the novel just exploded out of me. Thirty days. All too quickly to really do it justice. With my second novel, The Nihilesthete, I was taken by the spiritual diminishment and the all-pervasive powerlessness that I felt was taking over our culture which in turn prevented and inverted my lead character’s full expression. Such is the motive-force behind almost banal, cerebralized cruelties he harbours upon his arch-enemy, the artist, Brodski.”

Richard Kalich novelist

Richard Kalich in conversation with Lucy Sweeney Byrne - Books Go Social http://booksgosocial.com/2015/01/13/richard-kalich-in-conversation-with-lucy-sweeney-byrne/ January 13, 2015.

Life, Justice, Motivation, Thinking

“Chicago is my favorite American city. … I like all the museums. I love the Art Institute. I love all the theatre and the blues clubs and bars, and the people are so great. I think Chicago is the perfect blend of a big city with a Midwestern finish on it. Everybody is really nice but it is a sophisticated city. I love the park. I love the zoo. I love the lake. The whole thing.”

Megan Mullally (1958) American actress

Attributed

Love, People, Art, Thinking

“It remains to mention some of the ways in which people have spoken misleadingly of logical form. One of the commonest of these is to talk of ' the logical form' of a statement; as if a statement could never have more than one kind of formal power; as if statements could, in respect of their formal powers, be grouped in mutually exclusive classes, like animals at a zoo in respect of their species. But to say that a statement is of some one logical form is simply to point to a certain general class of, e. g., valid inferences, in which the statement can play a certain role. It is not to exclude the possibility of there being other general classes of valid inferences in which the statement can play a certain role.”

P. F. Strawson (1919–2006) British philosopher

Source: Introduction to Logical Theory (1952), p. 53 as cited in: Ian Hacking (1975) Why Does Language Matter to Philosophy?, p. 83.

People, Way, Animals

“There seems to be a general impression that to be known as normal in Hollywood is akin to being labeled as rare animal in a zoo.”

Irene Dunne (1898–1990) American actress

How Do I Stay Normal in Hollywood (1942)

Animals

“Someone told me
It's all happening at the zoo.
I do believe it,
I do believe it's true.”

Paul Simon (1941) American musician, songwriter and producer

At The Zoo
Song lyrics, Bookends (1968)

“Jack: Well, only if you have enough. I'd hate for you to run out to the zoo just for me.”

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

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

Hate

“—On the dedication page of the rebellion, we see the words “To Clementine”. A fine sentiment, miscellaneous organ music next, and, turning several pages, massed orange flags at the head of the column. This will not be easy, but neither will it be hard. Good will is everywhere, and the lighthearted song of the gondoliers is heard in the distance.
—Yes, success is everything. Morally important as well as useful in a practical way.
—What have the rebels captured thus far? One zoo, not our best zoo, and a cemetery. The rebels have entered the cages of the tamer animals and are playing with them, gently.
—Things can get better, and in my opinion will.
—Their Graves Registration procedures are scrupulous—accurate and fair.
—There’s more to it than playing guitars and clapping along. Although that frequently gets people in the mood.
—Their methods are direct, not subtle. Dissolution, leaching, sandblasting, cracking and melting of fireproof doors, condemnation, water damage, slide presentations, clamps and buckles.
—And skepticism, although absolutely necessary, leads to not very much.”

Donald Barthelme (1931–1989) American writer, editor, and professor

“The Crisis”, opening
Great Days (1979)

People, Music, Way, Mood

“Zoos mislead their visitors by the way the species are housed. Birds are in the Bird House, of course, and crocodiles are always segregated to the Reptile House with the other naked-skinned, scale-covered brutes. So the average visitor leaves the zoo firmly persuaded that crocodilians are reptiles while birds are an entirely different group defined by "unreptilian" characteristics - feathers and flight. But a turkey's body and a croc's body laid out on a lab bench would present startling evidence of how wrong the zoos are once the two stomachs were cut into. The anatomy of their gizzards is strong evidence that crocodilians and birds are closely related and should be housed together in zoological classification, if not in zoo buildings.”

Robert T. Bakker book The Dinosaur Heresies

The Dinosaur Heresies: A Revolutionary View of Dinosaurs (1986), Longman Scientific & Technical, p. 127
The Dinosaur Heresies (1986)

Way, Bird, Strong, Housing

“We can put women on Prozac and they will think they are happy, even though they are not. Disturbed animals in the zoo are given Prozac too, which rather suggests that misery is a response to unbearable circumstances rather than constitutional.”

Germaine Greer (1939) Australian feminist author

Sorrow (pg. 183)
The Whole Woman (1999)

Women, Happiness, Thinking, Animals

“Carol was discovering that the one thing that can be more disconcerting than intelligent hatred is demanding love. "She supposed that she was being gracefully dull and standardized in the Smails' presence, but they scented the heretic, and with forward-stooping delight they sat and tried to drag out her ludicrous concepts for their amusement. They were like the Sunday-afternoon mob starting at monkeys in the Zoo, poking fingers and making faces and giggling at the resentment of the more dignified race… They were staggered to learn that a real tangible person, living in Minnesota, and married to their own flesh-and-blood relation, could apparently believe that divorce may not always be immoral; that illegitimate children do not bear any special and guaranteed form of curse; that there are ethical authorities outside of the Hebrew Bible; that men have drunk wine yet not died in the gutter; that the capitalistic system of distribution and the Baptist wedding-ceremony were not known in the Garden of Eden;… that there are Ministers of the Gospel who accept evolution; that some persons of intelligence and business ability do not always vote the Republican ticket straight;… that a violin is not inherently more immoral than a chapel organ… 'Where does she get all them the'ries?'”

Sinclair Lewis book Main Street

marveled Uncle Whittier Smail.
Main Street (1920)

Love, Men, Children, Intelligence

“I have been called a Rogue Elephant, a Cannibal Shark, and a crocodile. I am none the worse. I remain a caged, and rather sardonic, lion, in a particularly contemptible and ill-run zoo.”

Wyndham Lewis book Blasting and Bombardiering

Blasting and Bombardiering (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1937) p. 12.

“I do have some early role models. I recall wanting to be a real-life version of the fictional "Sandor Arbitration Intelligence at the Zoo" (from Vernor Vinge's novel A Fire Upon the Deep) who in the story is known for consistently writing the clearest and most insightful posts on the Net. And then there was Hal Finney who probably came closest to an actual real-life version of Sandor at the Zoo, and Tim May who besides inspiring me with his vision of cryptoanarchy was also a role model for doing early retirement from the tech industry and working on his own interests/causes.”

Wei Dai Cryptocurrency pioneer and computer scientist

In response http://lesswrong.com/lw/jgz/aalwa_ask_any_lesswronger_anything/ap84 to the question "Do you have any role models?", March 2014

Life, Intelligence

“I love acting, but it's much more fun taking the kids to the zoo.”

Nicole Kidman (1967) Australian-American actress and film producer

Dame Magazine http://www.damemagazine.com/entertainment/f384/TheWitandWisdomofNicoleKidman.php

Love

“If there are 500 tigers left in India, I'd be surprised. They are even skinning the tigers in Indian zoos.”

Maneka Gandhi (1956) Indian politician and activist

On poaching of tigers in India, as quoted in "Hunting down the hunter: A dying breed" http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/hunting-down-the-hunter-a-dying-breed-473821.html, The Independent (12 April 2006) <br class="br">2001-2010

“While Hindu activists are always treated like animals in a zoo, never allowed to speak for themselves, always condemned to be judged by what someone else has written on the signboard in front of their cage, Muslim fanatics are invited to serve as zoo guides, competent to inform the ignorant outsider about the meanness of these beasts safely locked up in their cages.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

K. Elst : The Ayodhya Demolition: an Evaluation, in India., & Dasgupta, S. (1995). The Ayodhya reference: The Supreme Court judgement and commentaries.
1990s, The Ayodhya Demolition: an Evaluation (1995)

Animals

“What right do we have to claim, as some might, that human beings are the only inhabitants of our planet blessed with an actual ability to be "aware"? … The impression of a "conscious presence" is indeed very strong with me when I look at a dog or a cat or, especially, when an ape or monkey at the zoo looks at me. I do not ask that they are "self-aware" in any strong sense (though I would guess that an element of self-awareness can be present). All I ask is that they sometimes simply feel!”

Roger Penrose book The Emperor's New Mind

Source: The Emperor's New Mind (1989), Ch. 9, Real Brains and Model Brains, p. 383.

Dogs, Feeling, Cats, Sense

“Yet I also appreciate that we cannot win this battle to save species and environments without forging an emotional bond between ourselves and nature as well—for we will not fight to save what we do not love (but only appreciate in some abstract sense). So let them all continue—the films, the books, the television programs, the zoos, the little half acre of ecological preserve in any community, the primary school lessons, the museum demonstrations, even […] the 6:00 A. M. bird walks. Let them continue and expand because we must have visceral contact in order to love. We really must make room for nature in our hearts.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Eight Little Piggies

"Unenchanted Evening", p. 40
Eight Little Piggies (1993)

Love, Books, School, Communication

“We're all zoo humans to some extent, even me.”

Erwan Le Corre (1971)

MovNat: Learning how to move as we were intended to, The Washington Post http://washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/wellness/movnat-learning-how-to-move-as-we-were-intended-to/2012/02/03/gIQABjNMRR_story.html?utm_term=.e68f6050d5d7_r=0

“The freedom of birds is an insult to me. I'd have them all in zoos.”

Cormac McCarthy book Blood Meridian

The judge.
Blood Meridian (1985)

Bird, Freedom

“There are some people who begin the Zoo at the beginning, called WAYIN, and walk as quickly as they can past every cage until they get to the one called WAYOUT, but the nicest people go straight to the animal they love the most, and stay there.”

A.A. Milne book Winnie-the-Pooh

Winnie-the-Pooh (1926)

Love, People, Past, Animals

“My own first love was biology. I spent a great part of my adolescence in the Natural History museum in London (and I still go to the Botanic Garden almost every day, and to the Zoo every Monday). The sense of diversity—of the wonder of innumerable forms of life—has always thrilled me beyond anything else.”

Oliver Sacks (1933–2015) British neurologist and writer

Personal correspondence, quoted in Stephen Jay Gould, "Cabinet Museums: Alive, Alive, O!", Dinosaur in a Haystack (Harmony, 1995), p. 245

Love, Life, History, Nature

“The war hung over us like a storm cloud. […] They told us how the animals escaped from the zoo after the bombing raid and rushed about the streets. They fled not from people, but to people, and, let's say, the bear roared and shook its paw, the ostrich waved a burnt wing, and the elephant knelt, lifted its trunk and trumpeted plaintively. But what could people do when the earth was burning beneath them? A coral aspid, a very venomous and beautiful snake, slithered up to the sixth floor and meekly curled up under someone's bed. And in these stories about the ruins of great cities, about streets where African reptiles creep and dying elephants trumpet, there was something from Wells and from the Apocalypse — more generally from legends about the end of the world and the total destruction of humanity.”

Yury Dombrovsky (1909–1978) Soviet writer

Russian text
The Monkey Comes for His Skull (1943)

War, People, World, Beauty

“Then giving young Albert a shilling,
He said "Pop off back to the Zoo.
'Ere's your stick with the 'orses's 'ead 'andle,
Go and see what the Tigers can do!"”

Marriott Edgar (1880–1951) British poet

"The Return of Albert", line 73.
Albert, 'Arold and Others (1938)

“I, like every other stupid American, assumed the kangaroos would meet us at the airport and they would want to hug us as much as we wanted to hug them. … [In Sydney's zoo] I did find out about the koalas and how eucalyptus makes them high and why they sleep all day. They're little druggies.”

Kristen Bell (1980) American actress

On her impressions of Australia, as quoted in "US Star Disappointed no Kangaroos at airport", in The Sydney Morning Herald (15 October 2009) http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-world/us-star-disappointed-no-kangaroos-at-aussie-airport-20091015-gyw5.html

Stupidity, Sleep

“I live in a tough neighborhood. They got a children's zoo. Last week, four kids escaped.”

Rodney Dangerfield (1921–2004) American actor and comedian

Source: It's Not Easy Bein' Me: A Lifetime of No Respect But Plenty of Sex and Drugs (2004), p. 14

Children

“The letters Z, O and O dominate the front entrance gates of a capital city zoo. They are made of glass and they tower up two giraffes high. They are the width of one elephant and the colour of bottled blue ink.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

A Zed and Two Noughts

“I found myself going over a particular troublesome scene in the novel, for the one thousand and seventy-third time, in the manner of a lunatic ape in a cage at the zoo, running his fingers back and forth along the iron bars of his home.”

Michael Chabon book Wonder Boys

Wonder Boys (1995)

Home, Time

“I'm a g-nu,
I'm a g-nu,
The g-nicest work of g-nature in the zoo”

Michael Flanders (1922–1975) English writer and performer

A Gnu

Nature

“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

“For the roar of Godzilla, I took out the lowest string of a contrabass and then ran a glove that had resin on it across the string. The different kinds of roars were created by playing the recording of the sound that I'd made at different speeds. Toho's sound engineers previously had tried to use the roars of many different animals for Godzilla's roar. They went to a zoo and recorded the roars of many different mammals, but no matter how the sounds were manipulated, they seemed too much like the roars of each of the animals. The sound engineers also tried to alter the call of a night heron bird, but that also was not successful.”

Akira Ifukube (1914–2006) Japanese composer

As quoted by David Milner, "Akira Ifukube Interview I" http://www.davmil.org/www.kaijuconversations.com/ifukub.htm, Kaiju Conversations (December 1992)

Bird, Success, Animals, Speed

“The chimpanzees in the zoos do it,
Some courageous kangaroos do it
Let's do it, let's fall in love. I'm sure giraffes on the sly do it,
Even eagles as they fly do it,
Let's do it, let's fall in love.”

Cole Porter (1891–1964) American composer and songwriter

"Let's Do It, Let's Fall in Love"; an earlier variant, rather than "Even eagles...": "Heavy hippopotami do it..."
Paris (1928)

Love, Courage, Flying

“Before the Flood came, all the people and all the animals were vegetarian. Some say that some animals today cannot live without meat. During World War II, the zoo in London, England, had no meat to feed the lions so they fed them cabbage and other vegetables. They did fine. For years, Hollywood moviemakers used a lion called Little Tyke that refused to eat meat. In the 4,400 years since that Flood, some animals’ digestive tracts may have “adapted” to an all-meat diet, making it difficult or maybe even impossible to go back to a vegetarian diet, but that is not real evolution. Going from a plant-eating lion to a meat-eating lion is a minor change, compared to the evolution theory, which says they changed from a rock to a lion!”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Slowly of course! Unless you are from Harvard
Source: What On Earth Is About To Happen… For Heaven’s Sake? (2013), p. 47-48

War, People, World, Change

“Then he rose and began to pace the room in an overwrought sort of way, like a zoo lion who has heard the dinner-gong go and is hoping the keeper won't forget him in the general distribution.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Right Ho, Jeeves

Right Ho, Jeeves (1934)

Hope, Way, Forgetting

“Animals in zoos (we are told) believe that their bars protect them. We Americans have forged our own bars, built our own cage, and live in it more or less content as long as someone feeds us.”

Gene Wolfe (1931–2019) American science fiction and fantasy writer

The Best of Gene Wolfe (2009), afterword to "Petting Zoo", p. 432
Nonfiction

Animals

“We lived like that “Happy Family“ you sometimes see in traveling zoos: a lion caged with a lamb. It is a startling exhibit but the lamb has to be replaced frequently.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Have Space Suit—Will Travel

Source: Have Space Suit—Will Travel (1958), Chapter 7

Happiness, Family, Travel

“Anyone who truly wants to escape human solipsism should not seek out empty places. Instead of fleeing to the desert, where they will be thrown back into their own thoughts, they will do better to seek the company of other animals. A zoo is a better window from which to look out of the human world than a monastery.”

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

The Unsaved: The Mirror of Solitude (p. 150-1)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

World, Animals

“Nowhere in a zoo can a stranger encounter the look of an animal. At the most, the animal’s gaze flickers and passes on. They look sideways. They look blindly beyond. They scan mechanically. … That look between animal and man, which may have played a crucial role in the development of human society, and with which, in any case, all men had always lived until less than a century ago, has been extinguished. Looking at each animal, the unaccompanied zoo visitor is alone.”

John Berger (1926–2017) British painter, writer and art critic

Source: About Looking (1980), Chapter "Why Look at Animals?"

Men, Animals

“Zoo: An excellent place to study the habits of human beings.”

Evan Esar (1899–1995) American writer

Esar's Comic Dictionary

Study

“If you made a short visit to CERN's Theory Division you might think that you are in a zoo. But that is not entirely right. True enough, you will find women and men of dozens of nationalities, cultures, languages and what not… some of them may even look like ET. But what these people are doing is what defines our species in its ensemble: asking, and sometimes answering, some of the deepest questions. Thus the zoo is more like a circus of magicians, in which the performers — uncharacteristically — would insist in showing you their cards… and the entrance is free!”

Alvaro De Rujula (1944)

"What is a "theoretical physicist"?" at CERN Public Web.

Women, Men, People, Question

“You are not necessarily depriving him of his liberty, for territory is a form of natural cage and the word "liberty" does not have the same connotation for an animal as it does for a chest-beating liberal homo sapiens, who can afford the luxury of abstract ideas. What you are, in fact, doing is much more important, you are taking away his territory, so you must take great care to provide him with an adequate substitute, or you will get a bored, sick or dead animal on your hands.
The thing that turns a cage into a territory may be something quite slight, but it need not be size. It might be the shape of the cage, the number of branches or the lack of them, the absence or presence of a pond, a patch of sand, a chunk of log, which could make all the difference. Such a detail, trivial to the uninformed visitor, can help the animal consider this area his territory, rather than simply a place where he ekes out his existence. As I say it is not necessarily size which is of prime importance. This is where people who criticise zoos go wrong, for they generally have little idea what circumscribed lives most animals lead.”

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

The Stationary Ark (1976)

People, Idea, Nature, Help

“Think, for a moment, of a cheetah, a sleek, beautiful animal, one of the fastest on earth, which roams freely on the savannas of Africa. In its natural habitat, it is a magnificent animal, almost a work of art, unsurpassed in speedor grace by any other animal. Now, think of a cheetah that has been captured and thrown into a miserable cage in a zoo. It has lost its original grace and beauty, and is put on display for our amusement. We see only the broken spirit of the cheetah in the cage, not its original power and elegance. The cheetah can be compared to the laws of physics, which are beautiful in their natural setting. The natural habitat of the laws of physics is higher-dimensional space-time. However, we can only measure the laws of physics when they have been broken and placed on display in a cage, which is our three-dimensional laboratory. We can only see the cheetah when its grace and beauty have been stripped away.”

Peter Freund (1936–2018) American physicist

As quoted by Michio Kaku in Hyperspace (Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 12. ISBN 0-385-47705-8.

Law, Beauty, Art, Nature

“The sound is beautiful, it's perfect!
The sound of her young legs in stockings,
The rhythm of her walk, it's beautiful!
Just let it twist, let it break,
Let it buckle, let it bend,
I want to hear the noise of my Zoo-Music Girl.”

Nick Cave (1957) Australian musician

Song lyrics, Prayers on Fire (1981), Zoo-Music Girl

Beauty, Music, Girl, Perfection

“I was a frequent visitor at the London Zoo; in the lion house there were always ninnies who mocked the captive lions. I often wished that the bars would turn to butter, and that the great, noble beasts would practise their particular form of wit upon the little, ignoble men.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks (1949)
Context: God knows I have little interest in animals, but I do not like to see them insulted. I used to feel the same thing in the days when I was a frequent visitor at the London Zoo; in the lion house there were always ninnies who mocked the captive lions. I often wished that the bars would turn to butter, and that the great, noble beasts would practise their particular form of wit upon the little, ignoble men.

Men, Housing

“It's a brilliant metaphor. What I meant to say was, when you see a monkey masturbating at the zoo…”

Jon Stewart (1962) American political satirist, writer, television host, actor, media critic and stand-up comedian

C-SPAN interview, October 14, 2004, when asked about the above quote.

“You want to be safe, you have to live in the zoo.”

Miloš Forman (1932–2018) czech-American director, screenwriter, and professor

GWU interview (1997)
Context: You know, you have to really decide where you want to live: if you want to live in the jungle or in the zoo. Because if you want the beauty, if you want freedom, the jungle is... that's your world. But you're in danger there, you have to live with snakes, sharks, tigers, skunks, you know, mosquitoes, leeches. You want to be safe, you have to live in the zoo. You are protected. You know, if you are a lamb, the tiger will not attack you. You know, you'll get a little bit something to eat every day; that's fine. You have to work hard, but you live behind the bars, and what's wonderful — you live there behind the bars and you dream about the beauty of the jungle. Now what happened was that the bars opened, and everybody runs after the dream. And suddenly, well, yeah, it's beautiful — yes, I am free to go wherever I want, do whatever I want, but where do I want to go? Oh, my God, and here is a tiger and here's a snake. Oh, oh, and people have a tendency to, you know, back. And you will be surprised how many people prefer to live in the zoo; they are not ready to pay for the freedom; they think that freedom should be, you know, for free, even for granted, which never is, never is.

“They have made present-day India, and Hinduism even more so, out to be a zoo – an agglomeration of assorted, disparate specimens. No such thing as ‘India’, just a geographical expression, just a construct of the British; no such thing as Hinduism, just a word used by Arabs to describe the assortment they encountered, just an invention of the communalists to impose a uniformity – that has been their stance. For this they have blackened the Hindu period of our history, and, as we shall see, strained to whitewash the Islamic period.”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud
Context: The real crime of these eminences does not lie in the loss they have inflicted in terms of money. It lies in the condition to which they have reduced institutions. It lies in their dereliction – because of which projects that were important for our country have languished. It lies even more in the use to which they have put those institutions.
They have used them to have a comfortable time, of course. They have used them to puff up each other’s reputations, of course. But the worst of it is that they have used their control of these institutions to pervert public discourse, and thereby derail public policy.
They have made India out to have been an empty land, filled by successive invaders. They have made present-day India, and Hinduism even more so, out to be a zoo – an agglomeration of assorted, disparate specimens. No such thing as ‘India’, just a geographical expression, just a construct of the British; no such thing as Hinduism, just a word used by Arabs to describe the assortment they encountered, just an invention of the communalists to impose a uniformity – that has been their stance. For this they have blackened the Hindu period of our history, and, as we shall see, strained to whitewash the Islamic period. They have denounced ancient India’s social system as the epitomy of oppression, and made totalitarian ideologies out to be egalitarian and just.
They have belittled our ancient culture and exaggerated syncretistic elements which survived and made them out to have been an entire ‘culture’, the ‘composite culture’ as they call it. Which culture isn’t? And all the while they have taken care to hide the central facts about these common elements in the life of our people: that they had survived in spite of the most strenuous efforts spread over a thousand years of Islamic rulers and the ulema to erase them, that they had survived in spite of the sustained efforts during the last one hundred and fifty years of the missionaries and British rulers to make us forget and shed these elements, that the elements had survived their efforts to instead inflame each section to see its ‘identity’ and essence in factors which, if internalized, would set it apart. Most of all, these intellectuals and the like have completely diverted public view from the activities in our own day of organizations like the Tabhligi jamaat and the Church which are exerting every nerve, and deploying uncounted resources to get their adherents to discard every practice and belief which they share with their Hindu neighbours.
These intellectuals and their patrons have worked a diabolic inversion: the inclusive religion, the pluralist spiritual search of our people and land, they have projected as intolerant, narrow-minded, obscurantist; and the exclusivist, totalitarian, revelatory religions and ideologies – Islam, Christianity, Marxism-Leninism – they have made out to be the epitomes of tolerance, open-mindedness, democracy, secularism!

History

“When you go to the zoo and you see a monkey throwing poop, you go, "that's what monkeys do, what are you gonna do?" But what I wish the media would do more frequently is say "bad monkey."”

Jon Stewart (1962) American political satirist, writer, television host, actor, media critic and stand-up comedian

Charlie Rose interview, September 29, 2004
Context: If I was to really get at the burr in my saddle, it's not politics — and this is, I think, probably a horrible analogy — but I look at politicians as, they are doing what inherently they need to do to retain power. Their job is to consolidate power. When you go to the zoo and you see a monkey throwing poop, you go, "that's what monkeys do, what are you gonna do?" But what I wish the media would do more frequently is say "bad monkey."

“I first saw them in 1978. At the time, I knew a lot about chimps, because I had been studying them. I saw the bonobos at a zoo in Holland, and I thought immediately, they're totally different.”

Frans de Waal (1948) Dutch primatologist and ethologist

On his first encounter with bonobos
The Bonobo in All of Us (2007)
Context: I first saw them in 1978. At the time, I knew a lot about chimps, because I had been studying them. I saw the bonobos at a zoo in Holland, and I thought immediately, they're totally different. The sense you get looking them in the eyes is that they're more sensitive, more sensual, not necessarily more intelligent, but there's a high emotional awareness, so to speak, of each other and also of people who look at them.

Study, Time

“And you will be surprised how many people prefer to live in the zoo; they are not ready to pay for the freedom; they think that freedom should be, you know, for free, even for granted, which never is, never is.”

Miloš Forman (1932–2018) czech-American director, screenwriter, and professor

People, Thinking, Freedom

“You know, you have to really decide where you want to live: if you want to live in the jungle or in the zoo. Because if you want the beauty, if you want freedom, the jungle is… that's your world.”

Miloš Forman (1932–2018) czech-American director, screenwriter, and professor

World, Beauty, Freedom

“If you’ve ever been to the monkey house in one of those awful downscale zoos, you know what monkeys — these particular monkeys — are like: They jerk off and fling poo all day, generally using the same hand for both, and they don’t do a hell of a lot else, unless there’s McDonald’s. All day: jerk off, fling poo, jerk off, fling poo, jerk, fling, jerk, fling.Twitter, basically.”

Kevin D. Williamson (1972) American writer

How Twitter radicals are controlling corporate America (2019)

Jerk, Hell, Housing