Animal Quotes

While self-interest arising from the enjoyment of meat eating is obviously one reason for its entrenchment, and inertia another, a process of language usage engulfs discussions about meat by constructing the discourse in such a way that these issues need never be addressed. Language distances us from the reality of meat eating, thus reinforcing the symbolic meaning of meat eating, a symbolic meaning that is intrinsically patriarchal and male-oriented. Meat becomes a symbol for what is not seen but is always there--patriarchal control of animals and of language.

Man is the result of a purposeless and materialistic process that did not have him in mind. He was not planned. He is a state of matter, a form of life, a sort of animal, and a species of the Order Primates, akin nearly or remotely to all of life and indeed to all that is material.

I think animals help us live; they've helped me live. It was only when I began to devote myself to protecting animals that I blossomed completely. Taking care of them, looking out for them, has given my life true meaning, a meaning I hope future generations can experience.

A terrible animal, indeed, is an unbridled woman.

Man as a pure animal does not exist

My assumption is that fundamentally the picture of the human animal, as developed by Freud, is largely right.

The civilizing process has increased the distance between behavior and the impulse life of the animal body.

I think that in the end, a talk show is a very different animal.

I like to do chill things on dates. I think it would be fun to go to the zoo. I know it's really weird and random, but I love animals. It'd be like a day of doing silly things, while enjoying nature.

I love animals, always have, and it seemed natural to help the ASPCA. Animals have no voice of their own, so we have to be that voice

We always had dogs,so I understood all the joy and the love animals are capable of giving. It's crazy to me that some people have dogs in thier homes, but they treat them more like furniture.

If you're going to love animals and have a life with them, the odds are you're going to lose them. It's helpful when you get a dog to accept the fact that this dog is not going to be with you your whole life.

Some people say they love animals and yet harm them nonetheless; I'm glad those people don't love me.

I've always been an animal lover. People should be made aware of all the issues. Some people think that the whole wearing-fur thing is glamorous, but you can look good without it.

The dog is a gentleman; I hope to go to his heaven not man's.

If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons.

You think dogs will not be in heaven? I tell you, they will be there long before any of us.

To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs.

You can judge a man's true character by the way he treats his fellow animals.

Our perfect companions never have fewer than four feet.

The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul.

Those who wish to pet and baby wild animals 'love' them. But those who respect their natures and wish to let them live normal lives, love them more.

Love the animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled.

If having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans.

You will die but the carbon will not; its career does not end with you. It will return to the soil, and there a plant may take it up again in time, sending it once more on a cycle of plant and animal life.

But naturalists are now beginning to look beyond this, and to see that there must be some other principle regulating the infinitely varied forms of animal life.

Until we consider animal life to be worthy of the consideration and reverence we bestow upon old books and pictures and historic monuments, there will always be the animal refugee living a precarious life on the edge of extermination, dependent for existence on the charity of a few human beings.

In ten years [i.e., 1980] all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish.

Sociability is as much a law of nature as mutual struggle. Mutual aid is as much a law of animal life as mutual struggle.

If we knew exactly what animal life was like before the fall into sin and knew what nature was like before the law of entropy invaded it, we would already be living in heaven.

Zero of Animal Life probably about 300 fathoms.

Any glimpse into the life of an animal quickens our own and makes it so much the larger and better in every way.

May all that have life be delivered from suffering.

The thinking (person) must oppose all cruel customs, no matter how deeply rooted in tradition and surrounded by a halo. When we have a choice, we must avoid bringing torment and injury into the life of another.

Lastly, anyone who believes in the possibility of total animal liberation while billions of humans continue to inhabit and decimate the planet is delusional. Only when most humans have died off will there be a chance to returning to a society that values all beings for who they are.

The prescription of the equality of human beings is not a description of an alleged actual equality among humans: it is a prescription of how we should treat human beings.

Pain and suffering are in themselves bad and should be prevented or minimized, irrespective of the race, sex, or species of the being that suffers. How bad a pain is depends on how intense it is and how long it lasts, but pain of the same intensity and duration are equally bad, whether felt by humans or animals.

...chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans are thinking, self-aware beings, capable of planning ahead, who form lasting social bonds with others and have a rich social and emotional life. The great apes are therefore an ideal case for showing the arbitrariness of the species boundary. If we think that all human beings, irrespective of age or mental capacity, have some basic rights, how can we deny that the great apes, who surpass some humans in their capacities, also have these rights?

It is not the organs-that is, the character and form of the animal's bodily parts-that have given rise to its habits and particular structures. It is the habits and manner of life and the conditions in which its ancestors lived that have in the course of time fashioned its bodily form, its organs and qualities.

As soon as we touch the complex processes that go on in a living thing, be it plant or animal, we are at once forced to use the methods of this science [chemistry]. No longer will the microscope, the kymograph, the scalpel avail for the complete solution of the problem. For the further analysis of these phenomena which are in flux and flow, the investigator must associate himself with those who have labored in fields where molecules and atoms, rather than multicellular tissues or even unicellular organisms, are the units of study.

The advances of biology during the past 20 years have been breathtaking, particularly in cracking the mystery of heredity. Nevertheless, the greatest and most difficult problems still lie ahead. The discoveries of the 1970's about the chemical roots of memory in nerve cells or the basis of learning, about the complex behavior of man and animals, the nature of growth, development, disease and aging will be at least as fundamental and spectacular as those of the recent past.

New drugs and surgical techniques offer promise in the fight against cancer, Alzheimer's, tuberculosis, AIDS, and a host of other life-threatening diseases. Animal research has been, and continues to be, fundamental to advancements in medicine.

Recreation in the open is of the finest grade. The moral benefits are all positive. The individual with any soul cannot live long in the presence of towering mountains or sweeping plains without getting a little of the high moral standard of Nature infused into his being ... with eyes opened, the great story of the Earth's forming, the history of a tree, the life of a flower or the activities of some small animal will all unfold themselves to the recreationist.

If all persons with any trace of homosexual history, or those who were predominantly homosexual, were eliminated from the population today, there is no reason for believing that the incidence of the homosexual in the next generation would be materially reduced. The homosexual has been a significant part of human sexual activity since the dawn of history, primarily because it is an expression of capacities that are basic in the human animal.

The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else; it is a mainspring of human activity - designed largely to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny of man.

The lower animals, on the other hand, must have their bodily structure modified in order to survive under greatly changed conditions. They must be rendered stronger, or acquire more effective teeth or claws, in order to defend themselves from new enemies; or they must be reduced in size so as to escape detection and danger. When they migrate into a colder climate they must become clothed with thicker fur, or have their constitutions altered. If they fail to be thus modified, they will cease to exist.

Intellectually, human beings and animals may be different, but it's pretty obvious that animals have a rich emotional life and that they feel joy and pain. It's easy to forget the connection between a hamburger and the cow it came from. But I forced myself to acknowledge the fact that every time I ate a hamburger, a cow had ceased to breathe

Secondly, man sins against nature when he goes against his generic nature, that is to say, his animal nature. Now, it is evident that, in accord with natural order, the union of the sexes among animals is ordered towards conception. From this it follows that every sexual intercourse that cannot lead to conception is opposed to man's animal nature.

Materialist philosophies that treat human beings as machines or animals possess the high ground in our culture - academia, the most powerful media and many of our courts.