Animal quotes
6.3K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside animal — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"I'm not an activist; I don't look for controversy. I'm not a political person, but I'm a person with compassion. I care passionately about equal rights. I care about human rights. I care about animal rights."
"Mr. J.S. Mill speaks, in his celebrated work, "Utilitarianism," of the social feelings as a "powerful natural sentiment," and as "the natural basis of sentiment for utilitarian morality," but on the previous page he says, "if, as is my own belief, the moral feelings are not innate, but acquired, they are not for that reason less natural." It is with hesitation that I venture to differ from so profound a thinker, but it can hardly be disputed that the social feelings are instinctive or innate in the lower animals; and why should they not be so in man?"
"I have to take care of myself because if you get sick, you still have to work. Im not much a party animal, anyway. I lay low."
"Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones."
"People should be more like animals . . . they should be more intuitive; they should not be too conscious of what they do while they do it."
"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."
"To be shaken out of the ruts of ordinary perception, to be shown for a few timeless hours the outer and the inner world, not as they appear to an animal obsessed with words and notions, but as they are apprehended, directly and unconditionally, by Mind at Large-This is the experience of inestimable value to everyone."
"The difference between animals and humans is that animals change themselves for the environment, but humans change the environment for themselves."
"Manushya (man) is a being with Manas (mind); and as soon as his thinking power goes, he becomes no better than an animal."
"Since the law prohibits the keeping of wild animals and I get no enjoyment from pets, I prefer to remain unmarried."
"My imagination is a kind of animal. So what I do is keep it alive."
"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'm a vegetarian. I don't eat animals, so I won't wear them."
"Animals have genes for altruism, and those genes have been selected in the evolution of many creatures because of the advantage they confer for the continuing survival of the species."
"The dog has got more fun out of Man than Man has got out of the dog, for the clearly demonstrable reason that Man is the more laughable of the two animals"
"Love the animals. God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled. Don't trouble it, don't harass them, don't deprive them of their happiness, don't work against God's intent."
"We are lonesome animals. We spend all our life trying to be less lonesome. One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say — and to feel — "Yes, that’s the way it is, or at least that’s the way I feel it. You’re not as alone as you thought.""
"Humans need Jesus Christ as a necessity and not as a luxury. You may be pleased to have flowers, but you must have bread. . . . Jesus is not a phenomenon, He is bread: Christ is not a curiosity, He is water. As surely as we cannot live without bread, we cannot live truly without Christ: If we know not Christ we are not living, our movement is a mechanical flutter, our pulse is but the stirring of an animal life."
"To grow up in intimate association with nature - animal and vegetable - is an irreplaceable form of wealth and culture."
"I sometimes say animals are closer to God than humans. They are closer to the source. The humans are more lost in the mind forms. Being is more obscured to the human because of the overlay of ego and mental formation."
