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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"And Sam Vimes thought: Why is Young Sam's nursery full of farmyard animals anyway? Why are his books full of moo-cows and baa-lambs? He is growing up in the city. He will only see them on a plate! They go sizzle!"
"The money one gets for selling one's soul is always spent in deadening one's conscience, so the net gain at the end of a lifetime is no greater than if the diabolic bargain had not been struck."
"Man is the only animal to borrow tools."
"Most animals, including most domesticated primates (humans) show truly staggering ability to 'ignore' certain kinds of information - that which does not 'fit' their imprinted/ conditioned reality-tunnel"
"Animals outline their territories with their excretions, humans outline their territories by ink excretions on paper."
"I sat in the sun on a bench; the animal within me licking the chops of memory; the spiritual side a little drowsed, promising subsequent penitence, but not yet moved to begin."
"If you love animals, obviously it doesn't make sense to hurt them."
"Hinduism comes closest to being a nature religion. Rivers, rocks, trees, plants, animals, and birds all play their part, both in mythology and everyday worship. This harmony is most evident in remote places like this, and I hope it does not loose its unique character in the ruthless urban advance."
"We began as mineral. We emerged into plant life, and into the animal state, and then into being human, and always we have forgotten our former states, except in early spring when we slightly recall being green again."
"The most violent weapon on earth is the table fork."
"When all the other animals, downcast looked upon the earth, he [Prometheus] gave a face raised on high to man, and commanded him to see the sky and raise his high eyes to the stars."
"Animal rights activists gives disillusioned feminists an excuse to go back to being women protecting wee creatures without compromising their radical credentials"
"And so, with a boundless heart should one cherish all living beings."
"I am not a complete vegetarian. I eat only animals that have died in their sleep."
"It may be suggested by some books that it is not a sin to kill an animal, but it is written in our own hearts - more clearly than in any book - that we should take pity on animals in the same way as we do on humans."
"It's perfectly obvious that there is some genetic factor that distinguishes humans from other animals and that it is language-specific. The theory of that genetic component, whatever it turns out to be, is what is called universal grammar."
"It isn't true that convicts live like animals: animals have more room to move around."
"As regards this vice, we read that the peacock is more guilty of it than any other animal. For it is always contemplating the beauty of its tail, which it spreads in the form of a wheel, and by its cries attracts to itself the gaze of the creatures that surround it. And this is the last vice to be conquered."
"The animal merely makes a bed, which he warms with his body, in a sheltered place; but man, having discovered fire, boxes up someair in a spacious apartment, and warms that.... Thus he goes a step or two beyond instinct, and saves a little time for the fine arts."
"When I consider that the noble animals have been exterminated here - the cougar, panther, lynx, wolverine, wolf, bear, moose, deer, the beaver, the turkey, etc, etc - I cannot but feel as I lived in a tamed, and, as it were, emasculated country."
