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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"My main message to folks who love animals is that you can do something every day to help them. Even if you have no money or time, per se, you can find ways to contribute on any level: sharing shelter animals on social media, donating old blankets or towels to a local shelter, starting a petition online for an animal cause."
"PETA doesn't want stressed animals to be cruelly crowded into sheds, ankle-deep in their own crap, because they don't want any animals to die ever and basically think chickens should, in time, gain the right to vote. I don't want animals stressed or crowded or treated cruelly or inhumanely because that makes them probably less delicious."
"Russian forests crash down under the axe, billions of trees are dying, the habitations of animals and birds are laid waste, rivers grow shallow and dry up, marvelous landscapes are disappearing forever.... Man is endowed with creativity in order to multiply that which has been given him; he has not created, but destroyed. There are fewer and fewer forests, rivers are drying up, wildlife has become extinct, the climate is ruined, and the earth is becoming ever poorer and uglier."
"A human being is a naturally political [animal]."
"Man perfected by society is the best of all animals; he is the most terrible of all when he lives without law, and without justice."
"An animal is equipped for sustaining its life; its senses provide it with an automatic code of action, an automatic knowledge of what is good for it or evil... Man has no automatic code of survival. His particular distinction from all other living species is the necessity to act in the face of alternatives by means of volitional choice."
"Man's unique reward, however, is that while animals survive by adjusting themselves to their background, man survives by adjusting his background to himself."
"As Cuvier could correctly describe a whole animal by the contemplation of a single bone, so the observer who has thoroughly understood one link in a series of incidents should be able to accurately state all the other ones, both before and after."
"HELPED are those whose ever act is a prayer for harmony in the Universe, for they are the restorers of balance to our planet. To them will be given the insight that every good act done anywhere in the cosmos welcomes the life of an animal or a child."
"HELPED are those who love all the colors of all the human beings, as they love all the colors of the animals and plants; none of their children, nor any of their ancestors, nor any parts of themselves, shall be hidden from them."
"But if by some miracle and all our struggle, the earth is spared, only justice to every living being will save humankind."
"The cat will mew, and dog will have his day."
"We are certainly in a common class with the beasts; every action of animal life is concerned with seeking bodily pleasure and avoiding pain."
"Everything in the world of things and animals is still filled with happening, which you can take part in."
"In the animal world no creature born to be a dove turns into a scavenger. This happens only among men."
"The animal is ignorant of the fact that he knows. The man is aware of the fact that he is ignorant."
"All the human and animal manure which the world wastes, if returned to the land, instead of being thrown into the sea, would suffice to nourish the world."
"To wade in marshes and sea margins is the destiny of certain bird, and they are so accurately made for this that they are imprisoned in those places. Each animal out of its habitat would starve. To the physician, each man, each woman, is an amplification of one organ. A soldier, a locksmith, a bank-clerk, and a dancer could not exchange functions. And thus we are victims of adaptation."
"What strength belongs to every plant and animal in nature. The tree or the brook has no duplicity, no pretentiousness, no show. It is, with all its might and main, what it is, and makes one and the same impression and effect at all times. All the thoughts of a turtle are turtle's, and of a rabbit, rabbit's. But a man is broken and dissipated by the giddiness of his will; he does not throw himself into his judgments; his genius leads him one way but 't is likely his trade or politics in quite another."
"The human animal is a beast that dies but the fact that he’s dying don’t give him pity for others."
