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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"Man is a rational animal – so at least I have been told. Throughout a long life, I have looked diligently for evidence in favour of this statement, but so far I have not had the good fortune to come across it, though I have searched in many countries spread over three continents."
"The arithmetical machine produces effects that approach nearer to thought than all the actions of animals. But it does nothing that would enable us to attribute will to it, as to the animals."
"Without the help of selfishness, the human animal would never have developed. Egoism is the vine by which man hoisted himself out of the swamp and escaped from the jungle."
"If you like a person you say 'let's go into business together.' Man is a social animal after all, but such partnerships are fraught with danger."
"Animals on factory farms and slaughter houses are mutilated, drugged and abused in ways that would be illegal if dogs or cats were treated similarly. The problem is that farm animals are exempted from the Animal Welfare Act. Therefore, companies often act with impunity."
"It is humankind's duty to respect all life, not only animals have feelings but even also trees and plants."
"Though our conduct seems so very different from that of the higher animals, the primary instincts are much alike in them and in us."
"Considered logically this concept is not identical with the totality of sense impressions referred to; but it is an arbitrary creation of the human (or animal) mind."
"No one may shut his eyes to think the pain, which is therefore not visible to him, is non-existent."
"The thinking man must oppose all cruel customs no matter how deeply rooted in tradition or surrounded by a halo. We need a boundless ethics which will include the animals also. My life is full of meaning to me. The life around me must be full of significance to it. If I want others to respect my life, then I must respect the other life I see however strange it may be to mine. Ethics in our western world has hitherto been largely limited to the relation of man to man... but that is a limited ethics."
"It is the fate of every truth to be an object of ridicule when it is first acclaimed."
"To be enlightened is to be aware, always, of total reality in its immanent otherness - to be aware of it and yet remain in a condition to survive as an animal. Our goal is to discover that we have always been where we ought to be. Unhappily we make the task exceedingly difficult for ourselves."
"Chinese civilisation is so systematic that wild animals have been abolished on principle."
"One main factor in the upward trend of animal life has been the power of wandering."
"It has been generally the custom of writers on natural history to take the habits and instincts of animals as the fixed point, and to consider their structure and organization as specially adapted to be in accordance with them."
"I've always loved animals and I always thought that they were, if not better, then the absolute equal of any two legged creature that God ever created."
"I always felt that with luxury came cruelty. I do my best to live a happy, prosperous life, but I don't indulge in a lot of luxury. My husband and I are very mindful of what we eat and what we wear. I don't visit places that exploit animals or buy things that are derived from cruelty. I'm sure I'm not perfect, but I make a conscious effort to do no harm and always support people, places, or things that are on the up-and-up."
"It's extremely important that, as writers, we give a voice to those who don't have voices, including the other animals that we share the planet with and the places that are endangered or being lost."
"Little by little, in telling Sam all these details, I got to see the bigger point of baseball, that it can give us back ourselves. We’re a crowd animal, a highly gregarious, communicative species, but the culture and the age and all the fear that fills our days have put almost everyone into little boxes, each of us all alone. But baseball, if we love it, gives us back our place in the crowd. It restores us."
"You lay, a small knuckle on my white bed; lay, that fist like a snail, small and strong at my breast. Your lips are animals; you are fed with love. At first, hunger is not wrong."
