Animal quotes

Animal

6.3K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.

6.3K quotes

Explore further

Browse quotes that often appear alongside animal — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.

Quote collection

Animal quotes (page 76 of 316)

Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.

Samuel Beckett Playwright, Novelist
Animal

"I don’t like animals. It’s a strange thing, I don’t like men and I don’t like animals. As for God, he is beginning to disgust me."

Read quote 3 likes
Ralph Waldo Emerson Essayist, Philosopher, Poet
Animal

"All things are flowing, even those that seem immovable. The adamant is always passing into smoke. The plants imbibe the materialswhich they want from the air and the ground. They burn, that is, exhale and decompose their own bodies into the air and earth again. The animal burns, or undergoes the like perpetual consumption. The earth burns, the mountains burn and decompose, slower, but incessantly."

Read quote 3 likes
Ralph Waldo Emerson Essayist, Philosopher, Poet
Animal

"The true thrift is always to spend on the higher plane; to invest and invest, with keener avarice, that he may spend in spiritualcreation, and not in augmenting animal existence. Nor is the man enriched, in repeating the old experiments of animal sensation; nor unless through new powers and ascending pleasures he knows himself by the actual experience of higher good to be already on the way to the highest."

Read quote 3 likes
Ralph Waldo Emerson Essayist, Philosopher, Poet
Animal

"To the men of this world, to the animal strength and spirits, to the men of practical power, whilst immersed in it, the man of ideas appears out of his reason. They alone gave reason."

Read quote 3 likes
Ralph Waldo Emerson Essayist, Philosopher, Poet
Animal

"But in every constitution some large degree of animal vigor is necessary as material foundation for the higher qualities of the art."

Read quote 3 likes
Ralph Waldo Emerson Essayist, Philosopher, Poet
Animal

"The intellect searches out the Absolute order of things as they stand in the mind of God, and without the colors of affection. The intellectual and the active powers seem to succeed each other, and the exclusive activity of the one generates the exclusive activity of the other. There is something unfriendly in each to the other, but they are like the alternate periods of feeding and working in animals; each prepares and will be followed by the other."

Read quote 3 likes
Ralph Waldo Emerson Essayist, Philosopher, Poet
Animal

"The poise of a plant, the bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind, the vital resources of every vegetable and animal, are also demonstrations of the self-sufficing, and therefore self-relying soul. All history from its highest to its trivial passages is the various record of this power."

Read quote 3 likes
Ralph Waldo Emerson Essayist, Philosopher, Poet
Animal

"Perhaps it is the lowest of the qualities of an orator, but it is, on so many occasions, of chief importance,--a certain robust and radiant physical health; or--shall I say?--great volumes of animal heat."

Read quote 3 likes
Ralph Waldo Emerson Essayist, Philosopher, Poet
Animal

"The population of the world is a conditional population; these are not the best, but the best that could live in the existing state of soils, gases, animals, and morals: the best that could yet live; there shall be a better, please God."

Read quote 3 likes
Terence McKenna Ethnobotanist, Philosopher, Writer
Animal

"What they [psychedelics] cause is what I'm advocating, a fundamental revaluation of cultural values, because culture as we're practicing it currently is causing a lot of pain to a lot of people, and animals, and ecosystems, none of whom were ever allowed to vote on whether they wanted this process to go in this direction."

Read quote 3 likes
Terence McKenna Ethnobotanist, Philosopher, Writer
Animal

"All the accoutrements that distinguish us from animal existence were put in place when we had a different kind of mind than we have now. We didn't have a mind that favored role specialization, and male dominance, and anxiety over female sexual activity related to feelings of male ownership. That all came later."

Read quote 3 likes
Terence McKenna Ethnobotanist, Philosopher, Writer
Animal

"Since the very beginning of culture, what we seem to be are animals which take in raw material and excrete it imprinted with ideas."

Read quote 3 likes
Terence McKenna Ethnobotanist, Philosopher, Writer
Animal

"But technology is the real skin of our species. Humanity, correctly seen in the context of the last five hundred years, is an extruder of technological material. We take in matter that has a low degree of organization; we put it through mental filters, and we extrude jewelry, gospels, space shuttles. This is what we do. We are like coral animals embedded in a technological reef of extruded psychic objects. All our tool making implies our belief in an ultimate tool. That tool is the flying saucer, or the soul, exteriorized in three-dimensional space."

Read quote 3 likes
Terence McKenna Ethnobotanist, Philosopher, Writer
Animal

"Inwardness is the characteristic feature of the vegetable rather than the animal approach to existence. The animals move, migrate and swarm, while plants hold fast. Plants live in a dimension characterised by solid state, the fixed and the enduring. If there is movement in the consciousness of plants then it must be the movement of spirit and attention in the domain of vegetal imagination. (...) This is the truth that the shamans have always known and practiced. Awareness of the green side of mind was called Veriditas by the twelfth century visionary Hildegard Von Bingen."

Read quote 3 likes
Terence McKenna Ethnobotanist, Philosopher, Writer
Animal

"We are like coral animals embedded in a technological reef of extruded psychic objects...All our tool-making implies our belief in an ultimate tool."

Read quote 3 likes
Terence McKenna Ethnobotanist, Philosopher, Writer
Animal

"At the interface of the say-able and the unsay-able is the novel, the new, the never before seen, said or done. And that's what I think it's important to try and bring out, ideas. Because I think we are the animals that bring back ideas."

Read quote 3 likes