Zoos quotes
205 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside zoos — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"In my low periods, I wondered what was the point of creating art. For whom? Are we animating God? Are we talking to ourselves? And what was the ultimate goal? To have one's work caged in art's great zoos - the Modern, the Met, the Louvre?"
"I started thinking what could happen with my art and I realized that the biggest thing that could is that it winds up in a museum. It's like finding a rare animal and putting it in the zoo."
"Most people are really nice but some stare, like you're some kind of zoo exhibit and not a real person with real feelings."
"I think the discomfort that some people feel in going to the monkey cages at the zoo is a warning sign."
"To me, these people were as exotic as animals in a zoo. I'd never seen anything like them. I wasn't sure whether I wanted to be one of them or simply live among them taking notes and photographs."
"So I can go and let out everything that I feel about every bogus weekly cover, every single bogus skit, every single rumor and barber shop-everything that people feel is ok to treat celebrities like zoo animals, or act like what they're saying is not serious, or their lives are not serious or their dreams are not serious."
"Really, a young Atheist cannot guard his faith too carefully. Dangers lie in wait for him on every side. You must not do, you must not even try to do, the will of the Father unless you are prepared to "know of the doctrine." All my acts, desires, and thoughts were to be brought into harmony with universal Spirit. For the first time I examined myself with a seriously practical purpose. And there I found what appalled me; a zoo of lusts, a bedlam of ambitions, a nursery of fears, a harem of fondled hatreds. My name was legion."
"...there was the annual Fourth of July picketing at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. ...I thought it was ridiculous to have to go there in a skirt. But I did it anyway because it was something that might possibly have an effect. I remember walking around in my little white blouse and skirt and tourists standing there eating their ice cream cones and watching us like the zoo had opened."
"As an actor, to go and see those shows - great plays like 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' and Clifford Odets's 'Golden Boy' - it's so exhilarating. I'd personally love to perform the role of Jerry in Edward Albee's 'The Zoo Story.' He's a transient, lost soul, and an example of humanity at its rawest."
"Your own space, man, it's so important. That's why we were doomed because we didn't have any. It is like monkeys in a zoo. They die. You know, everything needs to be left alone."
"I was driven to Whipsnade one sunny morning. When we set out I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God, and when we reached the zoo I did. Yet I had not exactly spent the journey in thought. Nor in great emotion. “Emotional” is perhaps the last word we can apply to some of the most important events. It was more like when a man, after a long sleep, still lying motionless in bed, becomes aware that he is now awake."
"Instead of answering her as soon as he saw her hair grow electric, her face more vivid, her eyes like lightning, her body restless and jerky like a racehorse’s, he retired behind this wall of objective understanding, this gentle testing and acceptance of her, just as one watches an animal in the zoo and smiles at his antics, but is not drawn into this mood. It was this which left Lilith in a state of isolation - indeed, like a wild animal in an absolute desert."
"Am I my brother's keeper? Yes. Interestingly, in my case, I share that honor with the Prospect Park Zoo."
"And when you come back to Japan next summer, let's have that date or whatever you want to call it. We can go to the zoo or the botanical garden or the aquarium, and then we'll have the most politically correct and scrumptious omelets we can find."
"When you are brought up in a zoo, you know what's going on in the monkey house. You see a couple of monkeys loose and one is President and one is Vice President, you know it's trouble. Monkeys make trouble."
"Sportswriters are a rude and brainless subculture of fascist drunks, a gang of vicious monkeys jerking off in a zoo cage... more disgusting by nature than maggots oozing out the carcass of a dead animal."
