Animal Quotes - Page 11

• I abhor vivisection with my whole soul. All the scientific discoveries stained with innocent blood I count as of no consequence.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Philosophical, Discovery, Vegetarianism

  Mahatma Gandhi (2005). “All Men Are Brothers”, p.94, A&C Black

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• We do not ask what hope of gain makes a little bird warble, since we know that it takes delight in singing because it is for that very singing that the bird was made, so there is no need to ask why the human mind undertakes such toil in seeking out these secrets of the heavens. ... And just as other animals, and the human body, are sustained by food and drink, so the very spirit of Man, which is something distinct from Man, is nourished, is increased, and in a sense grows up on this diet of knowledge, and is more like the dead than the living if it is touched by no desire for these things.

  Johannes Kepler

  Growing Up, Knowledge, Science

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• My picture of the world is drawn in perspective and not like a model to scale. The foreground is occupied by human beings and the stars are all as small as three-penny bits. I don't really believe in astronomy, except as a complicated description of part of the course of human and possibly animal sensation. I apply my perspective not merely to space but also to time. In time the world will cool and everything will die; but that is a long time off still and its present value at compound discount is almost nothing.

  Frank P. Ramsey

  Stars, Believe, Science

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• You ask about my opinion on vivisection. I quite agree that it is justifiable for real investigations on physiology; but not for mere damnable and detestable curiosity.

  Charles Darwin

  Real, Science, Curiosity

  "Life and Letters of Charles Darwin: the Evolution".

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• The best thing about animals is they don't talk much.

  Thornton Wilder

  Best Things

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• For Nature is accustomed to rehearse with certain large, perhaps baser, and all classes of wild (animals), and to place in the imperfect the rudiments of the perfect animals.

  Marcello Malpighi

  Nature, Science, Class

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• Natural bodies are divided into three kingdomes of nature: viz. the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms. Minerals grow, Plants grow and live, Animals grow, live, and have feeling.

  Carl Linnaeus

  Nature, Science, Vegetables

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• All our knowledge merely helps us to die a more painful death than the animals that know nothing. A day will come when science will turn upon its error and no longer hesitate to shorten our woes. A day will come when it will dare and act with certainty; when life, grown wiser, will depart silently at its hour, knowing that it has reached its term.

  Maurice Maeterlinck

  Death, Knowledge, Science

  Maurice Maeterlinck (1913). “Our Eternity”

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• If only the fit survive and if the fitter they are the longer they survive, then Volvox must have demonstrated its superb fitness more conclusively than any higher animal ever has.

  Joseph Wood Krutch

  Science, Survival, Fit

  Joseph Wood Krutch, Paul Landacre (2005). “The Great Chain of Life”, p.22, University of Iowa Press

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• There is in all animals a sense of duty that man condescends to call instinct.

  Robert Breault

  Men, Humanity, Instinct

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• The poet alone knows astronomy, chemistry, vegetation, and animation, for he does not stop at these facts, but employs them as signs. He knows why the plain, or meadow of space, was strown with these flowers we call suns, and moons, and stars; why the deep is adorned with animals, with men, and gods; for, in every word he speaks he rides on them as the horses of thought.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Horse, Stars, Flower

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.192, Penguin

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• Very little of the great cruelty shown by men can really be attributed to cruel instinct. Most of it comes from thoughtlessness or inherited habit. The roots of cruelty, therefore, are not so much strong as widespread. But the time must come when inhumanity protected by custom and thoughtlessness will succumb before humanity championed by thought. Let us work that this time may come.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Strong, Philosophical, Men

  "Memoirs of Childhood and Youth". Book by Albert Schweitzer, 1924.

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• Animals, even plants, lie to each other all the time, and we could restrict the research to them, putting off the real truth about ourselves for the several centuries we need to catch our breath. What is it that enables certain flowers to resemble nubile insects, or opossums to play dead, or female fireflies to change the code of their flashes in order to attract, and then eat, males of a different species?

  Lewis Thomas

  Truth, Lying, Real

  Lewis Thomas (1984). “Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony”, Bantam

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• Of what use are the great number of petrifactions, of different species, shape and form which are dug up by naturalists? Perhaps the collection of such specimens is sheer vanity and inquisitiveness. I do not presume to say; but we find in our mountains the rarest animals, shells, mussels, and corals embalmed in stone, as it were, living specimens of which are now being sought in vain throughout Europe. These stones alone whisper in the midst of general silence.

  Carl Linnaeus

  Science, Vanity, Europe

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• Man is rated the highest animal, at least among all animals who returned the questionnaire.

  Robert Breault

  Men, Mankind, Miscellaneous

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• From the oyster to the eagle, from the swine to the tiger, all animals are to be found in men and each of them exists in some man, sometimes several at the time. Animals are nothing but the portrayal of our virtues and vices made manifest to our eyes, the visible reflections of our souls. God displays them to us to give us food for thought.

  Victor Hugo

  Nature, Eye, Reflection

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• All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

  George Orwell

  Funny, Sarcastic, Sarcasm

  Animal Farm ch. 10 (1945) See Bierce 141

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• A true sportsman is a hunter lost in the woods and out of ammo.

  Robert Breault

  Hunters, Woods, Ammo

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• When I play with my cat, who knows whether she is not amusing herself with me more than I with her.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Funny, Humor, Cat

  Essais bk. 2, ch. 12 (1580)

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• Being a humanitarian, supporting animal rights activists, human rights activists, it's all the same.

  Daryl Hannah

  Rights, Humanitarian, Activist

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• The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men.

  Alice Walker

  Meaningful, Nature, Men

  "The Dreaded Comparison: Animal Slavery and Human Slavery". Book by Marjorie Spiegel, Foreword, 1996.

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• The fate of animals is of greater importance to me than the fear of appearing ridiculous; it is indissolubly connected with the fate of men.

  Emile Zola

  Fear, Fate, Men

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• The assumption that animals are without rights, and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance, is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Positive, Philosophical, Compassion

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2016). “101 Facts of life”, p.8, Publishdrive

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• He is your friend, your partner, your defender, your dog. You are his life, his love, his leader. He will be yours, faithful and true, to the last beat of his heart. You owe it to him to be worthy of such devotion.
  
  
  
  Our dogs will love and admire the meanest of us, and feed our colossal vanity with their uncritical homage.

  Agnes Repplier

  Dog, Heart, Vanity

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• The Epicureans, according to whom animals had no creation, doe suppose that by mutation of one into another, they were first made; for they are the substantial part of the world; like as Anaxagoras and Euripides affirme in these tearmes: nothing dieth, but in changing as they doe one for another they show sundry formes.

  Plutarch

  Change, Science, World

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