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Animal Quotes

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Animal Quotes

“Leaving the complications of the human breakfast-table out of account, in an elemental sense, the egg only exists to produce the chicken. But the chicken does not exist only in order to produce another egg. He may also exist to amuse himself, to praise God, and even to suggest ideas to a French dramatist. Being a conscious life, he is, or may be, valuable in himself.”

Humans May Doe Ideas Order Animal Produce Creatures Conscious Accounts Praise Tables Leaving Valuable Eggs Chickens Breakfast Complication Elementals Praise God

Book:The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton

Source: The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton

“Once you begin to take yourself seriously as a leader or as a follower, as a modern or as a conservative, then you become a self-conscious, biting, and scratching little animal whose work is not of the slightest value or importance to anybody.”

Littles Self Values Animal Leader Modern Conscious Importance Conservative Followers Self Conscious Biting

Book:The Essays of Virginia Woolf: 1929-1932

Source: The Essays of Virginia Woolf: 1929-1932

“The fact of our deriving constant pleasure from whatever is a type or semblance of divine attributes, and from nothing but that which is so, is the most glorious of all that can be demonstrated of human nature; it not only sets a great gulf of specific separation between us and the lower animals, but it seems a promise of a communion ultimately deep, close, and conscious, with the Being whose darkened manifestations we here feebly and unthinkingly delight in.”

Humans Facts Seems Pleasure Animal Human Nature Divine Type Promise Conscious Constant Delight Separation Manifestation Glorious Attributes Communion Semblance

Book:Modern Painters: (pt.3) Of ideas of beauty

Source: Modern Painters: (pt.3) Of ideas of beauty

“Animals don't even try to look any different from what nature intended. They humbly wear their shells, scales, spines, plumes, pelts, and down. ... The conscious impulse to change one's appearance is found only among humans.”

Trying Humans Looks Different Found Animal Conscious Appearance Scales Authenticity Impulse Shells Spine

Book:Nonrequired Reading: Prose Pieces

Source: Nonrequired Reading: Prose Pieces

“There are a lot of obstacles in the way of our understanding animal intelligence - not the least being that we can't even agree whether nonhuman species are conscious. We accept that chimps and dolphins experience awareness; we like to think dogs and cats do. But what about mice and newts? What about a fly? Is anything going on there at all?”

Thinking Way Inspirational Motivational Understanding Animal Accepting Awareness Dog Conscious Cat Agree Species Obstacles Mice Dolphins Cat And Dog Newts Animal Intelligence

Author:Jeffrey Kluger

“It is just this rage for consideration that has betrayed the dog into his satellite position as the friend of man. The cat, an animal of franker appetites, preserves his independence. But the dog, with one eye ever on the audience, has been wheedled into slavery, and praised and patted into the renunciation of his nature. Once he ceased hunting and became man's plate-licker, the Rubicon was crossed. Thenceforth he was a gentleman of leisure; and except the few whom we keep working, the whole race grew more and more self-conscious, mannered and affected.”

Source: Memories and Portraits: Stevenson's Vol. 21

“The animal is one with its life activity. It does not distinguish the activity from itself. It is its activity. But man makes hislife activity itself an object of his will and consciousness. He has a conscious life activity. It is not a determination with which he is completely identified.”

Men Doe Animal Consciousness Objects Activity Conscious Determination Humankind

Book:Marx's Concept of Man: Including 'Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts'

Source: Marx's Concept of Man: Including 'Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts'

“My father so appropriately put it that we are certainly the only animal that makes conscious choices that are bad for our survival as a species.”

Choices Father Animal Survival Conscious Species

Author:Louise Leakey

“As a human being on Earth, you can't imagine friendship not being important in some other solar system or some other planet, or some other context of beings that are conscious. We even see it in animals. It is important for people on Earth to reach out or reach into someone.”

People Humans Important Earth Human Beings Animal Imagine Planets Conscious Reach Out Solar System

Author:Steve Martin

“Just as a stream flows smoothly on as long as it encounters no obstruction, so the nature of man and animal is such that we never really notice or become conscious of what is agreeable to our will; if we are to notice something, our will has to have been thwarted, has to have experienced a shock of some kind.”

Ifs Men Kind Long Has Beens Animal Sadness Sad Conscious Flow Streams Encounters Shock Nature Of Man Obstruction

Book:On the Suffering of the World

Source: On the Suffering of the World

“The magical approach is indeed the natural approach to life's experience. It is the adult version of childhood knowledge, the human version of the animals' knowledge, the conscious version of 'unconscious' comprehension.”

Humans Natural Animal Magic Childhood Approach Conscious Adults Versions Unconscious Comprehension

Author:Seth

“We talked about how easy it was to make the mistake of anthropomorphizing animals, and projecting our own feelings and perceptions on to them, where they were inappropriate and didn't fit. We simply had no idea what it was like being an extremely large lizard, and neither for that matter did the lizard, because it was not self-conscious about being an extremely large lizard, it just got on with the business of being one. To react with revulsion to its behavior was to make the mistake of applying criteria that are only appropriate to the business of being human.”

Humans Ideas Self Matter Feelings Easy Animal Mistake Fit Behavior Perception Conscious No Idea Appropriate Being Human Criteria Self Conscious Inappropriate Lizards Revulsion

Author:Douglas Adams

“History, call it 15,000 or 25,000 years of duration, is the story of an animal, some kind of complex animal, becoming conscious.”

Years Kind Stories Animal Becoming Conscious Complexes Duration

Author:Terence McKenna