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Animal Quotes

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Animal Quotes

“If animals could speak, mankind would weep.”

Ifs Speak Animal Mankind

Author:Anthony Douglas

“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe. One fancies a heart like our own must be beating in every crystal and cell, and we feel like stopping to speak to the plants and animals as friendly fellow-mountaineers. Nature as a poet, an enthusiastic workingman, becomes more and more visible the farther and higher we go.”

Source: My First Summer in the Sierra: Illustrated Edition

“Mr. J.S. Mill speaks, in his celebrated work, "Utilitarianism," of the social feelings as a "powerful natural sentiment," and as "the natural basis of sentiment for utilitarian morality," but on the previous page he says, "if, as is my own belief, the moral feelings are not innate, but acquired, they are not for that reason less natural." It is with hesitation that I venture to differ from so profound a thinker, but it can hardly be disputed that the social feelings are instinctive or innate in the lower animals; and why should they not be so in man?”

Source: The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

“There is one god, greatest among gods and men, who bears no similarity to humans either in shape or thought... but humans believe that the gods are born like themselves, and that the gods wear clothes and have bodies like humans and speak in the same way... but if cows and horses or lions had hands or could draw with the hands and manufacture the things humans can make, then horses would draw the forms of gods like horses, cows like cows, and they would make the gods' bodies resemble those which each kind of animal had itself.”

Ifs Men Way Believe Humans Kind Body Hands Form Religion Speak Born Animal Bears Morality Shapes Clothes Draws Horse Lions Cows Similarity

Author:Xenophanes

“For centuries poets, some poets, have tried to give a voice to the animals, and readers, some readers, have felt empathy and sorrow. If animals did have voices, and they could speak with the tongues of angels-at the very least with the tongues of angels-they would be unable to save themselves from us. What good would language do? Their mysterious otherness has not saved them, nor have their beautiful songs and coats and skins and shells and eyes.”

Source: Ill Nature: Rants and Reflections on Humanity and Other Animals

“Why can't I believe? she asked the darkness. Behind her eyelids she saw an animal. It was golden colour, with gentle green eyes and canine teeth, and curly wool instead of fur. It opened its mouth, but it did not speak. Instead, it yawned.It gazed at her. She gazed at it. "You are the effect of a carefully calibrated blend of plant toxins," she told it.Then she fell asleep.”

Believe Eye Speak I Believe Animal Behinds Darkness Saws Effects Mouths Green Plant Teeth Golden Gentle Colour Fur Canine Eyelids Wool Toxins Green Eyes

Author:Margaret Atwood

“Nature is not silent, and never was a name more derisively inappropriate than when we speak of these non-human creatures who hoot and crow and bray as the dumb animals.”

Humans Names Speak Animal Creatures Silent Dumb Crow Inappropriate Hoot

Author:Winifred Holtby

“It is said that angels come as thoughts, as visions, as dreams, as animals, as the light on the water or in clouds and rainbows, and as people too. Are they walking on this earth as people in disguise? Or do they appear for that one moment and vanish into ether again? Or is it really us, mere humans, who for a moment are picked up by the hand of God and made to speak unwittingly the words another needs to hear, or to hold out a life line to another soul?”

Source: A Book of Angels: Reflections on Angels Past and Present, and True Stories of How They Touch Our L ives

“Although other animals cannot reason nor speak the way humans do, this does not give us the right to do with them as we like. Even though our supposed possession of a soul and superior intelligence are used to create an arbitrary dividing line over rights, the fact remains that all animals have the capacity to experience pain and suffering, and in suffering they are our equals.”

Way Giving Humans Doe Soul Reason Facts Pain Used Suffering Speak Lines Animal Rights Capacity Remains Possession Superiors Arbitrary Dividing Pain And Suffering Superior Intelligence

Author:Nathaniel Altman

“The river, for example, is the living symbol of all the life it sustains or nourishes - fish, aquatic insects, water ouzels, otter, fisher, deer, elk, bear, and all other animals, including man, who are dependent on it or who enjoy it for its sight, its sound, or its life. The river as plaintiff speaks for the ecological unit of life that is part of it.”

Men Speak Enjoy Sound Water Animal Example Bears Rivers Sight Environmental Including Fishes Symbols Dependent Units Insects Ecological Deer Otters Elk

Author:William O. Douglas

“As poets, we don't accept oppression; we are about a freedom of spirit, or whatever you want to call it. I think environmental concerns have to go to the deep place, so we speak from a place of great empathy for the planet - for the disadvantaged people, animals, places, cultures.”

People Thinking Want Spirit Culture Speak Animal Accepting Planets Poet Empathy Concern Environmental Oppression Disadvantaged

Author:Alison Hawthorne Deming

“The question is not can animals speak but can they suffer.”

Suffering Speak Animal

Author:Jeremy Bentham

“Last year I gave several lectures on "Intelligence and Musicality among Animals" ... Today I am going to speak to you about "Intelligence and Musicality among Critics" ... The subject is much the same, with some modifications, of course.”

Years Today Lasts Courses Speak Animal Subjects Critics Last Year Lectures Modification Musicality

Author:Erik Satie

“Although homosexual behavior is very common in the animal world, it seems to be very uncommon that individual animals have a long-lasting predisposition to engage in such behavior to the exclusion of heterosexual activities. Thus, a homosexual orientation, if one can speak of such thing in animals, seems to be a rarity.”

Ifs World Long Seems Individual Speak Animal Common Activity Behavior Lasting Homosexual Orientation Uncommon Exclusion Animal World Rarity Long Lasting

Book:Queer Science: The Use and Abuse of Research Into Homosexuality

Source: Queer Science: The Use and Abuse of Research Into Homosexuality

“The ethic of Reverence for Life prompts us to keep each other alert to what troubles us and to speak and act dauntlessly together in discharging the responsibility that we feel. It keeps us watching together for opportunities to bring some sort of help to animals in recompense for the great misery that men inflict upon them, and thus for a moment we escape from the incomprehensible horror of existence.”

Men Feels Moments Helping Together Opportunity Speak Animal Existence Responsibility Trouble Horror Ethics Misery Reverence Prompts Reverence For Life Recompense

Author:Albert Schweitzer

“Animals were my passion from even before I could speak apparently. When I was about 10, 11 I fell in love with Tarzan.”

Passion Speak Animal My Passion

Author:Jane Goodall