Best animal & species Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings Page 2

“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

“At last gleams of light have come, and I am almost convinced (quite contrary to opinion I started with) that species are not (it is like confessing a murder) immutable. Heaven forfend me from Lamarck nonsense of a 'tendency to progression', 'adaptations from the slow willing of animals', &c! But the conclusions I am led to are not widely different from his; though the means of change are wholly so. I think I have found out (here's presumption!) the simple way by which species become exquisitely adapted to various ends.”

Source: Charles Darwin's Works: The life and letters of Charles Darwin... ed. by his son, Francis Darwin. 2v

“Once women invented farming, and began to keep and breed animals, they discovered the crucial function of the rooster and the henhouse. Fathers suddenly gained a function, and could do what only women had been able to do for all those millions of years--point at a child and say, "That is my son," "That is my daughter." Patriarchy quickly followed, beginning about five thousand years ago; a very short time in the development of our species, but covering all of recorded history.”

“Not only does every animal live at the expense of some other animal or plant, but the very plants are at war.... The individuals of a species are like the crew of a foundered ship, and none but good swimmers have a chance of reaching the land.”

Doe War Individual Chance Animal Land Evolution Plant Species Ships Reaching Expenses Crew Swimmer

Book:Collected essays

Source: Collected essays

“Man is taking over the forests and polluting the oceans, the animal species are threatened. I try to contribute as much as I can. We're really messing up our environment. I try to get people more aware of what's going on so that they can, even in a local way, try to prevent pollution to their lakes and rivers and prevent nuclear dumping in the oceans - it's bad enough that they're doing it in residential areas, but putting it in the ocean! Eventually it's going to pollute our food resources and, if the ocean dies, we're gone.”

“A somewhat casual observer from outer space might well deduce that the course of evolution in this planet had produced a species of large four-wheeled bugs with detachable brains; peculiar animals which rested when they sent their brains away from them but performed in rather predictable manner when their brains were recalled.”

Wells Might Courses Space Animal Brain Four Planets Evolution Species Peculiar Observers Bugs Casual Predictable Outer Space

Author:Kenneth E. Boulding

“Let us investigate more closely this property common to animal and plant, this power of producing its likeness, this chain of successive existences of individuals, which constitutes the real existence of the species.”

Real Individual Animal Common Existence Property Plant Species Chains

Author:Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon

“While ants exist in just the right numbers for the rest of the living world, humans have become too numerous. If we were to vanish today, the land environment would return to the fertile balance that existed before the human population explosion. Only a dozen or so species, among which are the crab louse and a mite that lives in the oil glands of our foreheads, depend on us entirely. But if ants were to disappear, tens of thousands of other plants and animal species would perish also, simplifying and weakening land ecosystems almost everywhere.”

“There is today a frightful disappearance of living species, be they plants or animals. And it's clear that the density of human beings has become so great, if I can say so, that they have begun to poison themselves. And the world in which I am finishing my existence is no longer a world that I like.”

Ifs World Humans I Can Today Human Beings Animal Existence Clear Plant Species Poison Finishing Disappearance Density

Author:Claude Levi-Strauss

“We discover too late that we have turned a blind eye to the extinction of a species that is essential to the balance of life in a particular context. Or we discover too late that the importation of a foreign life-form, animal or vegetable, has upset local ecosystems, damaging soil or neighbouring life-forms. We discover that we have come near the end of supplies-of fossil-fuels for example -on which we have built immense structures of routine expectation.”

Source: Faith in the Public Square

“Our problem with limited resources is not primarily overpopulation; it is greed. Our problem with pollution is not the invention of fluorocarbons or mass transport; it is irresponsibility. The loss of an acre of forest every second, the mass slaughter of elephants for their ivory, the extinction of entire species of plants, insects and animals all over the world is not something that "just happens" because there are more of us human beings. It happens because the race of ruling beings put in charge has almost wholly lost its sense of stewardship. We have turned away from God.”

“I've had a love of animals from birth. I love getting to know other species. We should all be aware that there is not one thing we can give a wild animal in captivity that they need.”

Knows Needs Giving Should Animal One Thing Birth Species Wild Animal Captivity

Author:Tippi Hedren

“Stupefaction overrode all other emotion when I saw this creature on the lookout, lying in wait for the game. For it was an ape, a large-sized gorilla. It was in vain that I told myself I was losing my reason: I could entertain not the slightest doubt as to his species. But an encounter with a gorilla on the planet Soror was not the essential outlandishness of the situation. This for me lay in the fact that the ape was correctly dressed, like a man of our world, and above all that he wore his clothes in such an easy manner.”

Men World Reason Facts Lying Games Easy Waiting Animal Emotion Situation Doubt Saws Planets Creatures Essentials Clothes Losing Lays Species Vain Encounters Our World Apes Gorillas

Author:Pierre Boulle

“For a long time, science has gone in the direction of sort of putting people in their place. We learned that the sun doesn't revolve around the Earth, the Earth revolves around the sun; we learned that we're just another species, evolved, like all other species, so we're just another animal, really.”

People Long Earth Animal Sun Gone Long Time Species

Author:Elizabeth Kolbert

“And at this moment in history, our core value happens to be the raw, aching truth of the human predicament. It may also be the only belief that can save us as a species. A species that will continue to find comfort and delight in the companionship of animals, the miracle of birds, the colours of the corals and the majesty of the forests. We are in it together, on this blue spinning marble in the cold and silent void. And we must act on that belief, if we are going to be able to continue to live a good life here, in this beautiful and fragile country, on this lovely planet, our only home.”

“Impartial observers from other planets would consider ours an utterly bizarre enclave if it were populated by birds, defined as flying animals, that nevertheless rarely or never actually flew. They would also be perplexed if they encountered in our seas, lakes, rivers, and ponds, creatures defined as swimmers that never did any swimming. But they would be even more surprised to encounter a species defined as a thinking animal if, in fact, the creature very rarely indulged in actual thinking.”

Source: Dumbth: The Lost Art of Thinking : with 101 Ways to Reason Better & Improve Your Mind

“When it comes to wilderness animals we have to make an effort to preserve what areas we can that they can be themselves in. Its come to a point though, clearly, where some species have to be cared for by humans if they are not going to disappear altogether.”

Ifs Humans Animal Effort Areas Species Disappear Preserves Wilderness

Author:Matthew Fox

“In every part of the universe we observe means adjusted with the nicest artifice to the ends which they are intended to produce; and in the mechanism of a plant, or animal body, admire how every thing is contrived for advancing the two great purposes of nature, the support of the individual, and the propagation of the species.”

Mean Two Ends Body Purpose Universe Individual Animal Support Produce Plant Species Admire Mechanism Advancing Artifice Propagation

Book:The Essential Adam Smith

Source: The Essential Adam Smith

“The point of sloths is to bring a sense of wonder, magic, and happiness to all other species. Did you know that every other animal's favorite animal is the sloth?”

Knows Animal Wonder Magic Species Sloth Did You Know Sense Of Wonder

Author:Ann Burton

“We see them [animals] as the Ice Age is ending and we know that actually in the long run, they're not going to make it. And there's something beautiful about that, beautifully sad. The way the characters are woven together in the film adds to the emotion because they need each other. The message is that it doesn't matter what species you are, you can still love each other and that is a fantastic message.”

Knows Way Needs Long Stills Matter Character Running Age Together Beautiful Film Animal Emotion Messages Add Species Ice Fantastic Long Runs Love Each Other Woven Something Beautiful Ice Age

Author:John Leguizamo

“The discovery informs about the origins and early evolution of arthropods, the most ubiquitous, species-rich, morphologically diverse and successful animal group on Earth.”

Earth Animal Successful Rich Groups Evolution Discovery Species Diverse Arthropods

Author:Benjamin Van Roy

“Shelters, conservationists, those concerned about unnecessary cruelty toward the animals we eat, and people working against species extinction fight to preserve the true riches of our planet, our real inheritance. These are big, critical goals.”

People Real Bigs Fighting Goal Animal Planets Concerned Species Critical Riches Cruelty Preserves Shelter Unnecessary Extinction Inheritance Our Planet True Riches Species Extinction

Author:April Gornik

“What a lonely species we are, searching for signals of life from other galaxies, adopting companion animals, visiting parks and zoos to commune with other beasts. In the process, we discover our shared identity.”

Process Animal Identity Lonely Species Beast Parks Companion Signals Galaxy Visiting Zoos Adopting Communes Companion Animals

Author:Diane Ackerman

“Man, who preys both on the vegetable and animal species, is himself a prey to neither. He too possesses the reproductive principle far beyond the degree requisite for the bare continuance of his species. What becomes of the surplus of human life to which this principle is competent?”

Men Humans Animal Principles Degrees Species Human Life Vegetables Prey Competent Surplus Continuance

Book:1829-1836

Source: 1829-1836

“Female animals defending their young are notoriously ferocious and lack the playful delight in combat which characterizes the mock combats of males of the same species. There seems very little ground for claiming that the mother of young children is more peaceful, more responsible, and more thoughtful for the welfare of the human race than is her husband or brother.”

Humans Children Littles Seems Young Mother Animal Race Brother Husband Female Responsible Species Males Delight Peaceful Welfare Human Race Thoughtful Combat Mock Young Children

Author:Margaret Mead

“It is obvious that the great majority of humans throughout history have had grossly, even ridiculously, unrealistic concepts of the world. Man is, among many other things, the mistaken animal, the foolish animal. Other species doubtless have much more limited ideas about the world, but what ideas they do have are much less likely to be wrong and are never foolish. White cats do not denigrate black, and dogs do not ask Baal, Jehovah, or other Semitic gods to perform miracles for them.”

Men World Humans Ideas Asks Black White Animal Dog Concepts Cat Miracle Majority Species Obvious Foolish Mistaken Jehovah

Author:George Gaylord Simpson

“The law of nature instructs most animals to cherish and educate their infant progeny. The law of reason inculcates to the human species the returns of filial piety.”

Humans Reason Law Animal Return Species Cherish Educate Infant Laws Of Nature Piety Human Species Progeny Filial Filial Piety

Book:Guizot's Gibbon: History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Source: Guizot's Gibbon: History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

“Herein lies our problem. If we level that much land to grow rice and whatever, then no other animal could live there except for some insect pest species. Which is very unfortunate.”

Ifs Problem Lying Grows Animal Levels Land Species Unfortunate Insects Rice Pests

Author:Steve Irwin

“Take the crocodile, for example, my favorite animal. There are 23 species. Seventeen of those species are rare or endangered. They're on the way out, no matter what anyone does or says, you know.”

Knows Way Doe Matter Animal Example No Matter What Species My Favorite Seventeen Crocodiles

Author:Steve Irwin

Animal Quotes

Related topics

Animal Quotes