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Cattle Quotes

Browse 249 quotes about Cattle.

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Cattle Quotes

“I found most of my friends quite content to be used as tax-material, even though the sums of money taken from them were employed against their own beliefs and interests. They had lived so long under the system of using others, and then in their turn being used by them, that they were like hypnotized subjects, and looked on this subjecting and using of each other as a part of the necessary and even Providential order of things. The great machine had taken possession of their souls.”

GovernmentPoliticsIndividualFreedomLibertySocietySlaveryLibertarianAnarchyIndividualismTaxationFree MarketCoercionCattleStatismVoluntaryismLaissez FaireTax
Author:Auberon Herbert
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“Escherichia colia O157:H7 is a relatively new strain of the common intestinal bacteria (no one had seen it before 1980) that thrives in feedlot cattle, 40 percent of which carry it in their gut. Ingesting as few as ten of these microbes can cause a fatal infection; they produce a toxin that destroys human kidneys.”

CattleBacteriaFactory FarmingFeedlots
Book:The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
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“Everything I thought about cows as an Easterner-come-west is wrong. They are not symbols of a noble culture of mounted herdsmen. They are not cute. They are an invasive species, Bos Taurus, a water-loving European animal not fit for arid climates, and their cancer-like effects on the land have not ceased.”

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Book:This Land: How Cowboys, Capitalism, and Corruption are Ruining the American West
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“When the longhorns could be gathered up and driven, it was theorized that the heat from the herd's mass attracted lightning. (Such was the radiant heat from a large herd that a cowboy's face would be blistered on whichever side of the herd he'd ridden by the day's end.) Their great horns also seemed to attract electricity, so that lightning and ground-electricity would bounce around from horn to horn throughout the herd - a phantasmagoric burning blue circuitry. The cracking of the cowboy's whips and the twitching of the cattle's tails also emitted sparkling "snakes of fire.”

CattleCowboysLonghorns
Book:The New Wolves: The Return of the Mexican Wolf to the American Southwest
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“Animals arrive at slaughter exhausted, thirsty, hungry, and terrified. Every year 100,000 factory farmed cattle arrive at slaughter injured, or too dispirited to walk; undercover investigators have repeatedly documented downed animals who are kicked, beaten, pushed with bulldozers, and dragged from transport trucks with ropes or a chain, though they are fully conscious, in pain, and bellowing pitifully. Cows exploited in the dairy industry, because they are older and their bodies have been exhausted by perpetual pregnancy, birthing, and milking, are among the most pathetic when they arrive at slaughter.”

VeganMilkCowsSlaughterCattleDairyAnimal EthicsFactory FarmsFactory Farmingm
Book:Speaking Up for Animals: An Anthology of Women's Voices
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“They don't have the time to take on animals with dietary restrictions and missing legs." "Do you think I don't know that? That's precisely why they're all here with me. No one else would take them. Angus, for example." She moved toward the Highland steer. "Some foolish merchant traveled to Scotland on holiday and decided to bring his wife a pet calf from the Highlands. Never stopped to think about the fact that he would grow." "Surely people aren't that stupid." "Oh, it happens all the time. But usually they make that mistake with pups or ponies. Not cattle." She shook her head. "They dehorned him in the worst, most painful way. When he came to me, the poor dear's wounds were infected. Infested, too. He could have perished from the fly-strike alone. That man was stupid, indeed. The only thing he got right was his choice of calf. Angus is exceedingly adorable." Adorable? Gabe eyed the beast. The animal stood as tall as Gabe's shoulder, and it smelled... the way cattle smell. Shaggy red fur covered its eyes like a blindfold, and its black, spongy nose glistened.”

CattlePenelope CampionSteerAngusAnimal Adoption
Book:The Wallflower Wager
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“Public grazing provides just one dollar out of every $2,500 of taxable income in the West, or 0.04 percent, and just one out of everything 1,400 jobs, or 0.07 percent. On both public and private lands in the eleven Western states, the livestock industry accounts for less than 0.5 percent of all income.”

EconomyCattleLivestock
Book:This Land: How Cowboys, Capitalism, and Corruption are Ruining the American West
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“The argument goes like this: even if public grazing contributes almost nothing to local economies and national food production, it nonetheless supports "an important western lifestyle and the rural west's social and cultural fabric." If we keep ranchers working on the range, on the big wide-open of the public domain, we ensure the historical continuity of a "custom" that has gone on for close to 150 years.”

CowsCattleCowboysGrazingRanchers
Book:This Land: How Cowboys, Capitalism, and Corruption are Ruining the American West
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“Pound for pound, these animals don’t add up to much. Dog fanciers with a couple of Rottweilers trump us in terms of sheer biomass. But, when it comes to sheer insistence, even the largest, most unruly dogs—or for that matter, your average herd of cattle—are no match for our ducks, geese, parrots, parakeets, turkeys, cats, rabbits, and other birds.”

DogAnimalsDucksTurkeysRabbitsCatsDuckCattlePetsParakeets
Book:Enslaved by Ducks
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“They walked gingerly across the junk-filled vacant lots to the local abattoir - a place of infinite fascination, with its strange sights and stranger smells. It was a thrill - because it outraged their every sense of animal love - to watch the killings. To see calm, innocent cattle led one by one into that room with the fetid smells and the stained, concrete floor always a'swish with running water. To see brawny, heavy-set Gus Milner and his equally big son, Charley, slip the snubbing rope through the ring in the cow's nose, and relentlessly draw its head down and down until its nose touched the heavy ring set in the floor, then fasten it. Their hearts did strange nip-ups just back of their mouths as one of the men would pick up the heavy sledge, and with one great, perfectly aimed blow, strike the animal just between and a bit above the eyes. They always jumped at the sudden slump as the carcass dropped, spraddled and lifeless, to the floor. ("The Shed")”

CattleSlaughterhouseAbbatroir
Book:Zacherley's Vulture Stew
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“Cattle and metal treasure were the main forms of wealth in ancient Ireland—metal because it was rare, and cattle because they were useful. Cattle provided milk to drink and to make into cheese, and hide and meat after they were dead. If a king demanded tribute from his subjects, it would probably be in the form of cattle—in fact, a wealthy farmer was called a bóiare, or “lord of cows.” In the famous poem Táin Bó Cuailnge, a major war starts because Queen Mebd discovers that her husband has one more bull than she does. Celtic chieftains spent quite a bit of their energy stealing cattle from one another. They even had a special word for this activity, táin. (Cattle raiding wasn’t just an amusement for the ancient Irish; modern Irish people were stealing one another’s cattle well into the twentieth century.)”

CattleCelticIrishQueen Mebd
Book:101 Things You Didn't Know About Irish History: The People, Places, Culture, and Tradition of the Emerald Isle
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“An intelligent and industrious crofter was proud to show our commissioner a cart of his own particular invention, and which, though furnished with what is proverbially regarded as a superfluity in the shape of of a 'third wheel', seemed exceedingly well adapted to its purpose. It was in use at the time for the purpose of driving home turnips from the field, the team consisting of the owner's two cows; and a more tractable or docile team it would have been difficult to imagine, indeed the assurance was given by a neighbour that not only did they obey their owner readily and efficiently in the draught, but that one of them, in particular, would come from the most distant part of the holding whenever he chose to call and wave his hat as a signal that her presence was wanted for business!”

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Book:Rural life in Victorian Aberdeenshire
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“Jeanie Deans, to our thinking, is the cream and perfection of Scott's work. She is tenfold more, because in all ordinary circumstances she would be much less interesting to us than a score of beautiful Rowenas, than even Flora or Rebecca. She is a piece of actual fact, real as the gentle landscape in which she is first enclosed, true to her kine that browse upon the slope - and yet she is the highest ideal that Scott has ever attained. A creature absolutely pure, absolutely truthful, yet of a tenderness, a forbearance, and long-suffering beyond the power of man, willing to die rather than lie.”

PurityTruthfulnessCattleForbearanceWalter ScottHeart Of MidlothianJeanie Deans
Author:Mrs. Oliphant
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“From an environmental point of view I have always believed that some of our native hardy breeds of cattle, such as Highlanders and Galloways, could be used in many nature conservation areas to replicate the activities of the ancient ox. This would be especially true if they were bred back to be capable of surviving all year round on natural vegetation, and were not to receive supplementary feeding or medicines.”

CattleNature ConservationAurochsGalloway CattleHighland CattleNative Breeds
Book:Restoring the Wild: Sixty Years of Rewilding Our Skies, Woods and Waterways
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“Earlier this year I visited the township of Bragar on the Isle of Lewis to research shielings. I was told the story of a local resident, Mr. Campbell, who lived through the end of transhumance on the island in the 1950s. Mr. Campbell readily recalled that the summers of his youth, spent at the family's àiridh on the Lewis moor, were the happiest time of his life; yet, when his family ceased to keep dairy cows on their croft, he refused to go out to the shieling any more: without the cows, what was the point? The essence of life at the shielings was gone.”

CattleDairy CowsLewisCroftingTranshumanceShielings
Book:Reforesting Scotland 72: Autumn/Winter 2025
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“You have driven me from the East to this place, and I have been here two thousand years or more....My friends, if you took me away from this land it would be very hard for me. I wish to die in this land. I wish to be an old man here....I have not wished to give even a part of it to the Great Father. Though he would give me a million dollars or more I would not give to him this land....When people want to slaughter cattle they drive them along until they get them to a corral, and then they slaughter them. So it was with us....My children have been exterminated; my brother has been killed.”

PeopleIfsMenWantGivingYearsChildrenHas BeensTwoHardWould BeDiesFatherWishMillionsLandBrotherThousandMy FriendsGive MeDollarsEastDrivenMy ChildrenMy BrotherNativeOld ManNative AmericanThousand YearsMillion DollarsSlaughterCattleGreat FatherWish To Die
Author:Standing Bear
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“I do not believe there ever was any life more attractive to a vigorous young fellow than life on a cattle ranch in those days. It was a fine, healthy life, too; it taught a man self-reliance, hardihood, and the value of instant decision...I enjoyed the life to the full.”

MenBelieveSelfYoungValuesDecisionTaughtFineHealthyFellowsEnjoyedAttractiveInstantSelf RelianceRelianceVigorousCattleHealthy Life
Book:The Rough Riders: An Autobiography
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“The weakling and the coward are out of place in a strong and free community. In a republic like ours the governing class is composed of the strong men who take the trouble to do the work of government; and if you are too timid or too fastidious or too careless to do your part in this work, then you forfeit your right to be considered one of the governing and you become one of the governed insteadone of the driven cattle of the political arena.”

IfsMenGovernmentPoliticalStrongCommunityClassTroubleDrivenCowardRepublicArenaGoverningCarelessCattleStrong ManForfeitFastidious
Book:Works
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“There's little in taking or giving, There's little in water or wine: This living, this living, this living, Was never a project of mine. Oh, hard is the struggle, and sparse is The gain of the one at the top, For art is a form of catharsis, And love is a permanent flop, And work is the province of cattle, And rest's for a clam in a shell, So I'm thinking of throwing the battle - Would you kindly direct me to hell?”

ThinkingGivingLittlesArtHardFormWaterLove IsStruggleHellMinesBattleProjectsArt IsHumorousGainsDirectAnd LoveWinePermanentThrowingShellsProvincesCattleCatharsisClams
Book:Collected poems: Not so deep as a well
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“Words change their meanings, just as organisms evolve. We would impose an enormous burden on our economy if we insisted on payment in cattle every time we identified a bonus as a pecuniary advantage (from the Latin pecus , or cattle, a verbal fossil from a former commercial reality).”

IfsRealityEconomyAdvantageBurdenEnormousFormerEvolveLatinOrganismsFossilsPaymentCattleBonus
Book:The Structure of Evolutionary Theory
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“Legends of the Silver Stallion had been told for years now, whenever mountain stockmen met round the campfires or on the winding hill tracks. Songs were sung about him to the cattle and both songs and tales had become even stranger since his supposed death when he vanished through the wind and the night over a great cliff. Tales kept cropping up of a ghost horse seen, or imagined, roaming over the mountains at night, of stockmen waking in a hut at midnight, hearing the tremendous stallion’s cry which could only be Thowra’s”

YearsNightSongCryWindMetsMountainHorseRoundsTrackStrangerHearingGhostTalesHillsSilverLegendsWakingMidnightCliffsCattleHutsRoamingCampfireStallions
Author:Elyne Mitchell
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“The gatherd storme is rype; the bigge drops falle;The forswat meadowes smethe, and drenche the raine;The comyng ghastness do the cattle pall,And the full flockes are drivynge ore the plaine;Dashde from the cloudes the waters flott againe;The welkin opes; the yellow levynne flies;And the hot fierie smothe in the wide lowings dies.”

DiesWaterHotWideYellowCattle
Book:Poetical Works: With Notices of His Life, History of the Rowley Controversy, a Selection of His Letters and Notes Critical and Explanatory
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