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Whales Quotes

Browse 306 quotes about Whales.

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Whales Quotes

“The inability of the IWC to enforce its own regulations was perhaps most blatantly exposed by the Greek shipowner Aristotle Onassis. He fitted out a whaling fleet trained by Norwegians with a German crew, which operated under several flags, including Panama’s. Although the Central American nation was an IWC member, it was incapable of exerting control over the shipping magnate. According to Ellis, Onassis’s Olympic Challenger ‘took endangered blue whales, female humpbacks and calves, and sperm whales so small that they had not developed teeth’. In a sense, Onassis’s flagrant violations helped the conservationist cause. Here was a fantastically wealthy man bent on the destruction of whales for no apparent reason – he hardly needed the money. Onassis did not bow to international pressure, and he would not abide by treaties. For the IWC , and for whalers who claimed that their industry was strictly controlled and essential to the growing human population, he was a public-relations nightmare. Onassis seemed to relish the role of international renegade: he invited American businessmen and socialites to watch whaling aboard the Challenger. The bar stools on his yacht were covered with the skin of sperm-whale penises, and whale teeth were used as footrests.”

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Book:Whale
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“Sea World orcas work as many as eight shows a day, 365 days a year. In the ocean, these whales can swim up to ninety miles a day. In captivity, the tanks are measured in feet. In the ocean, orcas have highly evolved and cohesive matriarchal cultures. Generations of family members, combining both females and males, spend their entire lives together—with each family, or pod, communicating its own unique dialect. In captivity, little to none of this exists. Orca culture is effectively destroyed.”

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Book:Fear of the Animal Planet: The Hidden History of Animal Resistance
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“Sometimes the shoreline was impassable, enclosed by high cliffs and huge boulders. But then, further along, Jesus would see the welcome sight of a pathway leading down to the sea once more. Then one day, he came upon the astounding vista of high white cliffs that must have gifted the land its name. This isle of Albion never ceased to amaze him. At night, Jesus would lay awake watching the stars before the gentle lull of the lapping waves sent him to sleep. But naturally, he was not so foolish as to camp where he could be washed out to sea by the tides and always made sure there was a safe way to scale the cliffs if the need arose. Once, he had been startled into wakefulness by an unfamiliar sound but soon realised it was the eerie calling of passing whales communicating with each other as they sang of their joy for life. And as their song resonated deep within his soul, Jesus felt the greatness and generosity of their spirit. Their relevance and connection to the mysteries of the universe.”

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Book:Imagining Jesus
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“The sensation I was feeling on the clifftop was some sort of reverberation in the air itself.… The whale had submerged and I was still feeling something. The strange rhythm seemed now to be coming from behind me, from the land, so I turned to look across the gorge … where my heart stopped.… Standing there in the shade of the tree was an elephant … staring out to sea!… A female with a left tusk broken off near the base.… I knew who she was, who she had to be. I recognized her from a color photograph put out by the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry under the title “The Last Remaining Knysna Elephant.” This was the Matriarch herself.… She was here because she no longer had anyone to talk to in the forest. She was standing here on the edge of the ocean because it was the next, nearest, and most powerful source of infrasound. The underrumble of the surf would have been well within her range, a soothing balm for an animal used to being surrounded by low and comforting frequencies, by the lifesounds of a herd, and now this was the next-best thing. My heart went out to her. The whole idea of this grandmother of many being alone for the first time in her life was tragic, conjuring up the vision of countless other old and lonely souls. But just as I was about to be consumed by helpless sorrow, something even more extraordinary took place.… The throbbing was back in the air. I could feel it, and I began to understand why. The blue whale was on the surface again, pointed inshore, resting, her blowhole clearly visible. The Matriarch was here for the whale! The largest animal in the ocean and the largest living land animal were no more than a hundred yards apart, and I was convinced that they were communicating! In infrasound, in concert, sharing big brains and long lives, understanding the pain of high investment in a few precious offspring, aware of the importance and the pleasure of complex sociality, these rare and lovely great ladies were commiserating over the back fence of this rocky Cape shore, woman to woman, matriarch to matriarch, almost the last of their kind. I turned, blinking away the tears, and left them to it. This was no place for a mere man.”

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Book:Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel
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“I couldn't help wondering where porpoises had learned this game of running on the bows of ships. Porpoises have been swimming in the oceans for seven to ten million years, but they've had human ships to play with for only the last few thousand. Yet nearly all porpoises, in every ocean, catch rides for fun from passing ships; and they were doing it on the bows of Greek triremes and prehistoric Tahitian canoes, as soon as those seacraft appeared. What did they do for fun before ships were invented? Ken Norris made a field observation one day that suggests the answer. He saw a humpback whale hurrying along the coast of the island of Hawaii, unavoidably making a wave in front of itself; playing in that bow wave was a flock of bottlenose porpoises. The whale didn't seem to be enjoying it much: Ken said it looked like a horse being bothered by flies around its head; however, there was nothing much the whale could do about it, and the porpoises were having a fun time.”

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Book:Lads Before the Wind: Diary of a Dolphin Trainer
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“The orca’s big brain was bigger than he had hoped—five times the size of a human’s and weighing in at nearly fifteen pounds. And this was from a young whale, not a mature adult. The brain was also more complicated than McGeer had imagined—more complicated than a human brain. Dolphin brains were impressive, but this brain was spectacular.”

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Book:The Killer Whale Who Changed the World
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“People had considered this the most fearsome creature on the planet. The most vicious. The most predatory. Without any rivals. It could beat anything in the ocean, so, therefore, it qualified as the most feared of all beasts. Totally wrong. So I guess Moby Doll changed the world’s attitudes towards killer whales. Instead of seeing a killer—a savage monster like Moby Dick—the world met a cuddly companion, Moby Doll.”

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Book:The Killer Whale Who Changed the World
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“They are forever looking into the nooks and crannies of a thing, whatever the thing may be. Always up very early or very late, going for rides on the backs of whales who deliver the mail; waking up covered in a secret language of hums; writing about the hobbies of feathers; changing shape like a cloud; howling at the moon; being a radioactive night-light in the dark; being a life raft on an ocean of alphabet soup; being great-hearted; being selfless; believing in tall tales, doodlebugs, and doohickeys. Believing. Believing in themselves. Believing in you.”

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Book:Confessions of an Imaginary Friend
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“The heroic and often tragic stories of American whalemen were renowned. They sailed the world’s oceans and brought back tales filled with bravery, perseverance, endurance, and survival. They mutinied, murdered, rioted, deserted, drank, sang, spun yarns, scrimshawed, and recorded their musings and observations in journals and letters. They survived boredom, backbreaking work, tempestuous seas, floggings, pirates, putrid food, and unimaginable cold. Enemies preyed on them in times of war, and competitors envied them in times of peace. Many whalemen died from violent encounters with whales and from terrible miscalculations about the unforgiving nature of nature itself. And through it all, whalemen, those “iron men in wooden boats” created a legacy of dramatic, poignant, and at times horrific stories that can still stir our emotions and animate the most primal part of our imaginations. “To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme,” proclaimed Herman Melville, and the epic story of whaling is one of the mightiest themes in American history.”

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Book:Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America
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“American whale oil lit the world. It was used in the production of soap, textiles, leather, paints, and varnishes, and it lubricated the tools and machines that drove the Industrial Revolution. The baleen cut from the mouths of whales shaped the course of feminine fashion by putting the hoop in hooped skirts and giving form to stomachtightening and chest-crushing corsets. Spermaceti, the waxy substance from the heads of sperm whales, produced the brightest- and cleanest-burning candles the world has ever known, while ambergris, a byproduct of irritation in a sperm whale’s bowel, gave perfumes great staying power and was worth its weight in gold.”

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Book:Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America
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“So what drew them to whaling? Some might have been lured by what Baudelaire called the ‘profound and mysterious charm that arises from looking at a ship’; others, as Elizabeth Hardwick noted in her biography of Melville, ‘have come sulking away, address unknown, from howling creditors, accusing wives, alert policemen, beggary on shore’. Many greenhands were from farming families, some awaiting their inheritance, others, as younger sons, unlikely to come into anything. Runaway slaves were not uncommon aboard Yankee whalers: Nantucket’s Quaker population helped to secure berths for those in danger of being recaptured by bounty hunters.”

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Book:Whale
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“The greenhands, by necessity, were taught the ropes at sea. The captain distributed them among the boats, so as not to slow its progress when they inevitably caught a crab with their oars, breaking the rhythm of the boat. From the stern, the mate called out ‘Break your backs!’ as each took an oar. It was best to be quick, for the ‘iron-fisted and iron-hearted officers’ often ‘beat their information in with anything that came to hand’.”

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Book:Whale
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“This isle of Albion never ceased to amaze him. At night, Jesus would lay awake watching the stars before the gentle lull of the lapping waves sent him to sleep. But naturally, he was not so foolish as to camp where he could be washed out to sea by the tides and always made sure there was a safe way to scale the cliffs if the need arose. Once, he had been startled into wakefulness by an unfamiliar sound but soon realised it was the eerie calling of passing whales communicating with each other as they sang of their joy for life. And as their song resonated deep within his soul, Jesus felt the greatness and generosity of their spirit. Their relevance and connection to the mysteries of the universe.”

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Book:Imagining Jesus
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“In life, the visible surface of the Sperm Whale is not the least among the many marvels he presents. Almost invariably it is all over obliquely crossed and re-crossed with numberless straight marks in thick array, something like those in the finest Italian line engravings. But these marks do not seem to be impressed upon the isinglass substance above mentioned, but seem to be seen through it, as if they were engraved upon the body itself. Nor is this all. In some instances, to the quick, observant eye, those linear marks, as in a veritable engraving, but afford the ground for far other delineations. These are hieroglyphical; that is, if you call those mysterious cyphers on the walls of pyramids hieroglyphics, then that is the proper word to use in the present connexion. By my retentive memory of the hieroglyphics upon one Sperm Whale in particular, I was much struck with a plate representing the old Indian characters chiselled on the famous hieroglyphic palisades on the banks of the Upper Mississippi. Like those mystic rocks, too, the mystic-marked whale remains undecipherable.”

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Book:Moby-Dick or, The Whale
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“Apropos of Eskimo, I once heard a missionary describe the extraordinary difficulty he had found in translating the Bible into Eskimo. It was useless to talk of corn or wine to a people who did not know even what they meant, so he had to use equivalents within their powers of comprehension. Thus in the Eskimo version of the Scriptures the miracle of Cana of Galilee is described as turning the water into blubber; the 8th verse of the 5th chapter of the First Epistle of St. Peter ran: ‘Your adversary the devil, as a roaring Polar bear walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.’ In the same way ‘A land flowing with milk and honey’ became ‘A land flowing with whale’s blubber,’ and throughout the New Testament the words ‘Lamb of God’ had to be translated ‘little Seal of God,’ as the nearest possible equivalent. The missionary added that his converts had the lowest opinion of Jonah for not having utilised his exceptional opportunities by killing and eating the whale.”

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Book:The Days Before Yesterday
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“Yesterday I learned that the breathing of whales is as crucial to our own breathing in the carbon cycle of the planet as are the forests of the world. Researchers say, if whales returned to their pre-commercial whaling numbers, their gigantic breathing would store as much carbon is 110,000 hectares of forest, or a forest the size of Rocky Mountain National Park.”

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Book:Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals Emergent Strategy Series
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“For most of the twentieth century, scientists were allied with whalers; much of their research was done either on the flensing deck or on the occasional stranded whale. Taxes levied on whale oil from the lucrative British Antarctic Territory financed extensive research in the Southern Ocean, including the natural history voyages of the RRS Discovery, the explorer Robert Falcon Scott’s Antarctic vessel. Until the 1970s the expressed intent of this research was to gather biological knowledge to help the hunt. In some cases, the studies were intended to increase efficiency.”

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Book:Whale
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“If they survive, today's children will inherit a world that our fathers and grandfathers have ravaged, where the seas are acidic cesspools that the whales have fled, where rain forests are Indian memories never to return, and where human greed has plundered Mother Earth's innards and turned human genes into factories for profit. They will inherit a diminished planet where fresh water is increasingly rare, and where fresh air is a commodity... We live in a world that fears and hates its young. How else can one explain the bequest of such a foul, polluted, and hollow inheritance?”

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Author:Mumia Abu-Jamal
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“The traveler from Europe edges into it like a tiny Jonah entering an inconceivably large whale, slipping past the straits of Belle Isle into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where five Canadian provinces surround him, for the most part invisible... to enter Canada is a matter of being silently swallowed by an alien continent.”

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Book:The Stubborn Structure: Essays on Criticism and Society
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“Sleep and I do not have a good relationship. We have never been good friends. I am constantly chasing sleep and then pushing it away. A good night's sleep is my white whale. Like Ahab, I am also a total drama queen about it. I love to talk about how little sleep I get. I brag about it, as if it is a true indication of how hard I work.”

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Author:Amy Poehler
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“Surely all God's people, however serious or savage, great or small, like to play. Whales and elephants, dancing, humming gnats, and invisibly small mischievous microbes- all are warm with divine radium and must have lots of fun in them.”

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Book:John Muir: The Story of My Boyhood and Youth & Letters to a Friend (Autobiography With Original Drawings): The Memoirs of the Naturalist, Environmental Philosopher and Early Advocate of Preservation of Wilderness, the Author of The Yosemite, Travels in Alaska, The Mountains of California & Steep Trails
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“Eventually man, too, found his way back to the sea. Standing on its shores, he must have looked out upon it with wonder and curiosity, compounded with an unconscious recognition of his lineage. He could not physically re-enter the ocean as the seals and whales had done. But over the centuries, with all the skill and ingenuity and reasoning powers of his mind, he has sought to explore and investigate even its most remote parts, so that he might re-enter it mentally and imaginatively.”

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Book:The Sea Around Us
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“In the [first] fifteen years [of field work] I can remember just ten times when I had really narrow escapes from death. Two were from drowning in typhoons, one was when our boat was charged by a wounded whale; once my wife and I were nearly eaten by wild dogs, once we were in great danger from fanatical lama priests; two were close calls when I fell over cliffs, once I was nearly caught by a huge python, and twice I might have been killed by bandits.”

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Author:Roy Chapman Andrews
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