ANIMAL QUOTES II
quotations about animals
We can't change the world for animals without changing our ideas about animals. We have to move from the idea that animals are things, tools, machines, commodities, resources here for our use to the idea that as sentient beings they have their own inherent value and dignity.
ANDREW LINZEY
interview, OneKind, June 21, 2011
Animals are like autistic savants. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that animals might actually be autistic savants. Animals have special talents normal people don't, the same way autistic people have special talents normal people don't; and at least some animals have special forms of genius normal people don't, the same way some autistic savants have special forms of genius. I think most of the time animal genius probably happens for the same reason autistic genius does: a difference in the brain autistic people share with animals.
TEMPLE GRANDIN & CATHERINE JOHNSON
Animals in Translation
And God said, "Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.
GENESIS 1:26
The best thing about animals is that they don't talk much.
THORNTON WILDER
The Skin of Our Teeth
Ask experimenters why they experiment on animals, and the answer is: "Because the animals are like us." Ask experimenters why it is morally okay to experiment on animals, and the answer is: "Because the animals are not like us." Animal experimentation rests on a logical contradiction.
CHARLES R. MAGEL
attributed, The PETA Practical Guide to Animal Rights
For an animal person, an animal-less home is no home at all.
CLEVELAND AMORY
The Cat Who Came for Christmas
Anyone would be hard pressed to put forth that animals are not perfect creations of God; they are just different types of creations. Humankind has always compared other creations with themselves, thinking always that we are the highest of God's creations. For this reason many humans don't think that other living organisms have souls, but how do we supposedly know that? Do we presume to know God so well that we can say that souls don't exist in other living forms? Just because God supposedly gave us dominion over all living things (according to the Book of Genesis in the Bible), does that mean we can kill and mistreat them? Could not the word "dominion" also mean a responsibility to care for and ensure the survival of all living things?
SYLVIA BROWNE
All Pets Go to Heaven
Animals are not humans with reduced capacities. They have their own capacities, their own spectrum of aptitudes and behaviors.
JEAN KAZEZ
Animalkind
Happiness is a warm puppy.
CHARLES SCHULZ
Happiness Is a Warm Puppy
Animals are simply sophisticated machines created by the infinitely skilled artisan, God.
BRIAN G. HENNING
The Ethics of Creativity
An animal's eyes have the power to speak a great language.
MARTIN BUBER
I and Thou
If a man aspires towards a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from injury to animals.
LEO TOLSTOY
The First Step
I have been studying the traits and dispositions of the "lower animals" (so called) and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result humiliating to me.
MARK TWAIN
Letters from the Earth
Auschwitz begins wherever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they're only animals.
THEODOR W. ADORNO
attributed, The Apocalyptic Animal of Late Capitalism
The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may one day come to be recognized that the number of legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day or a week or even a month old. But suppose they were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not Can they reason?, nor Can they talk?, but Can they suffer?
JEREMY BENTHAM
An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation
God gave unto the Animals
A wisdom past our power to see:
Each knows innately how to live,
Which we must learn laboriously.
MARGARET ATWOOD
The Year of the Flood
Animals, whom we have made our slaves, we do not like to consider our equal.
CHARLES DARWIN
Metaphysics, Materialism, and the Evolution of Mind
We animals are like the best person and it behooves you--I like that word, behooves--to model yourself after us. The main difference between humans and animals is ego, not brain, as they are led to believe. You watch us animals and we love, we play, we take care of ourselves in unity. We live our lives as you humans strive to live your lives. We are the ultimate. We want you to do as we do. We are the models. We are what you should be striving for. Can you see the value in humans that act like animals and also have a brain to make things happen?
CYNTHIA ATTAR
Say What?
Animals are like little children a bit. They're simple. They don't have politics driving them.
ANNABELLE SABLOFF
Reordering the Natural World
We're animals. We're born like every other mammal and we live our whole lives around disguised animal thoughts.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
Mammals