Quotes About Animals

One thing to remember is to talk to the animals. If you do, they will talk back to you. But if you don't talk to the animals, they won't talk back to you, then you won't understand, and when you don't understand you will fear, and when you fear you will destroy the animals, and if you destroy the animals, you will destroy yourself.

Treat other animals as friends and they become friends. Treat other animals as family and they become family. Give other animals your love and they will love you in return.

Our family holidays always include our animals. On Thanksgiving, we love to walk around our farm and visit with our rescued pigs, goats, horses, emus and many other rescued animals. We give them all special vegetables that day, and the whole family enjoys a vegetarian Thanksgiving dinner. We know that the animals are giving thanks that day, and we are also giving thanks for the joy they bring to our lives.

What distinguished man from animals was the human capacity for symbolic thought, the capacity which was inseparable from the development of language in which words were not mere signals, but signifiers of something other than themselves. Yet the first symbols were animals. What distinguished men from animals was born of their relationship with them.

I was aware of what animals go through because I had driven animals to slaughter and I'd killed animals. And I was aware that there were certain ethical issues, but they weren't preying on my mind very heavily.

The intelligence displayed by many dumb animals approaches so closely to human intelligence that it is a mystery. The animals see and hear and love and fear and suffer. They use their organs far more faithfully than many human beings use theirs. They manifest sympathy and tenderness toward their companions in suffering. Many animals show an affection for those who have charge of them, far superior to the affection shown by some of the human race. They form attachments for man which are not broken without great suffering to them.

I don't hold animals superior or even equal to humans. The whole case for behaving decently to animals rests on the fact that we are the superior species. We are the species uniquely capable of imagination, rationality, and moral choice - and that is precisely why we are under an obligation to recognize and respect the rights of animals.

We have all this Paleolithic art that suggests that our ancestors really venerated animals and that they depended on wild animals to survive - as opposed to domesticated animals that we depend on. Would it radically change things if we had more rhinos in our midst? I kind of suspect it would.

I have been scientifically 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 profoundly humiliating to me. For it obliges me to renounce my allegiance to the Darwinian theory of the Ascent of Man from the Lower Animals; since it now seems plain to me that that theory ought to be vacated in favor of a new and truer one, this new and truer one to be named the Descent of Man from the Higher Animals.

When I started Ashes and Snow in 1992, I set out to explore the relationship between man and animals from the inside out. In discovering the shared language and poetic sensibilities of all animals, I am working towards restoring the common ground that once existed when people lived in harmony with animals.

It is very funny about money. The thing that differentiates man from animals is money. All animals have the same emotions and the same ways as men. Anybody who has lots of animals around knows that. But the thing no animal can do is count, and the thing no animal can know is money.

After I recovered from 'Lioness', I wanted to write something about animals because I really like mythical creatures, especially dragons. At 12, I was one of those semi-recluses who did better with animals than people. Out of that, came the character, Daine, who could communicate with animals.

People who care about animals tend to care about people. They don't care about animals to the exclusion of people. Caring is not a finite resource and, even more than that, it's like a muscle: the more you exercise it, the stronger it gets.

I just love animals, and I'm an advocate for animals rights, and my family has rescued dogs from all over the world. I don't believe in animal testing. If you see me in fur, it's always fake. Sometimes you see me wearing skulls, but those are all from roadkill

The vegan believes that if we are to be true emancipators of animals we must renounce absolutely our traditional and conceited attitude that we have the right to use them to serve our needs. We must supply these needs by other means.... If the vegan ideal of non-exploitation were generally adopted, it would be the greatest peaceful revolution ever known, abolishing vast industries and establishing new ones in the better interests of men and animals alike.

Animals give me more pleasure through the viewfinder of a camera than they ever did in the crosshairs of a gunsight. And after I've finished "shooting," my unharmed victims are still around for others to enjoy. I have developed a deep respect for animals. I consider them fellow living creatures with certain rights that should not be violated any more than those of humans.

I realized that all animals, not just dogs and cats and horses, were sentient beings; therefore, I just couldn't say I love animals and then eat them.

I studied a lot of animal behavior and one of the things I find really interesting is the whole idea that animals are sensory based thinkers and I wrote about this in my book, Animals in Translation. That an animal's memory is not in words, they've got to be in pictures - it's very detailed so let's say the animal gets afraid of something - they'll get afraid of something that they're looking at or hearing, the moment the bad thing happens.

Feeding plants to animals then eating the animals is like filtering water through a sewer then drinking it.

The harming of animals for any reason is shameful, but torturing them for mere vanity is senseless. Slaughtering animals for their fur or harming them for cosmetic purposes is disgusting and not worth the perfect shade of lipstick.

The thing about animals that speaks to me so much is that my passion for the animals and against animal abuse is based on the knowledge that these creatures which think and feel can't speak for themselves. I feel it is my responsibility to speak for those who can't speak for themselves.

But complex animals had obtained their adaptive flexibility at some cost--they had traded one dependency for another. It was no longer necessary to change their bodies to adapt, because now their adaptation was behavior, socially determined. That behavior required learning. In a sense, among higher animals adaptive fitness was no longer transmitted to the next generation by DNA at all. It was now carried by teaching.

More and more I am certain that the only difference between man and animals is that men can count and animals cannot and if they count they mostly do count money.

Animal abuse is rampant in the U.S., right under everyone's eyes, for the entertainment of the public. The brutal confinement and pain of training methods of wild animals in the circus, the aquatic and theatrical shows, leads to retaliation by the animals. Eventually they find the right time to strike out, and they will.

Animals are a huge part of my life, so yes, if you are going to be a part of my life, you would need to have the same love for animals. Howard is so great in that aspect and he truly is my partner. We have six resident cats - Walter, Apple, Leon Bear, Charlie Boy, Bella, and Yoda-and we have fostered over fifty kittens in the last year. He even lets the kittens play in his hair! They love it!

Animals struggle with each other for food or for leadership, but they do not, like human beings, struggle with each other for thatthat stands for food or leadership: such things as our paper symbols of wealth (money, bonds, titles), badges of rank to wear on our clothes, or low-number license plates, supposed by some people to stand for social precedence. For animals the relationship in which one thing stands for something else does not appear to exist except in very rudimentary form.

The newspapers do little better. Their coverage of nonhuman animals is dominated by "human interest" events like the birth of a baby gorilla at the zoo, or by threats to endangered species; but developments in farming techniques that deprive millions of animals of freedom of movement go unreported.

Through PETA, we rescue animals in roadside zoos and circuses. They are some of the most abused animals in the country.

Kindness consents very readily to the removal of its object – we have all met people whose kindness to animals is constantly leading them to kill animals lest they should suffer. Kindness, merely as such, cares not whether its object becomes good or bad, provided only that it escapes suffering.

Agent Jones held Sinjin’s face in his hands. “I’m going to make balloon animals. People need balloon animals.” “How right you are, strange delusional man,” Sinjin said.

Animals don't have anyone to protect them. If we don't stand up, the people who are harming animals will never get stopped.

We have never understood why men mount the heads of animals and hang them up to look down on their conquerers. Possibly it feels good to these men to feel superior to animals, but does it not seem that if they were sure of it they would not have to prove it? Often a man who is afraid must constantly demonstrate his courage and, in the case of the hunter, must keep a tangible record of his courage.

Religions in general have to rediscover their roots. In Hinduism and the Koran, animals are described as equals. If you walk into a cathedral and look at the decorations of early Christianity, there are vines, animals, creatures and birds thriving all over the stonework.

Think of the beginning of the story of the beginning of everything: Adam (without Eve and without divine guidance) names the animals. Continuing his work, we call stupid people bird-brained, cowardly people chickens, fools turkeys. Are these the best names we have to offer? If we can revise the notion of women coming from a rib, can’t we revise our categorizations of the animals that, draped with barbecue sauce, end up as the ribs on our dinner plates — or for that matter, the KFC in our hands?

If animals are no longer quite outside the moral sphere, they are still in a special section near the outer rim. Their interests are allowed to count only when they do not clash with human interests. If there is a clash - even a clash between a lifetime of suffering for a nonhuman animal and the gastronomic preference of a human being - the interests of the nonhuman are disregarded. The moral attitudes of the past are too deeply embedded in our thought and our practices to be upset by a mere change in our knowledge of ourselves and of other animals.

I'm not sure what gave me empathy for animals, but I do know that I have always loved animals since I was a very young child. I always felt a need to nurture and protect them. Perhaps I could see they needed that, and caring for them made me happy.

I love animals, and not only do I get to help animals in need, I learn a lot too!

We know from the truths of evolution and ecology that we are all related and interdependent. Anthropomorphism (crediting animals with human emotions and traits) is, however, outdated. Rather we know that we are like animals.

I went to a heavy metal concert. The singer yelled out, "How many of you people feel like human beings tonight?" And then he said, "How many of you feel like animals?" The thing is, everyone cheered after the animals part, but I cheered after the human beings part because I did not know there was a second part to the question.

People think of animals as if they were vegetables, and that is not right. We have to change the way people think about animals. I encourage the Tibetan people and all people to move toward a vegetarian diet that doesn’t cause suffering.

Outside openings to attics, crawl spaces and similar locations should be sealed off so rats and squirrels cant get into houses, garages or other structures. Pet owners should make an extra effort to keep their domestic animals free of fleas and avoid leaving out pet food where it can attract wild animals.

There are no limits to God's compassion with Paradises over their one universally felt want: he immediately created other animals besides. God's first blunder: Man didn't find the animals amusing, - he dominated them and didn't even want to be an 'animal.'

I've got a lot of people that are really good at taming animals and working with animals; and they can't explain how they do. They just get a feeling from the animal.

The animal kingdom exhibits a series of mental developments which may be regarded as antecedents to the mental development of man, for the mental life of animals shows itself to be throughout, in its elements and in the general laws governing the combination of the elements, the same as the mental life of man.

It is heartbreaking to see so many animals in distress through the Gulf Coast region. Many of them are frightened, confused, hungry, dehydrated and lost.

The higher animals get their teeth without pain or inconvenience. Man gets his through months and months of cruel torture; he will never get a set which can really be depended on 'till a dentist makes him one.

Thirst teaches all animals to drink, but drunkenness belongs only to man.

Pleasure is never as pleasant as we expected it to be and pain is always more painful. The pain in the world always outweighs the pleasure. If you don't believe it, compare the respective feelings of two animals, one of which is eating the other.