Quotes About Animals

I'm not a vegetarian. Now, don't get me wrong - I like animals. And I don't think it's just fine to industrialize their production and to churn them out like they were wrenches. But there's no way to treat animals well when you're killing 10 billion of them a year. Kindness might just be a bit of a red herring. Let's get the numbers of animals we're killing for eating down, and then we'll worry about being nice to the ones that are left.

The consumption of animals - whether you're wearing them or eating them - is extraordinarily damaging to the planet. There are over a billion animals killed a year for food, half of which don't even get eaten. And there's over 50 million animals killed just for fashion.

I call animals "guardians of Being," especially animals that live with humans. Because, for many humans, it's through their contact with animals they get in touch with that level of being.

For most humans, especially for those in modern urban and suburban communities, the most direct form of contact with nonhuman animals is at meal time: we eat them.... The use and abuse of animals raised for food far exceeds, in sheer numbers of animals affected, any other kind of mistreatment.

The ruling British elite are like animals--not only in their morality, but in their outlook on knowledge. They are clever animals, who are masters of the wicked nature of their own species, and recognize ferally the distinctions of the hated human species. Nonetheless, obsessively dedicated to being such animals, they can not [sic] assimilate those qualities unique to true human beings.

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.

In the grand scheme of nature, I believe that it is very natural that animals eat animals, and that humans eat animals. It is only in the last couple of decades that meat-processing factories have come to rise, and I believe we should take time to reflect on that reality.

There are a few animals that have won themselves a bad reputation even though they have little or no effect on man. They have won their rating through man's interpretation of their attitude towards lower animals. These animals have been seen feeding in what appears to be a savage manner. But this behavior may perhaps be comparable to a man tearing the flesh off a chicken leg with his teeth.

Ninety-nine percent of all land animals eaten or used to produce milk and eggs in the United States are factory farmed. So although there are important exceptions, to speak about eating animals today is to speak about factory farming.

It's not that humans and non-humans are identical... but the lack of understanding that led to the slave trade is the same lack of understanding many people have about animals today. When slaves were brought over from Africa, many people believed they were not humans, that they didn't have feelings. Many people believe that primates and other animals don't have feelings, too, but they do.

I'm very sceptical about the prospects for 'big' environmental causes - 'saving the planet', halving the world's population, ending the exploitation of animals, and so on - but a person can ask him- or herself how he or she personally may exercise compassion or humility towards animals, vegetal life and so on.

Man is not like other animals in the ways that are really significant: Animals have instincts, we have taxes.

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.

When I see vegan food sold in single-use plastic containers, I get frustrated knowing that plastic is not really recycled; it is down-cycled to less and less reusable grades, and too much of it eventually ends up in the ocean - where it kills animals. Caring for animals means caring for the environment they live in, and vice versa.

You know, we all oppose animal cruelty. But sometimes we forget that animals on farms suffer and feel pain like all other animals. They, too, deserve to be protected from harm and cruelty.

People underestimate the power we have to make real change for animals; it's with our vote. Representatives may not care about animals, but they care about our vote and that is our leverage.

It is because of his brain that he [modern man] has risen above the animals. Guess which animals he has risen above.

Animals on factory farms all face pain and fear, just like the animals we share our homes with, yet are repeatedly abused in shocking ways.

I see myself as the God who will protect all of the animals that have no other way of voicing themselves. I am God, I see that, and I accept who I have become with open arms. All along I had no idea that those who will come to protect the animals and restore the balance won't be a God on a cloud, but us, this being, the being that I am!

To a man whose mind is free there is something even more intolerable in the sufferings of animals than in the sufferings of man. For with the latter it is at least admitted that suffering is evil and that the man who causes it is a criminal. But thousands of animals are uselessly butchered every day without a shadow of remorse. If any man were to refer to it, he would be thought ridiculous. And that is the unpardonable crime.

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!

Even animals have a conscience. Those in the jungle KILL only to eat, not live to kill. This is why we often see packs of predators focusing on just one kill, instead of targeting many. Even animals exercise reason. I have seen a mother lion taking care of a baby antelope, and a mother elephant taking care of a baby lion. The primal need to eat is unavoidable, yet even under severe hunger stretches, the desire to love can sometimes overcome the desire to eat.

The problem is that for almost any feature of humanity that you can name, whether it's the ability to suffer, whether it's the capacity to reason, whether it's having lives that can go better or worse, there are at least some other non-human animals that have all of these features as well. So to exclude non-human animals from the range of moral concern but to include all humans, just seems morally arbitrary.

Animals teach us about the animals in ourselves. We need their spirits.

Sometimes they'll make little Play-Doh animals, and when they go to sleep, I'll break the heads off the animals and put them at the foot of their beds for them to discover in the morning. Nothing wrong with sending your kids a little Sicilian message.

Let animals live like animals; let humans live like humans. That's my whole philosophy in a sentence.

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.

I've loved singing since forever. Whether it was with my sisters while cleaning the kitchen, putting shows on for my stuffed animals, writing songs about my stuffed animals, starting an a capella group with my cousins while on vacation, or awkwardly singing along to karaoke tracks alone in my bedroom - singing always found a way into my life.

I don't eat any animals or anything that has to do with animals. No fish or egg or dairy because I personally don't feel it's a good practice to eat anything that might run away from you.

Animals have their tragic and their comic side, and resemble us in many ways. They, too, have their distinctions and individualities. Many people believe that there is a huge gap separating them from the animals, but it is only really a step in the Wheel of Life, for we are all children of the One. To understand a fellow creature, we must regard him as a brother.

Plants, again, inasmuch as they are without locomotion, present no great variety in their heterogeneous pacts. For, when the functions are but few, few also are the organs required to effect them. ... Animals, however, that not only live but perceive, present a great multiformity of pacts, and this diversity is greater in some animals than in others, being most varied in those to whose share has fallen not mere life but life of high degree. Now such an animal is man.

I think I have a lot of empathy for animals and nature in general. Those things just make me comfortable. I grew up in the middle of nowhere, around a lot of animals. I feel for them.

For Nature is accustomed to rehearse with certain large, perhaps baser, and all classes of wild (animals), and to place in the imperfect the rudiments of the perfect animals.

It is an indication of the extent to which people are now isolated from the animals they eat that children brought up on storybooks that lead them to think of a farm as a place where animals wander around freely in idyllic conditions might be able to live out their entire lives without ever being forced to revise this rosy image.

I believe that the best way to create good living conditions for any animal, whether it's a captive animal living in a zoo, a farm animal or a pet, is to base animal welfare programs on the core emotion systems in the brain. My theory is that the environment animals live in should activate their positive emotions as much as possible, and not activate their negative emotions any more than necessary. If we get the animal's emotions rights, we will have fewer problem behaviors... All animals and people have the same core emotion systems in the brain.

I did have a life before the Animals, and I'm trying constantly to prove that I have a life after the Animals. People tend to forget that I was the frontman with War for two years. People sort of have compartmental memories.

I've just always loved animals. So I've often thought that if I weren't a writer I'd work for some nonprofit organization that does something positive for animals.

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.

My grandmother lives on a farm. And growing up, I assumed that the animals that I was eating and the animals that I was wearing all came from farms like my grandmother's. They all had names, they were all smothered with love, and they all lived to be very old.

The art of negotiation is perhaps what most deeply distinguishes man from the animals, and it is this art and this will to negotiate that has brought man forward, elevated him beyond the animals.

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.

If I blow the conch and they don't come back; then we've had it. We shan't keep the fire going. We'll be like animals. We'll never be rescued." "If you don't blow, we'll soon be animals anyway.

I don't have a hands - on fondness for animals. I did not grow up bonded to any particular nonhuman animal. I like them and I pet them and I'm kind to them, but there's no special bond between me and other animals...

If cows, pigs, chickens and turkeys go into slaughterhouses alive and come out chopped up into hundreds of pieces, how could anyone claim that animals aren't being mistreated, abused, tortured, terrorized and savagely murdered in these places? How in the world could SLAUGHTERING BILLIONS of INNOCENTS be done with love, humanity and concern?

Killing of animals for food is one thing, but on the other hand they do not exist simply as things to be slaughtered. This is true of fishing, too. Many men fish and leave their victims to rot and stink. But what about the fish? Has he no rights - not to be romanticized as though he were a man - but real rights?

We, who think like animals living in small groups, must structure a global world. We believe in universal human rights and believe racism and war are wrong. On the other hand, it is our nature to be cooperative and loving almost exclusively with the members of the group to which we feel we belong.