Animal Quotes - Page 27

Friendship is a strange animal. It only thrives in voluntary enjoyment of each other's company, in the pleasure of nonobligatory connection. I repeat: You owe me nothing.

A secret society exists, and is living among all of us. They are neither people nor animals, but something in-between.

For too long we have occupied ourselves with responding to the consequences of cruelty and abuse and have neglected the important task of building up an ethical system in which justice for animals is regarded as the norm rather than the exception. Our only hope is to put our focus on the education of the young.

I was watching Animal Planet. Did you know that the male seahorse has the baby? And I was thinking, "Why don't they just call that the female seahorse?" You know it's just some stubborn scientist. "Yeah, that one there's the male seahorse." And his assistant's like, "Uh, Bill, that one's having a baby." ... "The male has the baby. You're fired."

There would be very little point in my exhausting myself and other conservationists themselves in trying to protect animals and habitats if we weren't at the same time raising young people to be better stewards.

If intelligence and capability are not criteria for the possession of rights, why would animals -who have the capacity to feel fear and pain- be excluded from our moral consideration?

Cold air rises from the ground as the sun goes down. The eye-burning clarity of the light intensifies. The southern rim of the sky glows to a deeper blue, to pale violet, to purple, then thins to grey. Slowly the wind falls, and the still air begins to freeze. The solid eastern ridge is black; it has a bloom on it like the dust on the skin of a grape. The west flares briefly. The long, cold amber of the afterglow casts clear black lunar shadows. There is an animal mystery in the light that sets upon the fields like a frozen muscle that will flex and wake at sunrise.

There will never be any peace in the world as long as we eat animals.

Clearly, animals know more than we think, and think a great deal more than we know.

Pet ownership is slavery. Animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, or be entertained by.

We are taught that the body is an ignorant animal intelligence dwells only in the head. But the body is smart. It does not discern between external stimuli and stimuli from the imagination. It reacts equally viscerally to events from the imagination as it does to real events.

We humans fear the beast within the wolf because we do not understand the beast within ourselves.

May all that have life be delivered from suffering.

Men in America were terrified that if women got an equal say in society, the system would collapse and their lives would be valued less. Whites in America were scared that if blacks obtained their freedom and equality, the system would collapse and their lives would be devalued. Heterosexuals are terrified that the psychotic institution of marriage will collapse if gays are given their right to marry. And humans are terrified that if animals are liberated and no longer viewed as inferior subordinates, human life will be valued less.

Not only are animals unable to avail themselves of language to assert their own rights, but many fewer humans have a clear sense of kinship with animals than have a clear sense of kinship with other humans. Among beings with subjective states of awareness, animals are the untouchable caste, those whom human others would rather not acknowledge, let alone render assistance.

You can compromise between good, better, and best, and you can compromise between bad and worse and terrible. But you can’t compromise between good and evil. And now people look at the other side as a completely different kind of animal and say, “They are taking the country down the road to purgatory.” It’s complete intolerance.

Man is the cruelest animal.

Man is the most intelligent of the animals - and the most silly.

The only honest reaction and true loyalty we get is from our animals. Once they're your friends, you can do no wrong.

For better or worse, zoos are how most people come to know big or exotic animals. Few will ever see wild penguins sledding downhill to sea on their bellies, giant pandas holding bamboo lollipops in China or tree porcupines in the Canadian Rockies, balled up like giant pine cones.

The combined outrage of the millions of creatures which have suffered at the hands of man may well combine to haunt us. We are all of the same family, though destiny has assigned us to different roles: in our relationship with animals, we should regard them as different, not inferior.

The animal needing something knows how much it needs, the man does not.

I refuse to eat animals because I cannot nourish myself by the sufferings and by the death of other creatures. I refuse to do so, because I suffered so painfully myself that I can feel the pain of others by recalling my own sufferings.

Our land is more valuable than your money. It will last forever. It will not even perish by the flames of fire. As long as the sun shines and the waters flow, this land will be here to give life to men and animals. We cannot sell the lives of men and animals. It was put here by the Great Spirit and we cannot sell it because it does not belong to us

Our treatment of animals, in every department, is deeply and systematically immoral. Becoming a vegetarian is only the most minimal ethical response to the magnitude of the evil.