Animals Quotes

A nonhuman animal had better have a good lawyer. In 1508, Bartholomé Chassenée earned fame and fortune for his eloquent representation of the rats of his French province. These rats had been charged with destroying the barley crop and also with ignoring the court order to appear and defend themselves. Bartholomé Chassenée argued successfully that the rats hadn't come because the court had failed to provide reasonable protection from the village cats along the route.

~ Karen Joy Fowler

We have really, that I know of, no philosophical basis for high and low. Moreover, the vegetable kingdom does not culminate, as the animal kingdom does. It is not a kingdom, but a common-wealth; a democracy, and therefore puzzling and unaccountable from the former point of view.

~ Asa Gray

Forty-two years after Dr. King was murdered, we are still a nation of inequality. People of color, women, gays, lesbians, and others are still treated as second-class citizens. Yes, things have changed but we have still not achieved equality among all humans. And nonhuman animals continue to be chattel property without any inherent value.

~ Gary L. Francione

Andy once clipped a magazine article about how black dogs are always the last to be adopted at shelters and, therefore, more likely to be put down. Which is totally Dog Racism, if you ask me.

~ Stephanie Perkins

Not responding is a response--we are equally responsible for what we don't do. In the case of animal slaughter, to throw your hands in the air is to wrap your fingers around a knife handle.

~ Jonathan Safran Foer

The obsession with putting ourselves at the centre of everything is the bane not only of theologians but also of zoologists.

~ Yann Martel

I don't believe in the concept of hell, but if I did I would think of it as filled with people who were cruel to animals.

~ Gary Larson

Mr. Jamrach led me through the lobby and into the menagerie. The first was a parrot room, a fearsome screaming place of mad round eyes, crimson breasts that beat against bars, wings that flapped against their neighbours, blood red, royal blue, gypsy yellow, grass green. The birds were crammed along perches. Macaws hung upside down here and there, batting their white eyes, and small green parrots flittered above our heads in drifts. A hot of cockatoos looked down from on high over the shrill madness, high crested, creamy breasted. The screeching was like laughter in hell.

~ Carol Birch

Who knows what the long-term effects of saving rescue dogs are and the healing lessons and love they bring to Earth? Each one of us has the capacity to influence hundreds - even thousands of people or animals through the way we live our lives.

~ Jadi Kindred

The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.

~ Mahatma Gandhi

If you want to test cosmetics, why do it on some poor animal who hasn't done anything? They should use prisoners who have been convicted of murder or rape instead. So, rather than seeing if perfume irritates a bunny rabbit's eyes, they should throw it in Charles Manson's eyes and ask him if it hurts.

~ Ellen Degeneres

Animals are more than ever a test of our character, of mankind's capacity for empathy and for decent, honorable conduct and faithful stewardship. We are called to treat them with kindness, not because they have rights or power or some claim to equality, but in a sense because they don't; because they all stand unequal and powerless before us.

~ Matthew Scully

Humans are the only animals that have children on purpose, keep in touch (or don't), care about birthdays, waste and lose time, brush their teeth, feel nostalgia, scrub stains, have religions and political parties and laws, wear keepsakes, apologize years after an offense, whisper, fear themselves, interpret dreams, hide their genitalia, shave, bury time capsules, and can choose not to eat something for reasons of conscience. The justifications for eating animals and for not eating them are often identical: we are not them.

~ Jonathan Safran Foer

Were the walls of our meat industry to become transparent, literally or even figuratively, we would not long continue to raise, kill, and eat animals the way we do.

~ Michael Pollan

My blood was boiling, which is not a good thing for a coldblood.Dracula was dead. Rex was dying or dead.Breakfast was dying. And I was caring about it all. Meanwhile, that blasted Gunnar did nothing but sit and stare at his teevee all day. He was the reason we were all here, the reason we were suffering and dying, and he barely noticed us.I hissed so hard it hurt.

~ Patrick Jennings

I agree with Varner and Scruton that the more one thinks of one's life as a story that has chapters still to be written, and the more one hopes for achievements yet to come, the more one has to lose by being killed. For this reason, when there is an irreconcilable conflict between the basic survival needs of animals and of normal humans, it is not speciesist to give priority to the lives of those with a biographical sense of their life and a stronger orientation towards the future.

~ Peter Singer

It's not that there are no differences between human and non-human animals, any more than there are no differences between black people and white people, freeborn citizens and slaves, men and women, Jews and gentiles, gays or heterosexuals. The question is rather: are they morally relevant differences? This matters because morally catastrophic consequences can ensue when we latch on to a real but morally irrelevant difference between sentient beings.

~ David Pearce

I am not well-versed in theory, but in my view, the cow deserves her life. As does the ram. As does the ladybug. As does the elephant. As do the fish, and the dog and the bee; as do other sentient beings. I will always be in favor of veganism as a minimum because I believe that sentient beings have a right not to be used as someone else's property. They ask us to be brave for them, to be clear for them, and I see no other acceptable choice but to advocate veganism. If these statements make me a fundamentalist, then I will sew a scarlet F on my jacket so that all may know I'm fundamentally in favor of nonviolence; may they bury me in it so that all will know where I stood.

~ Vincent J. Guihan

Some people say they love animals and yet harm them nonetheless, I'm glad those people don't love me.

~ Marc Bekoff

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and man.

~ Mark Twain

Some people talk to animals. Not many listen though. That's the problem.

~ A.a. Milne

People speak sometimes about the bestial cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.

~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than he loves himself.

~ Josh Billings

All his life he tried to be a good person. Many times, however, he failed.For after all, he was only human. He wasn't a dog.

~ Charles M. Schulz

Four legs good, two legs bad.

~ George Orwell

If a dog will not come to you after having looked you in the face, you should go home and examine your conscience.

~ Woodrow Wilson

I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men.

~ Leonardo Da Vinci

You think those dogs will not be in heaven! I tell you they will be there long before any of us.

~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Petting, scratching, and cuddling a dog could be as soothing to the mind and heart as deep meditation and almost as good for the soul as prayer.

~ Dean Koontz

Compassion for animals is intimately associated with goodness of character, and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man.

~ Arthur Schopenhauer

You know, sometimes the world seems like a pretty mean place.' 'That's why animals are so soft and huggy.

~ Bill Watterson

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain’d, I stand and look at them long and long.They do not sweat and whine about their condition, They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things, Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago, Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.

~ Walt Whitman

Auschwitz begins wherever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they’re only animals.

~ Theodor W. Adorno

If you don't own a dog, at least one, there is not necessarily anything wrong with you, but there may be something wrong with your life.

~ Roger A. Caras

If slaughterhouses had glass walls, the whole world would be vegetarian.

~ Linda Mccartney

The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.

~ Willie Nelson

The dog is the most faithful of animals and would be much esteemed were it not so common. Our Lord God has made His greatest gifts the commonest.

~ Martin Luther

Quoth the Raven, Nevermore.

~ Edgar Allan Poe

Lots of people talk to animals...Not very many listen though...that's the problem.

~ Benjamin Hoff

The dog’s agenda is simple, fathomable, overt: I want. “I want to go out, come in, eat something, lie here, play with that, kiss you. There are no ulterior motives with a dog, no mind games, no second-guessing, no complicated negotiations or bargains, and no guilt trips or grudges if a request is denied.

~ Caroline Knapp