Quotes & Sayings About No Zoos

Zoo is inhuman, it is unethical, and it is sick and stupid! Just because children and their ignorant parents go and have some fun there, slavery and torture cannot be justified! A society which has zoos does not deserve to be free! You deserve freedom only if you let others to be free, including animals! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

I have been called a Rogue Elephant, a Cannibal Shark, and a crocodile. I am none the worse. I remain a caged, and rather sardonic, lion, in a particularly contemptible and ill-run zoo. — Wyndham Lewis

Children whose families take them to museums and zoos, who visit historic sites, who travel abroad, or who camp in remote areas accumulate huge chunks of background knowledge without even studying. For the impoverished child lacking the travel portfolio of affluence, the best way to accumulate background knowledge is by either reading or being read to. — Jim Trelease

We can put women on Prozac and they will think they are happy, even though they are not. Disturbed animals in the zoo are given Prozac too, which rather suggests that misery is a response to unbearable circumstances rather than constitutional. — Germaine Greer

When I was a kid, I said to my father one afternoon, 'Daddy, will you take me to the zoo?' He answered, 'If the zoo wants you, let them come and get you', — Jerry Lewis

Oh, I was an ugly kid. My old man took me to the zoo. They thanked him for returning me. — Rodney Dangerfield

Film is my passion. I had no money, after Human Zoo. I was completely broke. It was horrible. My film was in Berlin on opening night, but I couldn't even get to Berlin. — Rie Rasmussen

Writing is the main gig and teaching and performing are sidelines, an excuse for not writing more. Working on a novel and on an opera make me seriously want to retire and find a volunteer job as a docent at the zoo explaining to schoolchildren where frogs go in the winter. — Garrison Keillor

She cannot bear to catch fireflies in jars. She hates zoos. She will not let her father teach her about constellations, because she will not trap the stars. She lives in a world made entirely of sky. It is inconceivable that one day, her world will grow so dark and distant that when she raises her head, she will not be able to find it. — Amy Zhang

The surprise of animals ... in and out, cats and dogs and a milk goat and chickens and guinea hens, all taken for granted, as if man was intended to live on terms of friendly intercourse with the rest of creation instead of huddling in isolation on the fourteenth floor of an apartment house in a city where animals occurred behind bars in the zoo. — Elizabeth Janeway

When I was a child I used to read books by Gerald Durrell, who founded Jersey Zoo. He had a job collecting animals for zoos and for a long time that is what I wanted to do. Later when I was a teenager I had a fantastic English teacher called Mrs. Stafford. Her enthusiasm made me decide to be a writer. — Melvin Burgess

This really isn't a game we really should be proud of. This game is liking taking your kids to the zoo. You're supposed to take your kids to the zoo. You're a father. So a team like that, we're supposed to beat them like this. — Shaquille O'Neal

What a lonely species we are, searching for signals of life from other galaxies, adopting companion animals, visiting parks and zoos to commune with other beasts. In the process, we discover our shared identity. — Diane Ackerman

In most countries, it is possible to visit zoos and see bored animals pacing back and forth in cages, with nothing to do but wait for the next meal. Circuses are even worse places for animals. Their living conditions are deplorable, especially in travelling circuses where cages have to be small so that they can go on the road. — Peter Singer

I do love nature, but I don't suppose I'd spent more time in zoos as a child than anyone else! — Andy Serkis

I started thinking what could happen with my art and I realized that the biggest thing that could is that it winds up in a museum. It's like finding a rare animal and putting it in the zoo. — Patti Smith

When you are brought up in a zoo, you know what's going on in the monkey house. You see a couple of monkeys loose and one is President and one is Vice President, you know it's trouble. Monkeys make trouble. — Gore Vidal

[On public events attended by royalty:] It was the usual 'zoo tea.' You know, we eat - the others watch. — Princess Margaret

Boys and girls need chances to be around their father, to be enjoyed by him and if possible to do things with him. Better to play fifteen minutes enjoyably and then say, 'Now I'm going to read my paper' than to spend all day at the zoo crossly. — Benjamin Spock

Sometimes you think they must have come out of the chimp cages at the Bronx zoo. — Gerry Cheevers

Of course I was drawn to the sun bears, they're fascinating. But so are tigers and lots of other animals at the zoo. Probably a big part of the reason I felt so connected to them was because of their name: SUN BEAR. — Matthew Zapruder

Zoos and aquariums with glass walls serve a purpose but they also teach ignorant fuckers that they are better because we aren't the ones being held captive. When was it ever our right because we have opposable thumbs to put God's animals on permanent display in every major city in the world? We might be saving a few, but we wouldn't have to save any if we weren't fucking up the whole planet. — Sarah Noffke

If you want to understand how a lion hunts, don't go to the zoo. Go to the jungle. — Jim Stengel

Zoo is an artificial territory, an approximation. Civilization is our natural territory. — Yann Martel

I have a hatred of the taming of animals, especially large ones that are so contented in the wild. I abominate circus acts that involve big befooled beasts
cowed tigers or helplessly roaring lions pawing the air and teetering on small stools. I deplore zoos and anything to do with animal confinement or restraint. — Paul Theroux

Your every emotion goes right over the top with a big audience. It's either laughter or tears, with no in-between. Those tigers in zoos, they must have a big opera all the time. — Chuck Palahniuk

I know zoos are no longer in people's good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusions about freedom plague them both. — Yann Martel

Cecelia sat and watched us drink. I could see that I repulsed her. I ate meat. I had no god. I liked to fuck. Nature didn't
interest me. I never voted. I liked wars. Outer space bored me. Baseball bored me. History bored me. Zoos bored me. — Charles Bukowski

I don't mean to defend zoos. Close them all down if you want (and let us hope that what wildlife remains can survive in what is left of the natural world). I know zoos are no longer in people's good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusion about freedom plague them both. — Yann Martel

Nobody in the city of Los Angeles knows how to catch an alligator, ... We have no experience in recreation and parks, the zoo or animal control. — Janice Hahn

They used to have a smoking section at most airports. No more. They now have these glass-encased rooms. You're not just a smoker, you're an example to other people. You're an exhibit at a futuristic zoo. — Marc Maron

Zoos are becoming facsimiles - or perhaps caricatures - of how animals once were in their natural habitat. If the right policies toward nature were pursued, we would need no zoos at all. — Michael J. Fox

Stop going to the zoos! Don't take your children to the zoos! No creature ever deserves captivity without any crime! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

I'm also not an avid watcher of the show ['Walking Dead'] for no good reason. I think it's obviously a great show. I think it's a good comparison [to "Zoo"], because it is this apocalyptic world we're living in Season 2 of "Zoo." — James Wolk

Ensuring that our home planet is healthy and life sustaining is an overwhelming priority that undercuts all other human activities. The ship must first float.
Our failure to grasp these fundamental tenants of existence will be our undoing. And one thing is for certain. No calvary is going to come charging to our rescue. We are going to have to rescue ourselves or die trying.
Workable solutions are urgently needed. Saving seals and tigers or fighting yet another oil pipeline through a wilderness area, while laudable, is merely shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic. The real issue is our elementary accord with Earth and the plant and animal kingdoms has to be revitalized and re-understood.
The burning question is, How? — Lawrence Anthony

In zoos, along with the animals, the humanity of man is also prisoned! No cage is humane! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

The zoo cannot but disappoint. The public purpose of zoos is to offer visitors the opportunity of looking at animals. Yet nowherein a zoo can a stranger encounter the look of an animal. At the most, the animal's gaze flickers and passes on. They look sideways. They look blindly beyond. — John Berger

Every time you go to the zoo, you prolong the captivity of the animals there! If no one goes to the zoos, there will be no zoos! Destroying the evil is very simple and it is in your hand! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

I don't want to be on display like an animal in a zoo. — Grigori Perelman

I grew up in airports and on air bases. I know what flying and airports can be. And most airports make me feel like we're about three per cent better than ants. Especially U.S. airports. They're zoos. All civility is gone. — Douglas Coupland

In 1986, our commencement speaker was George Schultz, secretary of state, fourth in line to the president. You get me-basic cable's second most popular fake newsman. At this rate, the class of 2021 will be addressed by a zoo parrot in a mortar-board that has been trained to say congratulations. — Stephen Colbert

We must educate the public. The average person has no idea of what's going on in factory farms, in laboratories, circuses, roadside zoos or rodeos. — Bob Barker

Conversely, the biophilia hypothesis, as Wilson calls it, also explains why we find natural settings so peaceful. It's in our genes. That's why, each year, more people visit zoos than attend all sporting events combined. — Eric Weiner

I don't have time for lie-on-the-beach vacations. I'm a zoo person. There's one in New Jersey where animals actually come up to your car. I love the monkeys - I used to give them bubblegum to chew. — Missy Elliot

Are they given in exchange for the glory of an African sunrise, for the twilight breeze whispering through the palms, for the green shade of the matted, tangled vines, for the cool, big-starred nights of the desert, for the patter of the waterfall after a hard day's hunt? What, I ask you, are they given in exchange for THESE? Why, a bare cage with iron bars; an ugly piece of dead meat thrust in to them once a day; and a crowd of fools to come and stare at them with open mouths! - No, Stubbins. Lions and tigers, the Big Hunters, should never, never be seen in zoos. — Hugh Lofting

Great and good men and women stirred sugar into their coffee knowing that it had been picked by slaves. Kind, good ancestors of all of us never questioned hangings, burnings, tortures, inequality, suffering and injustice that today revolt us. If we dare to presume to damn them with our fleeting ideas of morality, then we risk damnation from our descendants for whatever it is that we are doing that future history will judge as intolerable and wicked: eating meat, driving cars, appearing on TV, visiting zoos, who knows? — Stephen Fry

I've never really been able to tolerate zoos. — Sonya Hartnett

Because we have put ourselves in our own zoo, we find it difficult to break out. — Edward T. Hall

It's still relatively rare to have an epidemiologist at a zoo. — Steve Ross

My favorite species to study would be Cobras and King Cobras which are two different families. They're very intelligent, and they're beautiful looking animals. Where they come from are countries and regions which I spend a lot of time in - South East Asia and India, those are places I go to fairly often, and so the cobras are my main interest. It's not a snake I can maintain, but when I see them in zoos and what not, I find them interesting. — Henry Rollins

You have city centre pubs where men go to meet girls, not realising that all girls in city centre pubs have thighs like tug boats and morals that would surprise a zoo animal. — Jeremy Clarkson

[My] excursions provided a unique opportunity for observing [the gorillas' behavior] in their natural habitat ... Then, all too soon, the infants were demanded for their trip to the zoo ... [H]appily the babies did not know they would never see their mountain home again — Dian Fossey

I again flourished my papers: "Here're my credentials from the Coalition Administration."
The American scrutinized the papers, shook his head in amazement, and smiled. "A South African," he said. "You're sure a long way from home." He radioed through for instructions and indicated that I should bring my hired car up to the side of the roadblock and wait. — Lawrence Anthony

Each living art object, taken out of its native habitat so we can conveniently gaze at it, is like an animal in a zoo. Something about it has died in the removal. — Daniel J. Boorstin

A zoo is not an ideal place for an animal - of course the best place for a chimp is the wilds of Tanzania - but a good zoo is a decent, acceptable place. Animals are far more flexible than we realize. IF they weren't, they wouldn't have survived. But my opinion about zoos came after research. Initially I had the opinion that most people have, that they are jails. — Yann Martel

The zoo is a prison for animals who have been sentenced without trial and I feel guilty because I do nothing about it. I wanted to see an oyster-catcher, so I was no better than the people who caged the oyster-catcher for me to see. — Russell Hoban

The zoos are full and the prisons overflowing. My, my. How the world so dearly loves a cage." She — Colin Higgins

The voice of the natural world would be, 'could you please give us space and leave us alone to get along with our own lives and our own ways, because we actually know much better how to do it than when you start interfering' — Jane Goodall

It was wrong to capture wild animals and confine them in captivity for people to go and gawk at them. And that's basically how zoos got started. But once you do that, and once you have animals that have been bred in captivity, you're really stuck with them in some sense. You can't return them to the wild. — Peter Singer

My wife a great driver, she once hit a deer. It was in a zoo. There is a pair of shoes on the dashboard. They belong to the last guy she hit — Rodney Dangerfield

When I saw the sun bears at the Oakland Zoo, I immediately was drawn to them. Not to be ornery, but regarding what you said about the speaker identifying with the bear: I'm not sure it's exactly right to say that the speaker feels that the bear must share his sadness, or whatever else he is feeling. That would be classic pathetic fallacy, which is certainly generative for poetry, but here the speaker appears actually to be rejecting that idea. — Matthew Zapruder

There are some people who begin the Zoo at the beginning, called WAYIN, and walk as quickly as they can past every cage until they get to the one called WAYOUT, but the nicest people go
straight to the animal they love the most, and stay there. — A.A. Milne

After this, he'd probably be going to zoos, climbing the enclosure, saying, 'Here, watch this...' Famous last words, as yet another unfit human is removed from the gene pool. — Kelley Armstrong

See this abdicated beast, once king
Of them all, nibble his claws:
Not anger enough left - no, nor despair -
To break his teeth on the bars. — Cecil Day-Lewis