Thinking Animal Quotes & Sayings

I think that we are supernatural. We are unique. We're the only animals in the universe that we know of that actually have self-consciousness, a sense of time and our own mortality. — Anne Rice

I think everything in my life has led to my animal welfare work. — Doris Day

If you think humans are meat-eaters then try eating the animal raw like every other meat-eater on the planet. If something is not palatable in its raw state then you probably shouldn't be eating it. — David Wolfe

We're social animals; we're meant to be together, but we were never necessarily meant to be together without being together. That was never the plan, I don't think. — Goldie Hawn

I cannot think of a worse way of destroying an animal. Only two other methods come to mind, and they are similar. One is to boil the fox alive, and the other is to burn it alive. Those are just about the only alternatives that are worse than hunting. — Bill Etherington

Man is head, chest and stomach. Each of these animals operates, more often than not, individually. I eat, I feel, I even, although rarely, think. This jungle crawls and teems, is hungry, roars, gets angry, devours itself, and its cacophonic concert does not even stop when you are asleep. — Rene Daumal

One of the remarks made by farmers at their public discussion of these problems suggest that they are rapidly ceasing to think of animals as sentient beings at all. If you handle vast numbers of creatures which are in any case going to die soon, it is, I suppose, easy to get into a state of mind in which they seem to be merely machines. — Kingsley Martin

Generally I'm very supportive of farmers. I think the wider Australian population is also. The animal justice fund is focusing on factory-farmed animals and where they're being mistreated. — Jan Cameron

God is the God of the animals in a far lovelier way, I suspect, than many of us dare to think, but he will not be the God of a man by making a good beast of him. — George MacDonald

There is no reasoning, no process of inference or comparison; there is no thinking about things, no putting two and two together; there are no ideas - the animal does not think of the box or of the food or of the act he is to perform. — Edward Thorndike

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

Chris: For me! Where do you live, where have you come from? For me!
I was dying every day and you were killing my boys and you did it for me? What the hell do you think I was thinking of, the Goddamn business? Is that as far as your mind can see, the business? What is that , the world
the business? What the hell do you mean, you did it for me? Don't you have a country? Don't you live in the world? What the hell are you? You're not even an animal, no animal kills his own, what are you? — Arthur Miller

Men make the mistake of thinking that because women can't see the sense in violence, they must be passive creatures. It's just not true. In one important way, at least, men are the passive sex. Given a choice, they will always opt for the status quo. They hate change of any kind, and they fight against it constantly. On the other hand, what women want is stability, which when you stop to think about it is a very different animal. — Eric Van Lustbader

If we recognise that every ecosystem can also be viewed as a food web, we can think of it as a circular, interlacing nexus of plant animal relationships (rather than a stratified pyramid with man at the apex) ... Each species, be it a form of bacteria or deer, is knitted together in a network of interdependence, however indirect the links may be. — Murray Bookchin

I think I could always live with animals. The more you're around people, the more you love animals. — Walt Whitman

I became a vegetarian out of concern for animals, but I wasn't a vegetarian long before I realized there's something to that. I don't think I would have worked for the past five years probably were it not for my vegetarian diet. — Bob Barker

A veterinarian who naively gave PETA some of the animals, thinking they would find them homes, and examined the dead bodies of others, testified that they were 'healthy' and 'adoptable.' — Nathan Winograd

Impartial observers from other planets would consider ours an utterly bizarre enclave if it were populated by birds, defined as flying animals, that nevertheless rarely or never actually flew. They would also be perplexed if they encountered in our seas, lakes, rivers, and ponds, creatures defined as swimmers that never did any swimming. But they would be even more surprised to encounter a species defined as a thinking animal if, in fact, the creature very rarely indulged in actual thinking. — Steve Allen

I think it's a huge shortcoming of mine - this disconnect between the world of human and animals. We are animals. — Rachel Zucker

Jessica Jones is its own animal, I think each one of these series is its own animal. There is some connective tissue, in terms of referencing the Marvel Universe, but it glances off of the other stories. — Melissa Rosenberg

You talk to some people who are opposed to same sex marriage, and they'll say, 'If we allow that, what's next? Will people want to marry animals?' ... You have to wonder about people who go straight to that idea
and they think WE'RE weird! — Ellen DeGeneres

While it's certainly true that many people think that dairy doesn't have a cost to the animal, it's because they never went to a dairy farm. — Neal Barnard

When Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, he exposed the world to a momentous discovery . For the first time in history, human beings were seen not as creatures of divine origin, but instead, as a product of nature, an animal like every other on the planet. Imagine yourself back in that amazing year. The day before Darwin's book was published, you wake up thinking yourself the image of God; the next morning you realize you have the face of a monkey. Not everybody immediately embraced this rude demotion from god to goat. — Jeff Schweitzer

Toads are conservative animals, I think, and not much given to expecting the best from fortune. Some weeks ago, well before the end of October, I accidentally dug up one while turning over some garden earth. I was surprised, naturally, when one of the clods heaved over on its die and there, in some annoyance, sat at toad. — Henry Mitchell

This is a really good circus. It has lions, tigers, dogs, monkeys and about any other animal act you can think of. There are a lot of great acts, and it's a two part, two hour show. — Howard Thompson

There's something fundamentally wrong with the wiring of our brains, which makes us incapable of consistent logical thinking. To make matters worse, though all creatures need a certain amount of aggressiveness to survive, we seem to have far more than is absolutely necessary. And no other animal tortures its fellows as we do. — Arthur C. Clarke

When we think of globalization we are thinking in part of structures and institutions that have been developed over time and that have allowed us to become more interdependent and interrelated. But the development, the extraordinary development, of those structures and institutions has not fundamentally transformed our humanity. We are still those animals with fears and anxieties and insecurities in the face of death and dread and disappointment and disease. — Cornel West

Is there any thinking animal like man? — Lailah Gifty Akita

I've always been very bonded to animals - more so than most people. (laughs) I don't think that they can defend themselves, so we have to help them. — Jennie Garth

Florentino Ariza was awake most of the night, thinking that he heard the voice of Fermina Daza in the fresh river breeze, ministering to his solitude with her memory, hearing her sing in the respiration of the boat as it moved like a great animal in the darkness. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

People look at me as if I were some sort of monster, but I can't think why. In my macabre pictures, I have either been a monster-maker or a monster-destroyer, but never a monster. Actually, I'm a gentle fellow. Never harmed a fly. I love animals, and when I'm in the country I'm a keen bird-watcher. — Peter Cushing

The pigs were pushing their noses through the slats in the truck bed, which made Langston so unaccountably sad she thought she would have to sit down on the sidewalk. How is it possible, she thought, that a person can drive a thinking, feeling, animal to slaughter and not become less than an animal himself? And what were the pigs searching for, after all, but air and freedom? — Haven Kimmel

If you claim to 'love' animals but you eat animal products, you need to think critically about how you understand love. — Gary L. Francione

There's nothing fashionable about a dead animal that has been cruelly killed just because some people think it looks cool to wear. — Stella McCartney

Animals are locked in a perpetual present. They can learn from recent events, but they are easily distracted by what is in front of their eyes. Slowly, over a great period of time, our ancestors overcame this basic animal weakness. By looking long enough at any object and refusing to be distracted - even for a few seconds - they could momentarily detach themselves from their immediate surroundings. In this way they could notice patterns, make generalizations, and think ahead. They had the mental distance to think and reflect, even on the smallest scale.
These early humans evolved the ability to detach and think as their primary advantage in the struggle to avoid predators and find food. It connected them to a reality other animals could not access. Thinking on this level was the single greatest turning point in all of evolution - the emergence of the conscious, reasoning mind. — Robert Greene

Things are picking up ... It's not going to make this thing go away ... don't think you're going to find anybody deterred ... There's a lot of people willing to die for the cause. — Jerry Vlasak

Animals are like autistic savants. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that animals might actually be autistic savants. Animals have special talents normal people don't, the same way autistic people have special talents normal people don't; and at least some animals have special forms of genius normal people don't, the same way some autistic savants have special forms of genius. I think most of the time animal genius probably happens for the same reason autistic genius does: a difference in the brain autistic people share with animals. — Temple Grandin

No, amusing me only, I wonder if they realize how they are used?"
"Not a bit. They think they are the emperors of creation."
"Poor lambs."
"That's not how I'd describe them."
"I was thinking of animal sacrifice."
"Ah. That's closer. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Butch clapped V on the thigh, then stood up, as if he knew exactly what V was thinking. "Listen, I don't want you to feel bad. It's my animal magnetism. I'm irresistible."
"Smart-ass. — J.R. Ward

Cathedrals are an unassailable witness to human passion. Using what demented calculation could an animal build such places? I think we know. An animal with a gorgeous genius for hope. — Lionel Tiger

All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal. — John Steinbeck

Animals are good to think with. — Claude Levi-Strauss

I think animals help us live; they've helped me live. It was only when I began to devote myself to protecting animals that I blossomed completely. Taking care of them, looking out for them, has given my life true meaning, a meaning I hope future generations can experience. — Brigitte Bardot

I don't care whether animals are capable of thinking; all I care about is that they are capable of suffering! — Jeremy Bentham

How is it possible, she thought, that a person can drive a thinking, feeling, animal to slaughter and not become less than an animal himself? — Haven Kimmel

CG Jung:Thoughts grow in me like a forest, populated by many different animals. But man is domineering in his thinking, and therefore he kills the pleasure of the forest and that of the wild animals. Man is violent in his desire, and he himself becomes a darker forest and a sickened forest animal. Just as I have freedom in the world, I also have freedom in my thoughts. Freedom is conditional. — C. G. Jung

The medical argument for animal testing doesn't stand up. Even if it did, I don't think we should kill other species. We think we're so much better; I'm not sure we are. I tell people, We've beaten into submission every animal on the face of the Earth, so we are the clear winners of whatever battle is going on between the species. Couldn't we be generous? I really do think it's time to get nice. No need to keep beating up on them. I think we've got to show that we're kind. — Paul McCartney

Nature is none other than God in things ... Animals and plants are living effects of Nature; Whence all of God is in all things ... Think thus, of the sun in the crocus, in the narcissus, in the heliotrope, in the rooster, in the lion. — Giordano Bruno

I really don't think I could consent to go to Heaven if I thought there were no animals there. — George Bernard Shaw

As poets, we don't accept oppression; we are about a freedom of spirit, or whatever you want to call it. I think environmental concerns have to go to the deep place, so we speak from a place of great empathy for the planet - for the disadvantaged people, animals, places, cultures. — Alison Hawthorne Deming

He was slumped over, blood trickling from the side of his mouth. I shook his furry hip, thinking, No! Even if you are half barnyard animal, you're my best friend and I don't want you to die!
Then he groaned "Food," and I knew there was hope. — Rick Riordan

I have been vegetarian for twelve years. And I have never been seriously ill. Vegetarian food strengthens the immune system. I think that meat makes you sick. — Bryan Adams

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

It wasn't love at first sight. They ran into each other one morning in a sunny clearing in the forest. A few moments of stunned silence. 'Glockenspiel,' Adam pronounced, thinking (but with terrible doubt) he'd found another animal in search of a name. When Eve approached him, proffering a handful of elderberries, he threw a stick at her and ran away. — Glen Duncan

I'm not a robot. I'm a freak of the universe ... a thinking animal ... and I'm trying to see my way clear through this morass. — Alfred Bester

We don't give a damn what you or anybody else on this planet thinks. We didn't sink those ships for you. We did it for the whales. — Paul Watson

Factory farming is terrible for the environment - not to mention that it's gross. The best thing you can do, if you think about it, is to become a vegetarian and just spread the word. The world would change for the better for animals, humans, and the planet if everyone took that step. — Christofer Drew

God, think of the great men that have nibbled on me, and now I'm nothing but a snack for a virus - something that can't even decide if it's a plant or an animal. — Robert Patrick

Elvis had animal magnetism, he was even sexy to the guys, I can't imagine what the chicks used to think. — Ian Hunter

Seriously, I think everybody needs to be more disciplined; nobody needs any meat. But from a perspective of how many animals suffer, it's probably better to kill and eat one whale than it is to eat fish, chickens, cows, lambs and eggs. — Ingrid Newkirk

I don't go to scary movies. I don't like the experience of being scared. I think it's very weird that some people do. Obviously, humans are the only animals that do that. You don't see a wolf walk to the end of a cliff and look over the edge to freak himself out. — Chuck Klosterman

A tiny little baby!' says Tam. 'People look at me like I'm an animal. People who don't know me judge me. I always remember going up to visit someone in prison, and this woman was sitting there. She was looking at me, growling a bit, and I could imagine what she was thinking: "There's a pedophile!" Anyway, I later discovered about her character. And I'll tell you, it outweighed anything I'd ever done.'
'What had she done?' I ask.
'Shoplifting,' says Tam.
There is silence. — Jon Ronson

Animal crackers, and cocoa to drink That is the finest of suppers, I think When I'm grown up and can have what I please, I think I shall always insist upon these. — Christopher Morley

We are the biggest sissies in the jungle. Every other animal is stronger than we are - they have fangs, they have claws, they have nimbleness, they have speed. We think Usain Bolt is fast - Usain Bolt can get his ass kicked by a squirrel. — Christopher McDougall

Landscapes are culture before they are nature; constructs of the imagination projected onto wood and water and rock. It is ... difficult to think of a single natural system that has not, for better or worse, been substantially modified by human culture. The cultural habits of humanity have always made room for the sacredness of nature. — Simon Schama

I find it quite useful to think of a free-market economy - or partly free market economy - as sort of the equivalent of an ecosystem. Just as animals flourish in niches, people who specialize in some narrow niche can do very well. — Charlie Munger

If you think that being vegan is difficult, imagine how difficult it is for animals that you are not vegan. — Gary L. Francione

Sentimentalising is anathema, as far as I am concerned. It leads you into ethical problems about violence and killing and eating meat. The whole world becomes topsy-survy if you impose moralities that were evolved within human society on what a blowfly or what a parasite does ... there are lots of emotions you can deduce from an animal's behaviour that are correct, but when you start saying it's feeling guilty or thinking or a loved one or mourning, you must be very careful of those feelings. — David Attenborough

To affirm life is to deepen, to make more inward, and to exalt the will-to-life. At the same time the man who has become a thinking being feels a compulsion to give every will-to-live the same reverence for life that he gives to his own. He experiences that other life as his own. He accepts as being good: to preserve life, to raise to its highest value life which is capable of development; and as being evil: to destroy life, to injure life, to repress life which is capable of development. This is the absolute, fundamental principle of the moral, and it is a necessity of thought. — Albert Schweitzer

I would rather be a free animal then a cage animal — Beto Jimenez

People moan about drugs being tested on animals. I sort of think it depends innit. If the drug's aspirin and the monkey's got a headache, is it right? — Karl Pilkington

If you love animals but think that veganism is extreme, then you are confused about the meaning of love. — Gary L. Francione

Man is a thinking animal, a talking animal, a toolmaking animal, a building animal, a political animal, a fantasizing animal. But, in the twilight of a civilization he is chiefly a taxpaying animal. — Hugh MacLennan

I think in rural settings, people have a different appreciation for animals than might the city dweller. In parts of India where poisonous snake bite is common, people have a much different value system. I live in a city. I'm not thinking about wolves, lions, etc. — Henry Rollins

As an animal lover and as a sometime-meat-eater, I've read so much about the emotional sophistication of pigs and cows and sheep that I do think twice when I do still eat them on occasion. — Bryan Fuller

I stood with my hands on the horses' necks, feeling the electricity of their thinking, the blood moving throughout their veins, and the history held neatly within the fabric of every organ of their equine anatomy, as if the body were a storage unit of memory. As I absorbed every nuance of the four-legged creatures, I touched my own stomach, lower back, liver, and spleen to see what the energies felt like. I compared one horse to another, then to myself, fascinated by the way each was so unique yet so the same. — Bethanne Elion

I don't think I have ever been as inspired by any character that I have played. I was deeply moved by Temple's courage and her resourcefulness.. She is really pioneering in both the world of autism and animal rights. She has encouraged an incredibly positive change in the world. — Claire Danes

When we walk around thinking we have a greater right to eat an animal than the animal has a right to live without suffering, it's corrupting. I'm not speculating. This is our reality. Look at what factory farming is. Look at what we as a society have done to animals as soon as we had the technological power. Look at what we actually do in the name of "animal welfare" and "humaneness," then decide if you still believe in eating meat. — Jonathan Safran Foer

It is sometimes argued that disbelief in a fearful and tempting heavenly despotism makes life into something arid and tedious and cynical: a mere existence without any consolation or any awareness of the numinous or the transcendent. What nonsense this is. In the first place, it commits an obvious error. It seems to say that we ought not to believe that we are an evolved animal species with faulty components and a short lifespan for ourselves and our globe, lest the consequences of the belief be unwelcome or discreditable to us. Could anything show more clearly the bad effects of wish-thinking? There can be no serious ethical position based on denial or a refusal to look the facts squarely in the face. But this does not mean that we must stare into the abyss all the time. (Only religion, oddly enough, has ever required that we obsessively do that.) — Christopher Hitchens

I don't think we're an animal that was built to be happy; we are an animal that was built to reproduce. — Helen Fisher

The world of organisms, of animals and plants, is built up of individuals. I like to think, then, of natural history as the study of life at the level of the individual-of what plants and animals do, how they react to each other and their environment, how they are organized into larger groupings like populations and communities. — Marston Bates

Aware of the suffering caused by the destruction of life, I am committed to cultivating compassion and learning ways to protect the lives of people, animals, plants, and minerals. I am determined not to kill, not to let others kill, and not to support any act of killing in the world, in my thinking, and in my way of life. — Nhat Hanh

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. — Neko Case

Care for all the animals they need our help Care for all the children stop thinking of ourselves. And if we work together to try for harmony Someday we will live in peace — Country Joe McDonald

Let's get into talking about how autism is similar animal behavior. The thing is I don't think in a language, and animals don't think in a language. It's sensory based thinking, thinking in pictures, thinking in smells, thinking in touches. It's putting these sensory based memories into categories. — Temple Grandin

To my way of thinking there's something wrong, or missing, with any person who hasn't got a soft spot in their heart for an animal of some kind. With most folks the dog stands highest as man's friend, then comes the horse, with others the cat is liked best as a pet, or a monkey is fussed over; but whatever kind of animal it is a person likes, it's all hunkydory so long as there's a place in the heart for one or a few of them. — Will James

Whether it's the Axis of Evil, or the evils of eating meat, it is a concept that has all but lost the impact it once had, because everyone thinks different things in this world are evil. PETA thinks what we do to animals is evil, but I think their overzealous approach is evil. Evil, in more ways than one, is comparable to the truth: definitions vary from one individual to the next. — Corey Taylor

And I don't think you'd have to kill
assassinate
too many vivisectors before you would see a marked decrease in the amount of vivisection going on. And I think for 5 lives, 10 lives, 15 human lives, we could save a million, 2 million, 10 million non-human animals. — Jerry Vlasak

It amazes me how people can close their minds off to the size of the Universe. With billions of stars, millions of galaxies, and possibly a googol of planets, how can it be that human beings are the only thinking animal in creation? — Coriander Woodruff

The bullet hit Lady right between her eyes, in the middle of her white star, exactly where we hoped it would. She bolted so hard her leather halter snapped into pieces and fell away from her face, and then she stood unmoving, looking at us with a stunned expression.
"Shoot her again," I gasped, and immediately Leif did, firing three more bullets into her head in quick succession. She stumbled and jerked, but she didn't fall and she didn't run, though she was no longer tied to the tree. Her eyes were wild upon us, shocked by what we'd done, her face a constellation of bloodless holes. In an instant I knew we'd done the wrong thing, not in killing her, but in thinking that we should be the ones to do it. I should have insisted Eddie do this one thing, or paid for the veterinarian to come out. I'd had the wrong idea of what it takes to kill an animal. There is no such thing as one clean shot. — Cheryl Strayed

You really, really have to care about animals to want to kill one. You have to learn all this stuff about them and start thinking like them. — Joel Stein

I am a political animal, because for God's sakes I think "We The People" is a job. I think experienced self government demands on all levels - intellectual, moral, historical, and spiritual level. We are supposed to be engaged and give directions to our elected employees. — Ted Nugent

Manushya (man) is a being with Manas (mind); and as soon as his thinking power goes, he becomes no better than an animal. — Swami Vivekananda

It's hard not to be kind of pessimistic about human beings generally, because we do tend to mess things up. If you just look at the history of extinctions, we've killed off an awful lot of animals - and I don't think we're doing a very good job of looking after the planet. — Bill Bryson

To make bread or love, to dig in the earth, to feed an animal or cook for a stranger - these activities require no extensive commentary, no lucid theology. All they require is someone willing to bend, reach, chop, stir. Most of these tasks are so full of pleasure that there is no need to complicate things by calling them holy. And yet these are the same activities that change lives, sometimes all at once and sometimes more slowly, the way dripping water changes stone. In a world where faith is often construed as a way of thinking, bodily practices remind the willing that faith is a way of life. — Barbara Brown Taylor

I went into designing my house thinking I could have some more expensive items because I didn't realize my kids were going to be animals. — Nicole Polizzi

If a huge genetic gap separated us from our closest relative in the animal kingdom, we could justifiably celebrate our brilliance. We might be entitled to walk around thinking we're distant and distinct from our fellow creatures. But no such gap exists. Instead, we are one with the rest of nature, fitting neither above nor below, but within. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

I have often wished myself a beast. I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own. Any thing, no matter what, to get rid of thinking! It was this everlasting thinking of my condition that tormented me. There was no getting rid of it. It was pressed upon me by every object within sight or hearing, animate or inanimate. — Frederick Douglass

I think I'd like to be remembered as someone who really helped people to have a little humility and realize that we are part of the animal kingdom not separated from it. — Jane Goodall

Man has been called a rational being, but rationality is a matter of choice - and the alternative his nature offers him is: rational being or suicidal animal. Man has to be man - by choice; he has to hold his life as a value - by choice; he has to learn to sustain it - by choice; he has to discover the values it requires and practice his virtues - by choice.
A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality. — Ayn Rand