Quotes & Sayings About Zoos

If dragons were common, and you could look at one in the zoo - but zebras were a rare legendary creature that had finally been decided to be mythical - then there's a certain sort of person who would ignore dragons, who would never bother to look at dragons, and chase after rumors of zebras. The grass is always greener on the other side of reality. Which is rather setting ourselves up for eternal disappointment, eh? If we cannot take joy in the merely real, our lives shall be empty indeed. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

Adult gorillas will fight to the death defending their families. This is why poachers who may be seeking only one infant for the zoo trade must often kill all the adults in the family to capture the baby. — Sy Montgomery

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

In my view this is not democracy, but a zoo ... It was exactly what we expected, but not on that scale nor in that form. In a word, it was nothing but a zoo, you can't put it better — Alexander Lukashenko

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

We wanted to blast the world free of history.... picture yourself planting radishes and seed potatoes on the fifteenth green of a forgotten golf course. You'll hunt elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center, and dig clams next to the skeleton of the Space Needle leaning at a forty-five degree angle. We'll paint the skyscrapers with huge totem faces and goblin tikis, and every evening what's left of mankind will retreat to empty zoos and lock itself in cages as protection against the bears and big cats and wolves that pace and watch us from outside the cage bars at night. — Chuck Palahniuk

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

Zoos have always fascinated me. What child hasn't wondered what would happen if all the animals escaped from the zoo? Or what would happen if they got caught in an enclosure? — Matthew Reilly

They parade for us
In zoos - in portraits
Of every generation. — Abigail George

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

Elephants in all the worlds zoos
in old age yearn
until one morning
they say
we will set off on a journey
carrying hidden the pain that will never return
to the places where we were happy — Mario Payeras

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

What a pity that most young people instead of seeing one animal in nature--which is worth a hundred in any Zoo--must derive their knowledge of God's creatures from their appearance in prisons. ... How do we manage to think that we know all about an animal by gazing at him penned in a cage? — Dhan Gopal Mukerji

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 went to the zoo one day and saw a chimp playing with a beat-up acoustic guitar in a way I had never seen before. Instead of using the pick the chimp was banging the neck and tapping it with its fingers. I knew the chimp was on to something so I practiced this new technique in my room for hours until I'd perfected it. — Eddie Van Halen

Their stupidity does not amaze me, its when they're smart that amazes me. It's baffling whenever you find someone who's smart - incredible. Soon you'll have zoos for such things. — Frank Zappa

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 was always fascinated with animals and I wanted to go to the zoo all the time. When I got older and I realized the animals bite, and when they do, most of the time you don't survive it kind of crushed my dream and now I just want to WATCH Discovery Channel. — Marcus Hudson

For God so loved the world, that whosoever believes in him will, from that point on, be considered weired by the rest of the world, which means the church should be more like a zoo than a tomb of identical mummies. — Mike Yaconelli

A good way to lose weight is to put salt on your ass and go to a petting zoo. But stay away from goats because I've seen them fornicate with a mail box. — Gary Busey

There was the annual Fourth of July picketing at Independence Hall in Philadelphia ... I thought it was ridiculous to have to go there in a skirt. But I did it anyway because it was something that might possibly have an effect. I remember walking around in my little white blouse and skirt and tourists standing there eating their ice cream cones and watching us like the zoo had opened. — Martha Shelley

My own first love was biology. I spent a great part of my adolescence in the Natural History museum in London (and I still go to the Botanic Garden almost every day, and to the Zoo every Monday). The sense of diversity of the wonder of innumerable forms of life has always thrilled me beyond anything else. — Oliver Sacks

If zoos are like arks, then rare animals are like passengers on a voyage of the damned, never to find a port that will let them dock or a land in which they can live in peace. The real solution, of course, is to preserve the wild nature that created these animals and has the power to sustain them. But if it is really true that we are inevitably moving towards a world in which mountain gorillas can survive only in zoos, then we must ask whether it is really better for them to live in artificial environments of our design than not to be born at all. — Peter Singer

Thanks partly to the kind of poets that we now have and partly to funding, there's been a gigantic shift in the way poetry is perceived ... Poems on the Underground, poets in schools, football clubs, zoos. — Andrew Motion

Whether you are attending someone else's or holding your own dinner party, your main objective should be to lead guests away from the usual road of predictable behaviour and tedious conversation, and towards a shared voyage of epicurean delight.
In much the same way as caged animals in zoos are kept mentally healthy by being set mealtime tasks by their keepers, dinner guests will find their repast far more satisfying if it is presented as a challenge and an opportunity for self-expression. For example, instead of the dry old formula of a plate flanked by serried ranks of knives, forks and spoons, today's modern host should show a little more ingenuity when selecting eating utensils. The novelty of using a Black & Decker two-speed drill to sheer flakes of the roast beef or a 15-inch spanner to negotiate the foie gras, will firmly place your party in the minds of your guests as a night to remember. — Gustav Temple And Vic Darkwood

I became very critical of zoos and circuses and keeping animals in captivity. I wish it was against the law. — Christopher Walken

I'm not going to / let a little thing like the world stand in my way. / Why should I? I understand it / as much as I understand penguins / and I still go to the zoo. — Matthew Dickman

Through PETA, we rescue animals in roadside zoos and circuses. They are some of the most abused animals in the country. — Sam Simon

The only place that work and motion are the same thing is the zoo where people pay to see the animals move around — Taiichi Ohno

We made a big fuss over the possibility of microbes on Mars. If orangutans were Martians we'd cherish them, we'd be so amazed at how they're like us but not like us, they'd be invited to tea and cigars at the White House. But they're apes, sad in zoos, funny in movies, useful in advertisements and in fantasy books, I'm almost ashamed to say, but at least the Discworld's Librarian has done his bit for the species and caused more than a few bob to flow their way. — Anonymous

After counting all the sheep in the world
I enumerate the wildebeests, snails,
camels, skylarks, etc.,
then I add up all the zoos and aquariums,
country by country.
By early light I am asleep
in a nightmare about drowning in the Flood, — Billy Collins

I can give or take elephants; I never can find the cheetah-but the zebras captivate me. They'd be one of the few things that would fit if we were lucky enough to live in a world that's black or white. — Jodi Picoult

Greta Garbo: A deer in the body of a woman, living resentfully in the Hollywood zoo. — Clare Boothe Luce

For me, "Zoo" has always been a fable. It has nothing to do with realism. It's a fable about what man is doing to the world, and the animals have retribution. But in the real world, this would not happen. But in the world of 1984, this kind of thing can happen in a story. — James Patterson

I've actually gone to the zoo and had monkeys shout to me from their cages, "I'm in here when you're walking around like that?" — Robin Williams

As for those deserters, malcontents, radicals, incendiaries, the civil and uncivil disobedients among the young, SDS, PLP, Weathermen I and Weathermen II, the revolutionary action movement, the Black United Front, Yippies, Hippies, Yahoos, Black Panthers, Lions and Tigers alike - I would swap the whole damn zoo for a single platoon of the kind of young Americans I saw in Vietnam. — Spiro T. Agnew

The solutions like freezing zygotes, fertilized eggs, of all kinds of animals and so on, or keeping them in zoos and having arboreta where we have trees, all these things have been promoted. Even getting the complete genetic code of various fishes so we can let them pass away and then we'll pull them back. That is science fiction run amok. — E. O. Wilson

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

For example, the main reason zebras never got domesticated is that they're ultra-high-fear. Zebras may bite people and not let go. They injure more people in zoos than the tigers do.15 — Temple Grandin

All zoos, even the most enlightened, are built upon the idea both beguiling and repellent - the notion that we can seek out the wildness of the world and behold its beauty, but that we must first contain that wildness. Zoos argue that they are fighting for the conservation of the Earth, that they educate the public and provide refuge and support for vanishing species. And they are right. Animal-rights groups argue that zoos traffic in living creatures, exploiting them for financial gain and amusement. And they are right. Caught inside this contradiction are the animals themselves, and the humans charged with their well-being. — Thomas French

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

The right to lead a life free of fear is a fundamental right of all living beings. But this fundamental right is being brutally violated by humans in animal testing, meat and dairy industry, circus, zoos, aquariums, and sports. — Ama H. Vanniarachchy

Why build a zoo when we can just put up a fence around Chapel Hill? — Jesse Helms

Welcome to Hollywood, a land just off the coast of planet Earth. I am never quite certain if I am visiting the zoo, or if I'm one of the animals in a cage. — Elinor Glyn

What do the animals do in the zoo? That's the same thing that I do in my cell. I play with myself. I make little string dolls. I talk to roaches. I'm in jail for nine counts of murder, and I didn't do it. I'm in solitary confinement, may I add. — Charles Manson

Zoological Parks South of Florida
"Cuba has several zoos, the largest of which are in Havana and Santiago de Cuba. The Havana National Zoo is dedicated to going beyond the mere display of animals and attempts to maintain a more natural habitat, supporting and promoting breeding programs for various species with follow-up scientific research programs." — Hank Bracker

I view my own body as a petting zoo. I am the main attraction ... And the only customer. — Craig Ferguson

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

We are facing an enormous crisis in Africa right now in terms of illegal wildlife trafficking, which is decimating animal populations, destroying local economies, and funding armed insurgencies and terrorist syndicates. If we do not find solutions to this crisis now, there will be little habitat left beyond sparse areas of national parks that will serve as glorified zoos to small pockets of remaining animals. — David Jeremiah Barron

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That which interests most people leaves me without any interest at all. This includes a list of things such as: social dancing, riding roller coasters, going to zoos, picnics, movies, planetariums, watching tv, baseball games; going to funerals, weddings, parties, basketball games, auto races, poetry readings, museums, rallies, demonstrations, protests, children's plays, adult plays ... I am not interested in beaches, swimming, skiing, Christmas, New Year's, the 4th of July, rock music, world history, space exploration, pet dogs, soccer, cathedrals and great works of Art. How can a man who is interested in almost nothing write about anything? Well, I do. I write and I write about what's left over: a stray dog walking down the street, a wife murdering her husband, the thoughts and feelings of a rapist as he bites into a hamburger sandwich; life in the factory, life in the streets and rooms of the poor and mutilated and the insane, crap like that, I write a lot of crap like that — 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

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

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

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

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

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

[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

The chimpanzees in the zoos do it, Some courageous kangaroos do it Let's do it, let's fall in love. I'm sure giraffes on the sly do it, Even eagles as they fly do it, Let's do it, let's fall in love. — Cole Porter

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

[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

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

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

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

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

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