In Yellowstone National Park, there are more ‘do not feed the animals’ signs than there are animals you might wish to feed.
Goats are the cable talk show panelists of the animal world, ready at a moment’s notice to interject, interrupt, and opine. They have something to say about everything, little of it complimentary. They are the most impertinent animals I have ever known.
We are civilized human beings, but we’re all animals deep down, and that creates a certain friction in all of us.
I like using animals because they help suspend my reader’s disbelief. We have certain ideas about dentists. We don’t have many ideas about rhinoceros dentists.
I’m a real pushover for animals.
I think growing up on a farm in a certain amount of isolation, with not a lot of friends nearby, makes you entertain yourself and kind of grows your imagination – being alone is quite good for all that. You make up stories, talk to the animals, let them be an audience, a bunch of cows.
I know that Daddy had an important job. He was working to change the world so everyone would love wildlife like he did. He built a hospital to help animals, and he bought lots of land to give animals a safe place to live.
Cats aren’t cooperative in the same way that other animals are. You can train a dog to act, but you can’t train a cat in the same way.
Animals are very easy to love and be friends with.
All of us in society are supposed to believe that cruelty to animals is wrong and that it is a good thing to prevent needless suffering. So if that is true, how can meat be acceptable under any but the most extraordinary circumstances, such as perhaps roasting the bird who died flying into a window?
Working with animals is always going to be tough because the animal doesn’t know it’s an actor.
If I could stomach the awful part of being a veterinarian, which involves sticking your hand up animals’ behinds, I would be a vet.
To err is human also in so far as animals seldom or never err, or at least only the cleverest of them do so.
I wish people would realize that animals are totally dependent on us, helpless, like children, a trust that is put upon us.
Animals do not admire each other. A horse does not admire its companion.
I look at trees, hunt mushrooms, and watch animals. Fishing is what gets me out into the woods so I can notice these things.
Those who actually hate animals to the point of being cruel to them are outcasts to the rest of us, no matter where in the world they live.
Anthropomorphic animals, when taken out of narrative into actual visibility, always turn into buffoonery or nightmare.
I studied what the Germans call the Naturwissenschaften, the natural sciences. Everything from biology to geology. How the clouds are formed, how the animals live, and what makes the rocks. So I know about nature. Period.
Most of the time, those who use animals in experiments justify that use by pointing to alleged benefits to human and animal health and the supposed necessity of using animals to obtain those benefits.
I mean, I really don’t want the federal government to be determining whether or not a person who feels certain ways about the environment or about animals or about certain religious issues should be considered an extremist. That to me is a type of thought control, mind control, which is very dangerous.
Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals.
Steve Irwin did wonderful conservation work but I was uncomfortable about some of his stunts. Even if animals aren’t aware that you are not treating them with respect, the viewers are.
A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him, that of plants and animals as that of his fellow men, and when he devotes himself helpfully to all life that is in need of help.
Normally I play dads, good guys, and little animals.
At PETA, we often say that the issue of how animals are treated isn’t just about them; it’s about us, how we behave.
When I was a kid if I was unhappy, I’d stroke my dog. I was into bringing injured birds into the house, RSPCA activities. And the relationship that you have with animals, you can get that from your children: that unquestioning love and adoration and equal need.
The difference between humans and wild animals is that humans pray before they commit murder.
I am very fussy; I am very detailed; I nag a lot. So in a sense, I am like Mr. Ping. I am temperamental, I am emotional, I’m fussy, and I’m very exact. And I want people to not fail; I want them to execute – all those things Mr. Ping wants in other people. Or animals.
For origin and development of human faculty we must look to these processes of association in lower animals.
Having animals in the city is entirely different from having animals out in the country. For one thing, it’s more social. When you live on lots of acres without neighbors within a stone’s throw, your dog-walks are usually solitary rambles over hill and dale.
It was always understood that plants and animals, though completely contrasted in their higher representatives, approached each other very closely in their lower and simpler forms. But they were believed not to blend.
I did have a life before the Animals, and I’m trying constantly to prove that I have a life after the Animals. People tend to forget that I was the frontman with War for two years. People sort of have compartmental memories.
There is that thing about not working with animals and children – I don’t think that’s true. Although you should never work with donkeys.
The cycle of life is death, decomposition and regeneration, and a person who wants to stop killing animals is actually anti-life because it’s only in death that life can be regenerated.
When you’re writing a book, with people in it as opposed to animals, it is no good having people who are ordinary, because they are not going to interest your readers at all. Every writer in the world has to use the characters that have something interesting about them, and this is even more true in children’s books.
I like animals. I like natural history. The travel bit is not the important bit. The travel bit is what you have to do in order to go and look at animals.
The eyes of some persons are large, others small, and others of a moderate size; the last-mentioned are the best. And some eyes are projecting, some deep-set, and some moderate, and those which are deep-set have the most acute vision in all animals; the middle position is a sign of the best disposition.
Turns out, I couldn’t catch them – or even get close to them. I realized that sharks are amazing, beautiful animals who have absolutely no interest in checking me out.
Even as a child, I felt very guilty about eating animals and never knew that there was something to do about it. And as I got older, it became clearer that there are things that I can do and choices I can make.
I love to think that animals and humans and plants and fishes and trees and stars and the moon are all connected.
Just about every children’s book in my local bookstore has an animal for its hero. But then, only a few feet away in the cookbook section, just about every cookbook includes recipes for cooking animals. Is there a more illuminating illustration of our paradoxical relationship with the nonhuman world?
We ogle plants and animals up close on television, the Internet and in the movies. We may not worship the animals we see, but we still regard them as necessary physical and spiritual companions. Technological nature can’t completely satisfy that yearning.
Just as our ancient ancestors drew animals on cave walls and carved animals from wood and bone, we decorate our homes with animal prints and motifs, give our children stuffed animals to clutch, cartoon animals to watch, animal stories to read.
The human young must learn to perceive these affordances, in some degree at least, but the young of some animals do not have time to learn the ones that are crucial for survival.
Because animals are property, we consider as ‘humane treatment’ that we would regard as torture if it were inflicted on humans.
I am just like my mother. She raised me to love and take care of animals, especially the ones that need it the most and so I started Eddie’s Rescue Ranch. We take in animals that need extra care and attention and the animals that get left behind.
But if you love animals for all the right reasons- and that’s just love and affection- then you’re going to go after animals who need you.
By the time I was six, I made an important discovery that I get along much better with animals than humans.
In most of the world, it is accepted that if animals are to be killed for food, they should be killed without suffering.
Simply by starting to cook again, you declare your independence from the culture of fast food. As soon as you cook, you start thinking about ingredients. You start thinking about plants and animals and not the microwave. And you will find that your diet, just by that one simple act, that is greatly improved.
We need a better way to talk about eating animals, a way that doesn’t ignore or even just shruggingly accept things like habits, cravings, family and history but rather incorporates them into the conversation. The more they are allowed in, the more able we will be to follow our best instincts.
