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Quotes about animals

95 quotes from 72 people

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I do feel that spiritual progress does demand at some stage⁠—an inexorable demand⁠—that we should cease to kill our fellow-creatures for satisfaction of our bodily wants.
Mahatma Gandhi1869–1948Speech at Meeting in Lausanne (8 December 1931), in The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (New Delhi: Publications Division Government of India, 1999 electronic edition), Volume 54, p. 272.
- Food
Man has much power of discourse which for the most part is vain and false; animals have but little, but it is useful and true, and a small truth is better than a great lie.
Leonardo da Vinci1452–1519XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.
- Truth & Lies
A man looking at a hippopotamus may sometimes be tempted to regard a hippopotamus as an enormous mistake; but he is also bound to confess that a fortunate inferiority prevents him personally from making such mistakes.
G. K. Chesterton1874–1936Charles Dickens (1906), Ch. 10 “The Great Dickens Characters”
- Comedy
Even a dog distinguishes between being stumbled over and being kicked.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.1841–1935“Early Forms of Liability,” Lecture I from The Common Law. (1909).
Anyone who tries to improve the lives of animals invariably comes in for criticism from those who believe such efforts are misplaced in a world of suffering humanity.
Jane Goodall1934–2025Reason for Hope: a Spiritual Journey (2000), p. 217
For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.
Rudyard Kipling1865–1936The Second Jungle Book (1895)
The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny.
Jeremy Bentham1748–1832An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789; 1823), Ch. 17: Of the Limits of the Penal Branch of Jurisprudence
- Justice
The question is not Can they reason?, nor Can they talk?, but Can they suffer?
Jeremy Bentham1748–1832An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789; 1823), Ch. 17: Of the Limits of the Penal Branch of Jurisprudence
Researchers find it very necessary to keep blinkers on. They don’t want to admit that the animals they are working with have feelings.
Jane Goodall1934–2025“An Interview with Jane Goodall”, In Defense of Animals (date unknown)
- Science
Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.
Harper Lee1926–2016To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), Pt. 1, Ch. 10 (Atticus Finch)
- Morality
He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring’d with the azure world, he stands
Alfred, Lord Tennyson1809–1892The Eagle (1851)In context
- Nature
Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us.
Harper Lee1926–2016To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), Pt. 1, Ch. 10 (Miss Maudie)
Let’s be perfectly clear, shall we. The fox is not a little orange puppy dog with doe eyes and a waggly tail. It’s a disease-ridden wolf with the morals of a psychopath and the teeth of a great white shark.
Jeremy Clarksonborn 1960The World According to Clarkson (2005), “A Murderous Fox Has Made Me Shoot David Beckham”, p. 161
- Comedy
We have the dubious distinction of being the deadliest species in the annals of biology.
Yuval Noah Harariborn 1976Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011), Chapter 4: “The Flood”
- Nature
When I play with my cat, who knows whether I do not make her more sport than she makes me?
Michel de Montaigne1533–1592Essays, Book II, Ch. 12, Apology for Raimond Sebond