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Quotes about animals

95 quotes from 72 people

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Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!
Arthur Conan Doyle1859–1930The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902), Chapter 2In context
- Fear
Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,
He’s broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity.
T. S. Eliot1888–1965Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats (1939)
- Comedy
You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson1803–1882The Conduct of Life (1860), Fate
- Food
If I were reincarnated, I’d want to come back a buzzard. Nothing hates him or envies him or wants him or needs him. He is never bothered or in danger, and he can eat anything.
William Faulkner1897–1962Interview with Jean Stein, The Paris Review, No. 12 (Spring 1956)
- Comedy
The kindness lavished on dogs, if evenly distributed, would establish peace on earth.
WFWilliam Feather1889–1981Featherisms (2008)
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
A ‘geek’ by definition is someone who eats live animals….I’ve never eaten live animals.
Crispin Gloverborn 1964
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
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
All along the backwater,
Through the rushes tall,
Ducks are a-dabbling,
Up tails all!
Kenneth Grahame1859–1932The Wind in the Willows (1908), Chapter IIIn context
- Poetry
“People come⁠—they stay for a while, they flourish, they build⁠—and they go. It is their way. But we remain. There were badgers here, I’ve been told, long before that same city ever came to be. And now there are badgers here again. We are an enduring lot, and we may move out for a time, but we wait, and are patient, and back we come. And so it will ever be.”
Kenneth Grahame1859–1932The Wind in the Willows (1908), Chapter IVIn context
- History
- Time
The better to eat you with!
Brothers GrimmGrimms’ Fairy Tales (1812–1815), Little Red-CapIn context
Animals are the main victims of history, and the treatment of domesticated animals in industrial farms is perhaps the worst crime in history.
Yuval Noah Harariborn 1976Introduction to Animal Liberation (2015)
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
Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.
Robert A. Heinlein1907–1988Glory Road (1963)
- Men
- Women