Animal Intelligence Quotes

• If a cat does something, we call it instinct; if we do the same thing, for the same reason, we call it intelligence.

  Will Cuppy

  Cat, Animal, Doe

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• Perhaps measuring animal intelligence by comparing it to human intelligence isn't the best litmus test.

  Ingrid Newkirk

  Animal, Tests, Compare

  "Top Scientific Minds Declare That We Are Just One Among Many Animals" by Ingrid Newkirk, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 28, 2012.

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• Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential.

  Winston Churchill

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

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• People must have renounced, it seems to me, all natural intelligence to dare to advance that animals are but animated machines.... It appears to me, besides, that such people can never have observed with attention the character of animals, not to have distinguished among them the different voices of need, of suffering, of joy, of pain, of love, of anger, and of all their affections. It would be very strange that they should express so well what they could not feel.

  Voltaire

  Pain, Philosophical, Character

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• We are all animals of this planet. We are all creatures. And nonhuman animals experience pain sensations just like we do. They too are strong, intelligent, industrious, mobile, and evolutional. They too are capable of growth and adaptation. Like us, firsthand foremost, they are earthlings. And like us, they are surviving. Like us they also seek their own comfort rather than discomfort. And like us they express degrees of emotion. In short like us, they are alive.

  Joaquin Phoenix

  Strong, Pain, Animal

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• I was so moved by the intelligence,sense of fun and personalities of the animals I worked with on Babe that by the end of the film I was a vegetarian.

  James Cromwell

  Fun, Animal, Personality

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• Dolphins are social mammals, capable of enjoying their lives. They form close bonds with other members of their group.

  Peter Singer

  Enjoy Life, Dolphins, Mammals

  "Dolphins have no part in this dispute with Iran" by Peter Singer, www.theguardian.com. 19 January, 2012.

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• The more I learn about people, the more I like my dog.

  Mark Twain

  Love, Inspirational, Life

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• For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.

  Douglas Adams

  Success, New York, War

  Douglas Adams (2017). “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Omnibus: A Trilogy in Four Parts”, p.102, Pan Macmillan

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• Wisdom and deep intelligence require an honest appreciation of mystery.

  Thomas W. Moore

  Appreciation, Intelligent, Honest

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• I feel more comfortable with gorillas than people. I can anticipate what a gorilla's going to do, and they're purely motivated.

  Dian Fossey

  Animal, Equality, People

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• There are a lot of obstacles in the way of our understanding animal intelligence - not the least being that we can't even agree whether nonhuman species are conscious. We accept that chimps and dolphins experience awareness; we like to think dogs and cats do. But what about mice and newts? What about a fly? Is anything going on there at all?

  Jeffrey Kluger

  Inspirational, Motivational, Dog

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• If you look up 'Intelligence' in the new volumes of the Encyclopeadia Britannica, you'll find it classified under the following three heads: Intelligence, Human; Intelligence, Animal; Intelligence, Military. My stepfather's a perfect specimen of Intelligence, Military.

  Aldous Huxley

  Military, Animal, Perfect

  Aldous Huxley (2009). “Point Counter Point”, p.108, Random House

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• We are taught that the body is an ignorant animal intelligence dwells only in the head. But the body is smart. It does not discern between external stimuli and stimuli from the imagination. It reacts equally viscerally to events from the imagination as it does to real events.

  Gloria E. Anzaldúa

  Real, Smart, Animal

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• Advertising: the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it.

  Stephen Leacock

  Money, Fear, Long

  Stephen Leacock, Gerald Lynch (2002). “Leacock on Life”, p.29, University of Toronto Press

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• If one of the arguments against eating meat is to do with cruelty and animal intelligence, then lab meat avoids that. There's also the environmental argument for it.

  Margaret Atwood

  Animal, Environmental, Meat

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