Animal Quotes - Page 8

• The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Philosophical, Squirrels, Humanity

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Quotable Thoreau: An A to Z Glossary of Inspiring Quotations from Henry David Thoreau”, p.92, BookBaby

  28 Copy quote

  Show source

• Man is the cruelest animal.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Philosophical, Men, Cruelty

  Friedrich Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (2003). “Thus Spake Zarathustra”, p.169, Algora Publishing

  45 Copy quote

  Show source

• In the case of those solids, whether of earth, or rock, which enclose on all sides and contain crystals, selenites, marcasites, plants and their parts, bones and the shells of animals, and other bodies of this kind which are possessed of a smooth surface, these same bodies had already become hard at the time when the matter of the earth and rock containing them was still fluid. And not only did the earth and rock not produce the bodies contained in them, but they did not even exist as such when those bodies were produced in them.

  Nicolas Steno

  Science, Rocks, Matter

  The Prodromus of Nicolaus Steno's Dissertation Concerning a Solid Body Enclosed by Process of Nature Within a Solid,

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• Although the works of the Creator may be in themselves all equally perfect, the animal is, as I see it, the most complete work of nature, and man is her masterpiece.

  Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon

  God, Nature, Science

  8 Copy quote

• Until we consider animal life to be worthy of the consideration and reverence we bestow upon old books and pictures and historic monuments, there will always be the animal refugee living a precarious life on the edge of extermination, dependent for existence on the charity of a few human beings.

  Gerald Durrell

  Life, Book, Science

  Gerald Durrell (1970). “Encounters with Animals”

  53 Copy quote

  Show source

• As soon as we touch the complex processes that go on in a living thing, be it plant or animal, we are at once forced to use the methods of this science [chemistry]. No longer will the microscope, the kymograph, the scalpel avail for the complete solution of the problem. For the further analysis of these phenomena which are in flux and flow, the investigator must associate himself with those who have labored in fields where molecules and atoms, rather than multicellular tissues or even unicellular organisms, are the units of study.

  John Jacob Abel

  Science, Atoms, Analysis

  John Jacob Abel, Otto Folin, Theobald Smith (1915). “Experimental and chemical studies of the blood: with an appeal for more extended chemical training for the biological and medical investigator”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The advances of biology during the past 20 years have been breathtaking, particularly in cracking the mystery of heredity. Nevertheless, the greatest and most difficult problems still lie ahead. The discoveries of the 1970's about the chemical roots of memory in nerve cells or the basis of learning, about the complex behavior of man and animals, the nature of growth, development, disease and aging will be at least as fundamental and spectacular as those of the recent past.

  H. Bentley Glass

  Memories, Lying, Learning

  7 Copy quote

• Increased knowledge of heredity means increased power of control over the living thing, and as we come to understand more and more the architecture of the plant or animal we realize what can and what cannot be done towards modification or improvement.

  Reginald Punnett

  Knowledge, Mean, Science

  16 Copy quote

• In order to turn natural history into a true science, one would have to devote oneself to investigations capable of telling us not the particular shape of such and such an animal, but the general procedures of nature in the animal's production and preservation.

  Pierre Louis Maupertuis

  Science, Order, Shapes

  10 Copy quote

• It is primarily through the growth of science and technology that man has acquired those attributes which distinguish him from the animals, which have indeed made it possible for him to become human.

  Arthur Compton

  Science, Technology, Men

  Arthur Holl Compton (1940). “The Human Meaning of Science”

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• The wonderful structure of the animal system will probably never permit us to look upon it as a merely physical apparatus, yet the demands of science require that the evidently magnified principles of vitality should be reduced to their natural spheres, or if truth requires, wholly subverted in favor of those more cognizable by the human understanding. The spirit of the age will not tolerate in the devotee of science a quiet indifference.

  John Gorrie

  Truth, Science, Understanding

  8 Copy quote

• This investigation has yielded an unanticipated result that reaction of cyanic acid with ammonia gives urea, a noteworthy result in as much as it provides an example of the artificial production of an organic, indeed a so-called animal, substance from inorganic substances.

  Friedrich Wohler

  Science, Discovery, Giving

  9 Copy quote

• One can truly say that the irresistible progress of natural science since the time of Galileo has made its first halt before the study of the higher parts of the brain, the organ of the most complicated relations of the animal to the external world. And it seems, and not without reason, that now is the really critical moment for natural science; for the brain, in its highest complexity-the human brain-which created and creates natural science, itself becomes the object of this science.

  Ivan Pavlov

  Science, Brain, Progress

  7 Copy quote

• The earliest signs of living things, announcing as they do a high complexity of organization, entirely exclude the hypothesis of a transmutation from lower to higher grades of being. The first fiat of Creation which went forth, doubtlessly ensured the perfect adaptation of animals to the surrounding media; and thus, whilst the geologist recognizes a beginning, he can see in the innumerable facts of the eye of the earliest crustacean, the same evidences of Omniscience as in the completion of the vertebrate form.

  Roderick Murchison

  Eye, Science, Media

  Roderick Impey Murchison (1854). “Siluria the History of the Oldest Known Rocks Containing Organic Remains, with a Brief Sketch of the Distribution of Gold Over the Earth by Roderick Impey Murchison”, p.469

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• This is the most exciting part of being human. It is using our brains in the highest way. Otherwise we are just healthy animals

  Edwin Land

  Health, Science, Brain

  10 Copy quote

• Many years ago, I was in a Broadway show and I had to wear a fox fur around my shoulders. One day my hand touched one of the fox's legs. It seemed to be in two pieces. Then it dawned on me.... her leg had probally been snapped in two by the steel trap that had caught it.

  Bea Arthur

  Hands, Years, Two

  9 Copy quote

• The brute animals have all the same sensations of pain as human beings, and consequently endure as much pain when their body is hurt; but in their case the cruelty of torment is greater, because they have no mind to bear them up against their sufferings, and no hope to look forward to when enduring the last extreme pain.

  Thomas Chalmers

  Hurt, Pain, Compassion

  9 Copy quote

• It's really important to me to show the interconnectedness of things. I always try to illustrate how environmentalism, humanitarianism, animal rights - all those things - are one and the same.

  Daryl Hannah

  Rights, Important, Trying

  19 Copy quote

• Every year tens of thousands of animals suffer and die in laboratory tests of cosmetics and household products...despite the fact that the test results do not help prevent or treat accidental or purposeful misuse of the products. Please join me in using your voice for those whose cries are forever sealed behind the laboratory doors.

  Woody Harrelson

  Doors, Years, Voice

  32 Copy quote

• ...chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans are thinking, self-aware beings, capable of planning ahead, who form lasting social bonds with others and have a rich social and emotional life. The great apes are therefore an ideal case for showing the arbitrariness of the species boundary. If we think that all human beings, irrespective of age or mental capacity, have some basic rights, how can we deny that the great apes, who surpass some humans in their capacities, also have these rights?

  Peter Singer

  Emotional, Thinking, Self

  34 Copy quote

• Should one break in and free the animals? That is illegal, but the obligation to obey the law is not absolute. It was justifiably broken by those who helped runaway slaves in the American South, to mention only one possible parallel.

  Peter Singer

  Law, Broken, Slave

  8 Copy quote

• Habits of thought lead us to brush aside descriptions of cruelty to animals as emotional, for "animal-lovers only"; or if not that, then anyway the problem is so trivial in comparison to the problems of human beings that no sensible person could give it time and attention. This too is a prejudice - for how can one know that a problem is trivial until one has taken the time to examine its extent?

  Peter Singer

  Taken, Emotional, Giving

  Peter Singer (1975). “Animal liberation: a new ethics for our treatment of animals”

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• It would be nonsense to say that it was not in the interests of a stone to be kicked along the road...A stone has no interests because it cannot suffer. The capacity for suffering and enjoyment is, however, not only necessary, but also sufficient for us to say that a being has interests - at an absolute minimum, an interest in not suffering. A mouse, for example, does have an interest in not being kicked along the road because it will suffer if it is.

  Peter Singer

  Suffering, Stones, Example

  7 Copy quote

• The statement "I am in pain" may be one piece of evidence for the conclusion that the speaker is in pain, but it is not the only possible evidence, and since people sometimes tell lies, not even the best possible evidence. Even if there were stronger grounds for refusing to attribute pain to those who do not have language, the consequences of this refusal might lead us to reject the conclusion. Human infants and young children are unable to use language. Are we to deny that a year-old child can suffer?

  Peter Singer

  Children, Pain, Lying

  Peter Singer (1975). “Animal liberation: a new ethics for our treatment of animals”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• We have seen that the senses and intuitions, the various emotions and faculties, such as love, memory, attention and curiosity, imitation, reason, etc., of which man boasts, may be found in an incipient, or even sometimes in a well-developed condition, in the lower animals.

  Charles Darwin

  Love, Nature, Memories

  Charles Darwin (2016). “The Descent of Man (Diversion Classics)”, p.176, Diversion Books

  12 Copy quote

  Show source