Animal Quotes - Page 150

I always felt that with luxury came cruelty. I do my best to live a happy, prosperous life, but I don't indulge in a lot of luxury. My husband and I are very mindful of what we eat and what we wear. I don't visit places that exploit animals or buy things that are derived from cruelty. I'm sure I'm not perfect, but I make a conscious effort to do no harm and always support people, places, or things that are on the up-and-up.

My life has become about trying to find effective ways to be as responsible with the choices I make - in food, clothing and everything else. I don't want to be responsible for the harm of any creature, person or animal.

It has been generally the custom of writers on natural history to take the habits and instincts of animals as the fixed point, and to consider their structure and organization as specially adapted to be in accordance with them.

One main factor in the upward trend of animal life has been the power of wandering.

Scientific civilisation has destroyed the soul of the world.

To attribute rights to animals is to ignore the purpose and justification of rights - to protect the interests of man.

The mole is an animal that digs passages searching for the sun. Sometimes he reaches the surface. When he looks at the sun he goes blind.

To be enlightened is to be aware, always, of total reality in its immanent otherness - to be aware of it and yet remain in a condition to survive as an animal. Our goal is to discover that we have always been where we ought to be. Unhappily we make the task exceedingly difficult for ourselves.

The thinking man must oppose all cruel customs no matter how deeply rooted in tradition or surrounded by a halo. We need a boundless ethics which will include the animals also. My life is full of meaning to me. The life around me must be full of significance to it. If I want others to respect my life, then I must respect the other life I see however strange it may be to mine. Ethics in our western world has hitherto been largely limited to the relation of man to man... but that is a limited ethics.

Don't stop to ask whether the animal or plant you meet deserves your sympathy, or how much it feels, or even whether it can feel at all: respect it and consider all life sacred.

Considered logically this concept is not identical with the totality of sense impressions referred to; but it is an arbitrary creation of the human (or animal) mind.

It is humankind's duty to respect all life, not only animals have feelings but even also trees and plants.

Though our conduct seems so very different from that of the higher animals, the primary instincts are much alike in them and in us.

but ignorance is a kind of insanity in the human animal. People who delight in torturing defenseless children or tiny creatures are in reality insane. The terrible thing is that people who are madmen in private may wear a totally bland and innocent expression in public.

The abuse of a harmless thing is the essence of sin.

What we really want to do is serve happiness. We want everyone to be happy, never unhappy even for a moment. We want the animals to be happy. The happiness of every living thing is what we want.

The similarities among animals that are on the surface very different are no coincidence. In fact, animal locomotion is no different than other flows, animate and inanimate they all develop in space and in time such that they optimize the flow of material.

[I]t is difficult to picture the great Creator conceiving of a program of one creature (which He has made) using another living creature for purposes of experimentation. There must be other, less cruel ways of obtaining knowledge.

Man is a perpetually wanting animal.

He who sees cruelty and does nothing about it is himself cruel.

Our age is one in which usefulness is thought to be the chief merit of nature; in which the attainment of power, the utilization of its resources is taken to be the chief purpose of man in God's creation. Man has indeed become primarily a tool-making animal, and the world is now a gigantic tool box for the satisfaction of his needs.

When great causes are on the move in the world, stirring all men's souls, drawing them from their firesides, casting aside comfort, wealth and the pursuit of happiness in response to impulses at once awe-striking and irresistible, we learn that we are spirits, not animals.

I am in favor of deliberately spreading methodically prepared bacteria among people and animals -- mildew ... to destroy the harvests, anthrax to destroy horses and livestock, and the plague, in order to kill not only entire armies, but also the inhabitants of large regions.

I would, if I could, always feed to music. The singularly graceless action of thus filling one's body with roots and dead animals and powdered grain is given some significance then. One can perform as a ritual what one is shamed to do as a utilitarian action.

Is man no more than this? Consider him well. Thou ow'st the worm no silk, the beast no hide, the sheep no wool, the cat no perfume. Here's three on's are sophisticated. Thou art the thing itself; unaccommodated man is no more than such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art.