Quotes About Rats

Behavioral psychology is the science of pulling habits out of rats.

Deep in their rat tendons, rats know history.

A historic measure of Paris's urbanity has been the description by Parisians of large rats on its subway system, or metro. I recently visited Paris with an eye toward seeing large rats. When I did not, after spending several hours being watched on metro platforms by wary Parisians, I began to realize that being able to readily spot rats in a specific city is an acquired skill, akin to learning a local dialect.

There were stairs that led down to the basement, too, but nobody ever went down there. There were dead rats living in the basement.

There were dead rats living in the basement.

In wine was truth, perhaps, but in whisky, the way Hoffman sluiced it down, was an army of imaginary rats climbing your legs.

The rats are terrible fellows for gnawing whatever they come across; and I have heard unfortunate tuli-growers complain most bitterly of Noah for having put a couple of rats in the ark.

As John was proving how this effect plays out in humans, other scientists were investigating it in other animals. For example, Professor Martha McClintock separated out lab rats. Some were raised in a cage, alone. Others were raised in groups. The isolated rats developed eighty-four times the number of breast cancer tumors as the rats who had a community.

It was the best place to be, thought Wilbur, this warm delicious cellar, with the garrulous geese, the changing seasons, the heat of the sun, the passage of swallows, the nearness of rats, the sameness of sheep, the love of spiders, the smell of manure, and the glory of everything.

A magician pulls rabbits out of hats. An experimental psychologist pulls habits out of rats.

I went down to the sewers in London and looked at a campaigning group in London called RATS, Rowers Against Thames Sewage, and I went to Sewage School and hung out with kids learning to make sewage soup and how to clean sewage. And it was great - really good fun.

Would you wish us to invest it for you? -No, I would like you to set up a trust for dumb animals. -What kind of dumb animals do you have in mind, Miss Donahue? -Oh, stray dogs. Rats. Birds. -We could still invest it for you. Then the animals would get the income without touching the capital. -No, I don't wish to invest it. I don't want them to get rich. They might become human.

Cats are useful for killing vermin (mice, rats) but beyond that provide very little use to humans, except companionship, and even then only according to their capricious whims.

on Easter Island concluded that it wasn't humans who deforested the landscape; rather, it was the rats

A recent study of pollen and animal remains on Easter Island concluded that it wasn't humans who deforested the landscape; rather, it was the rats that came along for the ride and then bred unchecked. The native palms couldn't produce seeds fast enough to keep up with their appetites.)

if there's been epidemic extinction and ecospace opens up, rats may be best placed to take advantage of that.

What tipped the scales was that psychology involved working with rats.

One out of 100 citizens of the U.S. is going to prison, and it's not that the system is making criminals, it's that it's making criminals better criminals. We're breeding them like rats and it has to change.

There are lots of rats. It's a dirty little secret at the Delacorte Theatre.

I had mice that I kept as pets when I was very young, and I've always liked the way they look. Even rats. I'm not scared of them.

I actually don't mind rats at all. I kind of think they're quite cute, but that's just me.

I have taxidermy pets that are very close to me. I have a little lizard with a head that comes on and off that I call Nicolas Cage because his face is long. And I have a big diamondback rattlesnake called Rufus, and I have some rats in jars and stuff.

Once or twice I saw evidence that rats had been nesting among the books, rearranging them to make snug two and three-level homes for themselves and smearing dung on the covers to form the rude characters of their speech.

Despite my exhaustion I have a devil of a time getting to sleep because of the rats above my bed and a pig who lives beneath my room.