Quotes About Animals

Vulnerability--not hunger, not anger, and certainly not spite--is the key to predator-prey relationships. The skill and viciousness of the hunter matters less than the size, speed, strength, health, and ferocity of the hunted. Vulnerability explains why large predators tend to kill the old, young, and sick members of prey populations. Predators eat the mild and weak because those are the animals they can catch and kill.

Here's something you must know and don't forget it - animals never lie. They don't like, they don't put on disguises, and they are always true to what they are. That's why you can trust them.

Taken together, the animals reminded Pip that she was an animal herself; the multitude of shames she'd left behind in Oakland seemed of smaller consequence at Los Volcanes.

The radical otherness of birds is integral to their beauty and their value. They are always among us but never of us. They're the other world-dominating animals that evolution has produced, and their indifference to us ought to serve as a chastening reminder that we're not the measure of all things.

So I envy animals. Dogs especially, because nothing smells bad to them.

And the beavers. They lived in big dams like brownstones or Tudors in Boston or New York. Whole cities of them, gathering up twigs, mixing mortar, patting it down with their tails, all split up into little groups of labor. Smart animals, the beavers. Some of them grew to five feet tall, but they've all been killed off already, the first to go when the white hunters arrived. Well

Just how destructive does a culinary preference have to be before we decide to eat something else? If contributing to the suffering of billions of animals that live miserable lives and (quite often) die in horrific ways isn't motivating, what would be? If being the number one contributor to the most serious threat facing the planet (global warming) isn't enough, what is? And if you are tempted to put off these questions of conscience, to say not now, then when?

If we are not given the option to live without violence, we are given the choice to center our meals around harvest or slaughter, husbandry or war. We have chosen slaughter. We have chosen war. That's the truest version of our story of eating animals. Can we tell a new story?

Almost always when I told someone I was writing a book about eating animals, they assumed, even without knowing anything about my views, that it was a case for vegetarianism. It's a telling assumption, one that implies not only that a thorough inquiry into animal agriculture would lead one away from eating meat, but that most people already know that to be the case.

Imagine being served a plate of sushi. But this plate also holds all of the animals that were killed for your serving of sushi. The plate might have to be five feet across.

Dogs are wonderful, and in many ways unique. But they are remarkably unremarkable in their intellectual and experiential capacities. Pigs are every bit as intelligent and feeling, by any sensible definition of the words. They can't hop into the back of a Volvo, but they can fetch, run and play, be mischievous, and reciprocate affection. So why don't they get to curl up by the fire? Why can't they at least be spared being tossed on the fire?

The animals are those things that God likes but doesn't love.

My dream went all the way back to the beginning. The rain rose into the clouds, and the animals descended the ramp.

We are breeding creatures incapable of surviving in any place other than the most artificial settings. We have focused the awesome power of modern genetic knowledge to bring into being animals that suffer more.

Cruelty...prefers abstraction. Some have tried to resolved this gap by hunting or butchering an animal themselves, as if those experiences might somehow legitimize the endeavor of eating animals. This is very silly. Murdering someone would surely prove that you are capable of killing, but it woudln't be the most reasonable way to understand why you should or shouldn't do it.

I felt shame for living in a nation of unprecedented prosperity-a nation that spends a smaller percentage of income on food than any other civilization has in human history-but in the name of affordability treats the animals it eats with cruelty so extreme it would be illegal if inflicted on a dog.

What we forget about animals we begin to forget about ourselves.

Why does watching a dog be a dog fill one with happiness?

Just how destructive does a culinary preference have to be before we decide to eat something else? If contributing to the suffering of billions of animals that live miserable lives and (quite often) die in horrific ways isn't motivating, what would be? If being the number one contributor to the most serious threat facing the planet (global warming) isn't enough, what is? And if you are tempted to put off these questions of conscience, to say not now, then when?

Lo que olvidamos de los animales es lo que empezamos a olvidar de nosotros mismos.

Anyone who suggests that there is a perfect symbiosis between the farmers' interest and the animals' is probably trying to sell you something (and it's not made of tofu)

But unlike all farmed meat, which requires the creation and maintenance of animals, dogs are practically begging to be eaten. Three to four million dogs and cats are euthanized annually. This amounts to millions of pounds of meat now being thrown away every year.

We hebben oorlog gevoerd, of eigenlijk hebben we een oorlog laten voeren, tegen alle dieren die we eten. Deze oorlog is nieuw en heeft een naam: bio-industrie. De bio-industrie beschouwt de natuur als een obstakel dat overwonnen moet worden.

If I misuse a corporation's logo, I could potentially be put in jail; if a corporation abuses a billion birds, the law will protect not the birds, but the corporation's right to do what it wants. That is what it looks like when you deny animals rights. It's crazy that the idea of animal rights seems crazy to anyone. We live in a world in which it's conventional to treat an animal like a hunk of wood and extreme to treat an animal like an animal. Before