Higher Animals Quotes

The higher animals are in a sense drawn into Man when he loves them and makes them (as he does) much more nearly human than they would otherwise be. ~ C.S. Lewis

The cell was the first invention of the animal kingdom, and all higher animals are and must be cellular in structure. Our tissues were formed ages on ages ago; they have all persisted. Most of our organs are as old as worms. All these are very old, older than the mountains. ~ John M. Tyler

I have been scientifically studying the traits and dispositions of the "lower animals" (so-called,) and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result profoundly humiliating to me. For it obliges me to renounce my allegiance to the Darwinian theory of the Ascent of Man from the Lower Animals; since it now seems plain to me that that theory ought to be vacated in favor of a new and truer one, this new and truer one to be named the Descent of Man from the Higher Animals. ~ Mark Twain

From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of higher animals, directly follows. ~ Charles Darwin

As I discuss in Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or the Dog?, we may, in the lifeboat or burning-house situation, decide to favor the human over the nonhuman not because death is a lesser harm to the nonhuman, but because we do not know what death means to the nonhuman and we have a better idea what it means to the human. We might, therefore, rely on this - a matter of epistemological limitation on our part and not any empirical claim that death is a lesser harm to humans - as the tie-breaker. We might also flip a coin. We might also decide to choose the nonhuman for some other reason, such as that the human in question is very old and the nonhuman in question is very young. In no case, however, would I think it appropriate to invoke any notion that humans are "higher" animals. ~ Gary L. Francione

The ancestors of the higher animals must be regarded as one-celled beings, similar to the Amoebae which at the present day occur in our rivers, pools, and lakes. The incontrovertible fact that each human individual develops from an egg, which, in common with those of all animals, is a simple cell, most clearly proves that the most remote ancestors of man were primordial animals of this sort, of a form equivalent to a simple cell. When, therefore, the theory of the animal descent of man is condemned as a 'horrible, shocking, and immoral' doctrine, tho unalterable fact, which can be proved at any moment under the microscope, that the human egg is a simple cell, which is in no way different to those of other mammals, must equally be pronounced 'horrible, shocking, and immoral. ~ Ernst Haeckel

Since I was in flight from religion, I assumed that my classmates had to be in flight from religion too, albeit in a quieter, savvier way than I had as yet been able to discover. Only today do I realize how mistaken I was. They were never in flight at all. Nor are their children in flight, or their grandchildren. By the time I reached by seventieth year, I used to predict, all the churches in the world would have been turned into barns or museums or potteries. But I was wrong. Behold, new churches spring up every day, all over the place, to say nothing of mosques. So Nietzsche's dictum needs to be amended: while it may be so that only the higher animals are capable of boredom, man proves himself highest of all by domesticating boredom, giving it a home. ~ J.M. Coetzee

Inflammation as understood in man and the higher animals is a phenomenon that almost always results from the intervention of some pathogenic microbe. ~ Elie Metchnikoff

Indecency, vulgarity, obscenity - these are strictly confined to man; he invented them. Among the higher animals there is no trace of them. They hide nothing. They are not ashamed. ~ Mark Twain

Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion
several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven ... The higher animals have no religion. And we are told that they are going to be left out in the Hereafter. I wonder why? It seems questionable taste. ~ Mark Twain

We think we know that chimpanzees are higher animals and earthworms are lower, we think we've always known what that means, and we think evolution makes it even clearer. But it doesn't. It is by no means clear that it means anything at all. Or if it means anything, it means so many different things to be misleading, even pernicious. ~ Richard Dawkins

Apparently, in the realm of higher animals, it takes 2 to make 1. The arithmetic of this mystery seems to suggest 1 + 1 = 1. ~ Roscoe Webster

What is wanted is men of principle, who recognize a higher law than the decision of the majority. The marines and the militia whose bodies were used lately were not men of sense nor of principle; in a high moral sense they were not men at all. ~ Henry David Thoreau

You're a talking cat?" Endora asked with a look of disbelief on her face.
"My, my, my, aren't you the bright bulb of the bunch," he replied with a bit of snarky smugness. "Tell me then, bright-bulb, do you suppose that I need your permission to talk just because I'm a cat?" He raised his paw to his face, admiring his newly gnawed manicure. After he observed the last nail, he slapped his paw down on the floorboards, making a low thud sound. "Because I don't," he smirked.
Endora was taken by surprise at his rudeness. She stared back at him, speechless and not quite sure how to respond.
"Are you a magic cat?" Mila busted in with a question that seemed as silly to her as to the cat.
He glared and narrowed his eyes at her. "A magic cat," he said, standing up to arch his furry back. "Is my talking some sort of magic to you? If it is… then I am." He stretched his back higher and let out a long purr that turned into, "Purrhaps, you four little witchy girls should clearly refine your meaning of magic so you know what it means before you say the word magic."
"I rather am quite fond of talking cats," Selena said with a big smile. "Of course, you're the first one I've ever seen."
The cat narrowed its eyes tighter. "Indeed," he said, letting out a yawn as if the whole conversation were a bore. He leapt off the porch and dash away, mumbling and grumbling his way down the corridor.
Selena looked over at Endora. "Rude little snot, isn't he?" she said. ~ Sophie Palmer

Michael Crichton comments, "Animals raised in isolation, without parents, without guidance, were not fully functional. Zoo animals frequently could not care for their offspring, because they had never seen it done. They would ignore their infants, or roll over and crush them, or simply become annoyed with them and kill them. . . . Adapative behavior was a kind of morality; it was behavior that had evolved over many generations because it was found to succeed - behavior that allowed members of the species to cooperate, to live together, to hunt, to raise young."59 ~ Stephen Harrod Buhner

people used to tell me that i had beautiful hands
told me so often, in fact, that one day i started to believe them until i asked my photographer father, "hey daddy could i be a hand model"

to which he said no way,

i dont remember the reason he gave me and i wouldve been upset,

but there were far too many stuffed animals to hold
too many homework assignment to write,
too many boys to wave at
too many years to grow,

we used to have a game, my dad and i about holding hands cus we held hands everywhere, and every time either he or i would whisper a great
big number to the other, pretending that we were keeping track of how many times we had held hands that we were sure, this one had to be 8 million 2 thousand 7 hundred and fifty three.

hands learn more than minds do,
hands learn how to hold other hands,
how to grip pencils and mold poetry,
how to tickle pianos and dribble a basketball,
and grip the handles of a bicycle
how to hold old people, and touch babies ,
i love hands like i love people,

they're the maps and compasses in which we navigate our way through life, some people read palms to tell your future,

but i read hands to tell your past,
each scar marks the story worth telling,
each calloused palm,
each cracked knuckle is a missed punch
or years in a factory,

now ive seen middle eastern hands cl ~ Sarah Kay

At a time when we are dealing with unpredictable suppliers of energy abroad and higher gas costs at home, the decision to increase domestic energy exploration is integral to a balanced, common sense energy policy. ~ Randy Neugebauer

Moral courage is higher and a rarer virtue than physical courage. ~ William Slim

Witnessing Matthew's limitless energy and his growing list of accomplishments, Simon Hunt had informed him decisively that any time he tired of working for Bowman's, he was welcome to come to Consolidated Locomotive. That had prompted Thomas Bowman to offer Matthew a higher percentage of the soap company's future profits.
"I'll be a millionaire by the time I'm thirty," Matthew had told Daisy dryly, "if I can just manage to stay out of jail. ~ Lisa Kleypas

The truth, I am convinced, is that there is no longer a poetical audience among the higher class of minds, that moral, political, and physical science have entirely withdrawn from poetry the attention of all whose attention is worth having; and that the poetical reading public being composed of the mere dregs of the intellectual community, the most sufficing passport to their favour must rest on the mixture of a little easily-intelligible portion of mawkish sentiment with an absolute negation of reason and knowledge. ~ Thomas Love Peacock

All animals deserve respect. ~ Jim Blakeway

He discovered that the science he'd once thought of as the whole world of knowledge is only a branch of philosophy, which is far broader and far more general. The questions he had asked about infinite hypotheses hadn't been of interest to science because they weren't scientific questions. Science cannot study scientific method without getting into a bootstrap problem that destroys the validity of its answers. The questions he'd asked were at a higher level than science goes. And so Phaedrus found in philosophy a natural continuation of the question that brought him to science in the first place, What does it all mean? What's the purpose of all this? At ~ Robert M. Pirsig

It is easy to show that the ego ideal answers to everything that is expected of the higher nature of man. As a substitute for a longing for the father, it contains the germ from which all religions have evolved. ~ Sigmund Freud

Every living creature on the earth is special. You want to be the one that puts an end to one of them? ~ Sue Monk Kidd

Despite its misrepresentations, Mowat's book shattered many myths and untruths that had hung about the wolf's neck for centuries. Mowat's wolves weren't savage brutes, but instead were playful and social creatures, good and protective parents --animals entirely ill-deserving of the treatment they had received. ~ Bruce Hampton

Scoutcraft is a means through which the veriest hooligan can be brought to higher thought and to the elements of faith in God; and, coupled with the Scout's obligation to do a good turn every day, it gives the base of Duty to God and to Neighbour on which the parent or pastor can build with greater ease the form of belief that is desired. ~ Robert Baden-Powell

It's great to celebrate the victories along the way in living your dreams
but never allow the praises of your past pause you from pursuing higher heights. ~ Bernard Kelvin Clive

Poets, come out of your closets, Open your windows, open your doors, You have been holed up too long in your closed worlds ... Poetry should transport the public/to higher places/than other wheels can carry it ... ~ Lawrence Ferlinghetti

On the higher plane the soul is sexless, and those who wish to rise higher than the physical plane must eliminate the idea of sex. ~ Virchand Gandhi

It is because of his brain that [modern man] has risen above the animals. Guess which animals he has risen above. ~ Will Cuppy

I was a town child, it is true, but that did not prevent me enjoying open-air life, with plants and animals. ~ Georg Brandes

I've found it's never the animals you have to worry about, Miki. It's the humans. ~ Shelly Laurenston

I don't know what you're talking about. I just like animals," Rafael said. "So does Sky, except he's kind of a hippie soulbonder about it. ~ Rose Christo

The hyena found it difficult to walk in my high-heeled shoes. ~ Leonora Carrington

And surely, surely, if we are not simply animals that live to fight, there must be a reason for bloodshed. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

It may be broadly stated that ... of all animals kept for the recreation of mankind the horse is alone capable of exciting a passion that shall be absolutely hopeless. ~ Bret Harte

The true reader must be an extension of the author. He is the higher court that receives the case already prepared by the lower court. The feeling by means of which the author has separated out the materials of his work, during reading separates out again the unformed and the formed aspects of the book - and if the reader were to work through the book according to his own idea, a second reader would refine it still more, with the result that, since the mass that had been worked through would constantly be poured into fresh vessels, the mass would finally become an essential component - a part of the active spirit.

Through impartial rereading of his book the author can refine his book himself. With strangers the particular character is usually lost, because the talent of fully entering into another person's idea is so rare. Often even in the author himself. It is not a sign of superior education and greater powers to justifiably find fault with a book. When receiving new impressions, greater sharpness of mind is quite natural. ~ Novalis

A long, low moan reverberated through her chest and into him. He sucked harder, flicking his tongue around the tiny pink tip. She was in the shadows cast by the late-day sun, leaving him little choice but to learn her by touch. He found the water-soft curve of her breast, running his tongue along the heaviest part of her until she filled his mouth. "More," he murmured, shifting her higher until his teeth scraped along her ribs. ~ Taryn Elliott

America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. ~ John Quincy Adams

As people's lifestyles have improved, they've become more and more sensitive toward animals. It's becoming a universal value, like Western classical music. ~ Wang Shi

Vegan is just pure love. Love for animals, love for the planet, and love for yourself. ~ Mischa Temaul

I froze, finding myself in the middle of an entire display of delicate paper animals. I'd found the door to Narnia ~ C.L. Stone

In a Fisherian world, animals are slaves to evolutionary fashion, evolving extravagant and arbitrary displays and tastes that are all "meaningless"; they do not involve anything other than perceived qualities. ~ Richard O. Prum

The judge speaks in the name of justice,' he said. 'The priest speaks in the name of pity, which is only a higher form of justice.' (Bishop Myriel) ~ Victor Hugo

The decoding of the human genome tells us that we are indeed related to the animals, the insects, and the plants, and that, like it or not, Earth is where we belong. ~ Ian McCallum

At the same time we see the phenomenon of successful women adopting the standards of men with a vengeance. Will women's march to power ascendancy, won against all odds, mean that they too will choose to flaunt their preferences for red meat, animal skin, sport hunting, and even bullfighting? As women are swelling the ranks of biomedical science, many have adopted the practice of animal experimentation. Will animal exploitation become the ultimate symbol of equality with the white male? ~ Maria Comninou

Giraffes are fairytale animals, almost heraldic - as if from the land of fables. They have extremely beautiful faces, huge eyes, very sensitive nostrils and oh, blue tongues! ~ Joanna Lumley

The cost to reconnect animals to live in natural settings without human support is a debt that many animals in transition must honor with their lives. ~ Young Tim

During the thousands of years of monetary system, most workers have been paid just enough to make it necessary that they return to work, even when higher wages have been possible. How else can the wage-payer keep the workers coming back? ~ Jacque Fresco

Whether animals admit it or not, they and I communicate. ~ Carolyn Gold Heilbrun

I love dogs, not chimps. Some chimps are nice, and some are horrid. I don't actually think of them as animals any more than I think of us as animals, although both of us are. ~ Jane Goodall

The Bible presents God as above, beyond, and outside the experiences of mortal man. His thoughts are higher than our thoughts, and His ways are past finding out. God cannot be known by human intellect or reason, except through the new birth. Belief in God is not the product of seeing and knowing, but seeing and knowing are the products of believing.
Truth is revealed by God through the Scriptures-the Holy Bible. Truth is what the Bible declares, and not what the masses believe or what is the consensus. Reason, science, experience have nothing to do with truth. The test of truth is "thus saith the Lord. ~ Roger McIntyre

Buddha taught kindness towards lower beings; and since then there has not been a sect in India that has not taught charity to all beings, even to animals. This kindness, this mercy, this charity - greater than any doctrine - are what Buddhism left to us. ~ Swami Vivekananda

Let us return for a moment to Lady Lovelace's objection, which stated that the machine can only do what we tell it to do. One could say that a man can "inject" an idea into the machine, and that it will respond to a certain extent and then drop into quiescence, like a piano string struck by a hammer. Another simile would be an atomic pile of less than critical size: an injected idea is to correspond to a neutron entering the pile from without. Each such neutron will cause a certain disturbance which eventually dies away. If, however, the size of the pile is sufficiently increased, the disturbance caused by such an incoming neutron will very likely go on and on increasing until the whole pile is destroyed. Is there
a corresponding phenomenon for minds, and is there one for machines? There does seem to be one for the human mind. The majority of them seem to be "sub-critical," i.e. to correspond in this analogy to piles
of sub-critical size. An idea presented to such a mind will on average give rise to less than one idea in reply. A smallish proportion are supercritical. An idea presented to such a mind may give rise to a whole "theory" consisting of secondary, tertiary and more remote ideas. Animals' minds seem to be very definitely sub-critical. Adhering to this analogy we ask, "Can a machine be made to be super-critical? ~ Alan Turing

Eena had thought the whole idea of his picture was absolutely wonderful and had asked Willum what kind of animal she might be. He'd responded after only a moment of thought.
"I think you'd be a crioness."
"Why is that?"
"Because they can fly."
"Why would that remind you of me?" She'd been unable to guess his reasoning.
"Because few animals can fly. You can do things others can't do. Like flying. It's magic."
"Oh. How very clever."
The comparison had left her both impressed and flattered. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

They say the seeds of what we will do are in all of us, but it always seemed to me that in those who make jokes in life the seeds are covered with better soil and with a higher grade of manure. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

God has given us music so that above all it can lead us upwards. Music unites all qualities: it can exalt us, divert us, cheer us up, or break the hardest of hearts with the softest of its melancholy tones. But its principal task is to lead our thoughts to higher things, to elevate, even to make us tremble ... The musical art speaks in sounds more penetrating than the words of poetry, and takes hold of the most hidden crevices of the heart ... Song elevates our being and leads us to the good and the true. If, however, music serves only as a diversion or as a kind of vain ostentation it is sinful and harmful. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche