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.

What birds can have their bills more peculiarly formed than the ibis, the spoonbill, and the heron?

To expect the world to receive a new truth, or even an old truth, without challenging it, is to look for one of those miracles which do not occur.

Truth is born into this world only with pangs and tribulations, and every fresh truth is received unwillingly.

To the mass of mankind religion of some kind is a necessity.

To say that mind is a product or function of protoplasm, or of its molecular changes, is to use words to which we can attach no clear conception.

I am decidedly of the opinion that in very many instances we can trace such a necessary connexion, especially among birds, and often with more complete success than in the case which I have here attempted to explain.

I spent, as you know, a year and a half in a clergyman's family and heard almost every Tuesday the very best, most earnest and most impressive preacher it has ever been my fortune to meet with, but it produced no effect whatever on my mind.

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.

On the spiritual theory, man consists essentially of a spiritual nature or mind intimately associated with a spiritual body or soul, both of which are developed in and by means of a material organism.

In all works on Natural History, we constantly find details of the marvellous adaptation of animals to their food, their habits, and the localities in which they are found.

I hold with Henry George, that at the back of every great social evil will be found a great political wrong.

I am thankful I can see much to admire in all religions.

Civilisation has ever accompanied emigration and conquest - the conflict of opinion, of religion, or of race.

There is, I conceive, no contradiction in believing that mind is at once the cause of matter and of the development of individualised human minds through the agency of matter.

What we need are not prohibitory marriage laws, but a reformed society, an educated public opinion which will teach individual duty in these matters.

But naturalists are now beginning to look beyond this, and to see that there must be some other principle regulating the infinitely varied forms of animal life.

As well might it be said that, because we are ignorant of the laws by which metals are produced and trees developed, we cannot know anything of the origin of steamships and railways.

The foregoing considerations lead us to the very important conclusion, that matter is essentially force, and nothing but force; that matter, as popularly understood, does not exist, and is, in fact, philosophically inconceivable.

In my solitude I have pondered much on the incomprehensible subjects of space, eternity, life and death.

I have since wandered among men of many races and many religions.

If this is not done, future ages will certainly look back upon us as a people so immersed in the pursuit of wealth as to be blind to higher considerations.

Modification of form is admitted to be a matter of time.

Man has done a lot to make himself dangerous and animals get the worst of all of it. But then, man too is an animal.

Biology will relate every human gene to the genes of other animals and bacteria, to this great chain of being.

When I see professional clowns, mimes, or people who makes ballon animals, I think of their relatives and how disappointed they must be.

Animals often strike us as passionate machines.

My object will be, first, to show by what connections the history of the fossil bones of land animals is linked to the theory of the earth and why they have a particular importance in this respect.

Hence the same instant which killed the animals froze the country where they lived. This event was sudden, instantaneous, without any gradual development.

Towns are suffering from all these things, we should unite until we are all satisfied, man cannot be killing each other as if we were animals, as if we had no culture; that is a lack of culture.

Animals are such agreeable friends - they ask no questions; they pass no criticisms.

The only way to save a rhinoceros is to save the environment in which it lives, because there's a mutual dependency between it and millions of other species of both animals and plants.

I've always been fascinated by the way that children and animals suffer stoically in a way that I don't think adults do.

Ever occur to you why some of us can be this much concerned with animals suffering? Because government is not. Why not? Animals don't vote.

Animals are reliable, many full of love, true in their affections, predictable in their actions, grateful and loyal. Difficult standards for people to live up to.

When we seed millions of acres of land with these plants, what happens to foraging birds, to insects, to microbes, to the other animals, when they come in contact and digest plants that are producing materials ranging from plastics to vaccines to pharmaceutical products?

It's been my dream to have four babies by 30. I look after animals, so I'd have a lot to give my kids.

Yes, I've kissed a lot of guys. I like to kiss, but that's it. I don't go home with anyone. I sleep with my animals, like my baby monkey, Brigitte Bardot.

The desire to take medicine is perhaps the greatest feature which distinguishes man from animals.

The tabloids are like animals, with their own behavioural patterns. There's no point in complaining about them, any more than complaining that lions might eat you.

Early experiences convinced me that animals can and do have quite distinct personalities.

Without civilization, we would not turn into animals, but vegetables.

God sleeps in the minerals, awakens in plants, walks in animals, and thinks in man.

History is a people's memory, and without a memory, man is demoted to the lower animals.

Although I agree that wild horses are a symbol of the American West, I also believe that it is the responsibility of Congress to ensure that these animals are managed, protected, and controlled in an effective manner.

Man, of all the animals, is probably the only one to regard himself as a great delicacy.

The proportion between the velocity with which men or animals move, and the weights they carry, is a matter of considerable importance, particularly in military affairs.

Working on behalf of companion animals is so important. We start to realize how healing they are.

The theoretical understanding of the world, which is the aim of philosophy, is not a matter of great practical importance to animals, or to savages, or even to most civilised men.