Whatever life may really be, it is to us an abstraction: for the word is a generalised term to signify that which is common to all animals and plants, and which is not directly operative in the inorganic world.

Life must be considered sui generis; it is not a form of energy, nor can it be expressed in terms of something else.

We know that communication must be hampered, and its form largely determined, by the unconscious but inevitable influence of a transmitting mechanism, whether that be of a merely mechanical or of a physiological character.

Death is not a word to fear, any more than birth is.

Death is not extinction. Neither the soul nor the body is extinguished or put out of existence.

Whatever life may really be, it is to us an abstraction: for the word is a generalised term to signify that which is common to all animals and plants, and which is not directly operative in the inorganic world.

In other cases, when the medium becomes entranced, the demonstration of a communicator's separate intelligence may become stronger and the sophistication less.

But although life is not energy, any more than it is matter, yet it directs energy and thereby controls arrangements of matter.

They definitely mean to maintain that the process called death is a mere severence of soul and body, and that the soul is freed rather than injured thereby.

The hypothesis of surviving intelligence and personality - not only surviving but anxious and able with difficulty to communicate - is the simplest and most straightforward and the only one that fits all the facts.

Of mediumship there are many grades, one of the simplest forms being the capacity to receive an impression or automatic writing, under peaceful conditions, in an ordinary state; but the whole subject is too large to be treated here.

The properties which differentiate living matter from any kind of inorganic imitation may be instinctively felt, but can hardly be formulated without expert knowledge.

Any person without invincible prejudice who had the same experience would come to the same broad conclusion, viz., that things hitherto held impossible do actually occur.

The old series of sittings with Mrs. Piper convinced me of survival for reasons which I should find it hard to formulate in any strict fashion, but that was their distinct effect.

The amount of sophistication varies according to the quality of the medium, and to the state of the same medium at different times; it must be attributed in the best cases physiologically to the medium, intellectually to the control.

Basing my conclusions on experience I am absolutely convinced not only of survival but of demonstrated survival, demonstrated by occasional interaction with matter in such a way as to produce physical results.

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.

I always felt people should live with animals.

Man's unique reward, however, is that while animals survive by adjusting themselves to their background, man survives by adjusting his background to himself.

It isn't true that convicts live like animals: animals have more room to move around.

They are the most fascinating, intelligent, resourceful, adaptable animals I have ever seen. Grizzlies are a real symbol of true wildness.

As long as man eats animals how can cruelty to animals be removed.

Although native Africans domesticated some plants in the Sahel and in Ethiopia and in tropical West Africa, they acquired valuable domestic animals only later, from the north.

Thousands of years ago, humans domesticated every possible large wild mammal species fulfilling all those criteria and worth domesticating, with the result that there have been no valuable additions of domestic animals in recent times, despite the efforts of modern science.