Wislawa Szymborska Quotes

They're animals, all right. But why are you so goddam sure that makes us human beings?

There seems to be no unexpressed self in animals, as if they are as fully themselves in flesh as possible, with no lag of consciousness to fill up, while we keep trying to grow into something else.

Q: If you could be an animal, what kind of animal would you be? A: You already are an animal.

Man is an animal who more than any other can adapt himself to all climates and circumstances.

I don't use machines - animals don't use machines.

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.

I have trouble actually describing myself because I'm always suspicious of people who start describing themselves. I'm like, "OK, why are you trying to tell me what you are?"

Impartial observers from other planets would consider ours an utterly bizarre enclave if it were populated by birds, defined as flying animals, that nevertheless rarely or never actually flew. They would also be perplexed if they encountered in our seas, lakes, rivers, and ponds, creatures defined as swimmers that never did any swimming. But they would be even more surprised to encounter a species defined as a thinking animal if, in fact, the creature very rarely indulged in actual thinking.

Race is precisely of as much consequence in man as it is in any animal.

The importance of insomnia is so colossal that I am tempted to define man as the animal who cannot sleep. Why call him a rational animal when other animals are equally reasonable? But there is not another animal in the entire creation that wants to sleep yet cannot.

Of all the animals which fly in the air, walk on the land, or swim in the sea, from Paris to Peru, from Japan to Rome, the most foolish animal in my opinion is man.

The proper definition of a man is an animal that writes letters.

MAN IS FUNDAMENTALLY AN ANIMAL. Animals, as distinct from man, are not machine-like, not sadistic; their societies, within the same species, are incomparably more peaceful than those of man. The basic question, then is: What has made the animal, man, degenerate into a machine?

What is human behavior, except trying to prove that we're not animals?

...the program of scientific experimentation that leads you to conclude that animals are imbeciles is profoundly anthropocentric. It values being able to find your way out of a sterile maze, ignoring the fact that if the researcher who designed the maze were to be parachuted into the jungles of Borneo, he or she would be dead of starvation in a week...If I as a human being were told that the standards by which animals are being measured in these experiments are human standards, I would be insulted.

Rant would tell people: 'You're a different human being to everybody you meet.

For a long time humans probably were in touch on a deeper level with the depths of their being, unconsciously so, the same way an animal or a tree is. Gradually, though, more and more of their identity went into the movement of thought. They identified more and more with the movement of thinking.

Pay close attention to when you're being the real you & when you're trying to impress an invisible jury.

Man is the sole animal whose nudities offend his own companions, and the only one who, in his natural actions, withdraws and hides himself from his own kind.

There isn't a sharp line dividing humans from the rest of the animal kingdom. All the time, we find animals doing things that, in our arrogance, we thought were just human.

We are the only animals that let our kids come back home.

I don't want to misrepresent who I am personally. I don't want my kids to see me on a talk show and say, "You're talking different" or "You look different, dad." I'm not gonna be an animal; I know how to conduct myself.

Not until man is willing to recognize his animal nature - in the good sense of the word - will he create genuine culture.

Different cats don't like certain litter. They also don't like an unstable floor, no animal like's unstable floor. So if you put a thin piece of plastic down under a litter box and the cat walks on it and starts to slip, they don't like that. Any animal doesn't like an unstable floor.

Chimpanzees, more than any other living creature, have helped us to understand that there is no sharp line between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom. It's a very blurry line, and it's getting more blurry all the time.