Dora Russell Quotes

We're animals. We're violent.

Too much of the animal disfigures the civilized human being, too much culture makes a sick animal.

The animal man lives in the senses. If he does not get enough to eat, he is miserable; or if something happens to his body, he is miserable. In the senses both his misery and his happiness begin and end.

I find it valid to understand man as an animal before I am prepared to know him as a man.

Man as a pure animal does not exist.

That animal part of us, it's the most interesting part. It's everything that has to do with drives, with things we can't stop ourselves from doing, with all the spaces where we're unable to reason with ourselves. It has its dark side, but there's a luminous side, too, which is the fact that we're just another species of animal.

You want to know if we're animals? When I'm on stage with the volume rippling my body like a glass of water and thousands of people are generating heat in my direction, there's no time for thought. My basement facilities take over completely. Sure it's animal. People might like to talk about art, but look where art is, in the gutter.

Hope was an instinct only the reasoning human mind could kill. An animal never knew despair.

An animal on a leash is not tamed by the owner. The owner is extending himself through the leash to that part of his personality which is pure dog, that part of him which just wants to eat, sleep, bark, hump chairs, wet the floor in joy, and drink out of a toilet bowl.

They know where happiness lies, not in a cave or a country, but in love and the freedom to give and take what has been there all along.

Man is and remains an animal.Here a beast of prey, there a housepet, but always an animal.

Without guilt / What is a man? An animal, isn't he? / A wolf forgiven at his meat, / A beetle innocent in his copulation.

What are we? Humans? Or animals? Or savages?

I always find you go back to an animal; it will always show you the sort of primal aspects of behavior. You always know how to respond if you choose that.

It would seem from this fact, that man is naturally a wild animal, and that when taken from the woods, he is never happy in his natural state, 'till he returns to them again.

Love and compassion ... are the ultimate source of human happiness, and the need for them lies at the very core of our being.

But it did not all happen in a day, this giving over of himself, body and soul, to the man-animals. He could not immediately forego his wild heritage and his memories of the Wild. There were days when he crept to the edge of the forest and stood and listened to something calling him far and away.

When I stop doing the things that make me unhappy, I will experience the happiness that is that natural state of being. See, I don't think we were created with some pain and misery and whatever. I think we were created by whatever this thing is, when it extended itself, and, here we are. But I pile on so many misconceptions that I end up uncomfortable in my own skin.

I usually say the aim of life is to be happy. Our existence is based on hope. Our life is rooted in the opportunity to be happy, not necessarily wealthy, but happy within our own minds. If we only indulge in sensory pleasure, we'll be little different from animals. In fact, we have this marvellous brain and intelligence; we must learn to use it.

Basically, a human being is a social animal. So, if you create some short moment of happiness for people, you get deep satisfaction.

The truth is, if a werewolf behaved like this psychopath it wouldn't be because he was part animal, but because he was still too human. Only humans kill for sport.

How we act with each other really reveals our most animal instincts.

A world full of happiness is not beyond human power to create; the obstacles imposed by inanimate nature are not insuperable. The real obstacles lie in the heart of man, and the cure for these is a firm hope, informed and fortified by thought.

Animals can seem more pure. Without complication, I mean, animals are selfless. What animals do for us, they do out of instinct.

That is my work, to transform your life from a sad affair into a celebration.