John Steinbeck Quotes

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.

We're animals. We're born like every other mammal and we live our whole lives around disguised animal thoughts.

I always compare human beings to animals. It's a nice way to figure out who they are.

There is not, in my opinion, anything more mysterious in nature than this instinct in animals, which thus rise above reason, and yet fall infinitely short of it.

Animals have always left me with a curiosity about human nature. I trust animals more than most people.

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

Our instinctual understanding of reality is the same as most other animals.

I'm not a propagandist, I'm not a polemicist; my primary interest is just looking at and trying to understand how animals work.

I was always interested in animals, but when I was little, animal behavior was still a new science. It was available to become a veterinarian, it was available to study biology, but not specifically animal behavior. In the '60s, Jane Goodall was the founder of this new science.

Animals do not admire each other. A horse does not admire its companion.

Animals often strike us as passionate machines.

My point of view is that men are basically animals, and I'm okay with that.

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.

Homo sapiens does its best to forget the fact, but it is an animal.

Man is said to be a reasoning animal. I do not know why he has not been defined as an affective or feeling animal. Perhaps that which differentiates him from other animals is feeling rather than reason. More often I have seen a cat reason than laugh or weep. Perhaps it weeps or laughs inwardly - but then perhaps, also inwardly, the crab resolves equations of the second degree.

Animals can learn, but it is not by learning that they become dogs, cats, or horses. Only man has to learn to become what he is supposed to be.

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

I'd be a dog, a monkey, or a bear, or anything but that vain animal who is so proud of being rational.

The only animal from which humans have nothing to learn, in fact, is the sheep. Humans have already learned everything the sheep's got to teach.

Mere animals couldn’t possibly manage to act like this. You need to be a human being to be really stupid.

The more experience and insight I obtain into human nature, the more convinced do I become that the greater portion of a man is purely animal.

How Instinct varies in the grov'ling swine.

Animals teach us about the animals in ourselves. We need their spirits.

What is denominated discretion in man we call cunning in brutes.