Richard Jefferies Quotes

Human folk are as a matter of fact eager to find intelligence in animals.

My father was a guy who, because of the businesses he was in - the hotel business, the hospitality business - he didn't differentiate between the waiter serving you dinner, from the maitre d from the guy who owns a restaurant. Everybody was the same to him. He didn't look at who you were. He didn't look at your wallet.

There has been so much underestimating of animal cognition that to perhaps overestimate it, as I probably do, is probably a healthy reaction.

It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions.

If a cat does something, we call it instinct; if we do the same thing, for the same reason, we call it intelligence.

A cockroach likely has no less brainpower than a butterfly, but we're quicker to deny it consciousness because it's a species we dislike.

The mode of consciousness of nonhuman species is quite different from human consciousness.

It has often been said, that there is but one rank of men in America… we have no artificial distinctions of men into noblemen and commoners among us, but it ought to be remarked, that superior degrees of industry and capacity, and above all, commerce, have introduced inequality of property among us, and these have introduced natural distinctions of rank in Pennsylvania, as certain and general as the artificial distinctions of men in Europe. This will ever be the case while commerce exists in this country.

One of the things we found out as we filmed with people who dealt with chimps, and with all animals, and it's really incredible, is their levels of intelligence that we don't recognize right away.

One would wonder to hear skeptical men disputing for the reason of animals, and telling us it is only our pride and prejudices that will not allow them the use of that faculty. Reason shows itself in all occurrences of life; whereas the brute makes no discovery of such a talent, but in what immediately regards his own preservation, or the continuance of his species. Animals in their generation are wiser than the sons of men; but their wisdom is confined to a few particulars, and lies in a very narrow compass. Take a brute out of his instinct, and you find him wholly deprived of understanding.

To understand animal thinking you've got to get away from a language.

There is no fundamental difference between man and the higher mammals in their mental faculties...The difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind.

Why should the peculiarities of human consciousness be the narrow standard by which other creatures are judged?

A lifelong intimacy with animals has got me out of the common notion that they are automata with a slight infusion of intelligence in their composition. The mind in beast and bird, as in man, is the main thing.

The human understanding, from its peculiar nature, easily supposes a greater degree of order and equality in things than it really finds.

I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts.

When most of us talk to our dogs, we tend to forget that they're not people.

Quality and title have such allurements that hundreds are ready to give up all their own importance, to cringe, to flatter, to look little, and to pall every pleasure in constraint, merely to be among the great, though without the least hopes of improving their understanding or sharing their generosity. They might be happier among their equals.

In name we had the Declaration of Independence in 1776; but we gave the lie by our acts to the words of the Declaration of Independence until 1865; and words count for nothing except in so far as they represent acts.

The schematicism by which our understanding deals with the phenomenal world ... is a skill so deeply hidden in the human soul that we shall hardly guess the secret trick that Nature here employs.

Who can . . . guess how much industry and providence and affection we have caught from the pantomime of brutes?

Human reason borrowed many arts from the instinct of animals.

Scientists believe that monkeys can be taught to think, lie and even play politics within their community. If we can just teach them to cheat on their wives we can save millions on congressional salaries.

And Beasts that have Deliberation , must necessarily also have Will .

We have intelligent species on our planet that we are not even trying to communicate with.