Padgett Powell Quotes

[The taxidermist is] a historian, dealing with an animal's past; the zookeeper is a politician, dealing with an animal's present; and everyone else is a citizen who must decide on that animal's future (...) The indifference of the many, combined with the active hatred of the few, has sealed the fate of animals.

I always said it was to be dumb enough to do what Marlon Perkins said to do.

I know that Daddy had an important job. He was working to change the world so everyone would love wildlife like he did. He built a hospital to help animals, and he bought lots of land to give animals a safe place to live.

My family had a habit of collecting creatures that didn't always want to be pets. The first animal I can remember was a Lab named Zoe.

What I'm attempting to do is to show people that if I can spend some time with very dangerous spiders and snakes and scorpions, then maybe they'll feel different about the spiders and snakes they find around their areas. I don't need people to keep them as pets. I just like them to be respectful and see that everything in nature has its place.

People eat duck and you think, well, we've got loads of chickens, leave the ducks alone!

The more you learn about animals and animal rights - it's an intriguing, fascinating world.

Everything that I love is behind those gates. We have elephants, and giraffes, and crocodiles, and every kind of tigers and lions. And - and we have bus loads of kids, who don't get to see those things. They come up sick children, and enjoy it.

I love things made out of animals. It's just so funny to think of someone saying, 'I need a letter opener. I guess I'll have to kill a deer.

Unfortunately, fur is still flying off the racks. It's a billion dollar industry.

My parents were very permissive when it came to animals. As long as we earned the money to buy them and built whatever structure it was they were going to live in, we could have any kind of pet we wanted. They would have let us have a rhinoceros if we could have afforded it.

Killing a stag is like killing a child. What's the difference?

'Born Free' was the first film I ever saw. I just fell in love with the idea of people having that bond with a wild animal.

It's so fantastic that Prince William has championed African wildlife. He's putting his back into it - and one thing the royal family is brilliant at is getting people to cough up.

People are beginning to realize that it's important that we see animals in a natural state - but through film, through video, through documentaries, at wildlife preserves, and through other humanely protected ways, which don't involve... performing for us.

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society recognizes that the deaths of four sealers is a tragedy, but Sea Shepherd also recognizes that the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of seal pups is an even greater tragedy.

I wish that one of my children will be like the Australian guy from the Discovery Channel show. The crocodile hunter.

I just can't remember a time when I wasn't involved with animals and wildlife.

Yes, I've often been threatened by hunters, by horsemeat butchers, and seal murderers... I am still alive!

People are not going to care about animal conservation unless they think that animals are worthwhile.

Everyone has a different opinion; every country has a different way of doing things. But I do believe that we need a regulatory body so that everyone who owns or manages wildlife is subject to inspection and rated on how well they look after the animals and how the communities benefit.

Fur is not luxury: it is an industry of death and suffering.

People get very passionate about saving the whale, but when something like a Florida indigo snake is endangered there are not a lot of people out there holding up placards.

I feed foxes. I'm not supposed to, but I love it.

I'm the spokesperson for the North Shore Animal League America. So, I'd go on morning shows on their behalf. I also work closely with the Wildlife Rescue Center in the Hamptons.