Douglas Adams Quotes

An argument often given for why Earth couldn't host another form of life is that once the life we know became established, it would have eliminated any competition through natural selection. But if another form of life were confined to its own niche, there would be little direct competition with regular life.

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.

Humanity is exalted not because we are so far above other living creatures, but because knowing them well elevates the very concept of life.

You know horses are smarter than people. You never heard of a horse going broke betting on people.

If animals had reason, they would act just as ridiculous as we menfolks do.

A tree is a thought, an obstruction stopping the flow of wind and light, trapping water, housing insects, birds, and animals, and breathing in and out. How treelike the human, how human the tree.

...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.

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.

A cavalryman's horse should be smarter than he is. But the horse must never be alowed to know this.

Thought does not ennoble us and neither does it differentiate humans from other animals.

If you look up 'Intelligence' in the new volumes of the Encyclopeadia Britannica, you'll find it classified under the following three heads: Intelligence, Human; Intelligence, Animal; Intelligence, Military. My stepfather's a perfect specimen of Intelligence, Military.

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.

There is in every animal's eye a dim image and gleam of humanity, a flash of strange light through which their life looks out and up to our great mystery of command over them, and claims the fellowship of the creature if not of the soul.

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

My experience with horses is that they never throw away a chance to go lame.

An appreciation of animals is good for a human, it can lead to a better understanding and respect for all living things.

It is absurd to talk of one animal being higher than another...we consider those, where the intellectual faculties most developed as the highest. - A bee doubtless would [use] ... instincts as a criteria.

The animal has secrets which, unlike the secrets of caves, mountains, seas are specifically addressed to man.

My horse was so late getting home, he tiptoed into the stable.

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.

I thought," Shad said slowly, "that she was offended if you referred to Blind Seer or Elation as her pets.""True," Derian assured him. "Absolutely the correct etiquette-to her face. However, well... When I first met Firekeeper, less than a year ago, her relationships with animals fell into pretty much two categories: those you ate and those you befriended. I remember that she thought we were pretty clever for bringing horses along so we wouldn't need to hunt our meat. It took me a while to show her they had other uses.

Anytime you work with animals, you begin to see more humanity in them.

The horse, the noblest, bravest, proudest, most courageous and certainly the most perverse and infuriating animal that humans ever domesticated

Animals make us Human.

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.