Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

Thirst teaches all animals to drink, but drunkenness belongs only to man.

Just because society, and government, and whatever was different 100 years ago, doesn't mean that people didn't have sex, pick their nose, or swear.

At least 260 species of animal have been noted exhibiting homosexual behavior but only one species of animal ever, so far as we know, has exhibited homophobic behavior - and that's the human being.

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

Of all animals, he alone attains to the Contemplative Life.

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

The animal needing something knows how much it needs, the man does not.

I thought about how odd it is for billions of people to be alive, yet not one of them is really quite sure of what makes people people. The only activities I could think of that humans do that have no animal equivalent were smoking, body-building and writing. That's not much, considering how special we seem to think we are.

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 slander the hyena; man is the fiercest and cruelest animal.

Man is a game playing animal and a computer is another way to play games.

For more than a century, people have often thought that the conclusion to draw from Darwin's vision is that Homo sapiens, our species - and we're just animals too, we're just mammals - that there is nothing morally special about us. I myself don't think this follows at all from Darwin's vision, but it is certainly the received view in many quarters.

To be reminded that one is very much like other members of the animal kingdom is often funny...though...I do not too much mind being somewhat like a cat.

I have been studying the traits and dispositions of the "lower animals" (so called) and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result humiliating to me.

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

Of all the animals which fly in the air, walk on the land, or swim in the sea, from Paris to Peru, from Japan to Rome, the most foolish animal in my opinion is man.

You should know as much as you can about the human species if you have a hand in designing human society. Of course, I'm not saying that you can derive moral rules from nature - that's deriving an ought from an is, as the philosophers say - but you do need to know what kind of animals we are if you want to design a stable society.

I'm trying to understand how do we tell lies to ourselves to justify what we've done and what are the consequences of those lies? But actually maybe I also recognize that in turning empathy into a practice for many years, by turning, by forcing myself to separate at some level the humanity of a human being from his or her actions and recognizing that sometimes, even the moral aspects of a human being can contribute to immoral behavior.

We all have to control our feelings. That's the thing that separates us from animals.

Of all the animals on earth, none is so brutish as man when he seeks the delirium of coition.

He whose intellect overcomes his lust is higher than the angels; he whose lust overcomes his intelligence is less than an animal.

Man alone of animals plays the ape to his dreams .

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.

It's human nature, we take a mile when we're given an inch. We're crazy. You see what we did to the animals! They don't even exist anymore!

Indecency, vulgarity, obscenity - these are strictly confined to man; he invented them. Among the higher animals there is no trace of them. They hide nothing. They are not ashamed.