Marvin Harris Quotes

A good tracker is interpreting all the time, from every little sign, you know? Not just interpreting the age of the tracks but also: Is it wounded? Is it hungry? A good tracker is interpreting a lot.

Man and other civilized animals are the only creatures that ever become dirty.

I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.

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 never thought I could learn much from a dog or cat. They sleep when we sleep. They eat when we eat. I'm into observing animals being as wild as they can be in a captive environment.

Self-preservation, nature's first great law, all the creatures, except man, doth awe.

Animals of all classes, old and young, shrink with instinctive fear from any strange object approaching them.

Animals often strike us as passionate machines.

Human beings are the only animals of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid.

Pigs are not that dirty. And they're smart, strange little creatures. They just need love.

Hunters and trackers learn not only to understand intellectually a bunch of facts about the animal they follow, but to feel their way into the very being of the animal.

So is the savage buffalo, especially delighting in dark places, where he can wallow in the mud and slake his thirst without much trouble; and here also we find the wild pig.

Some kinds of animals burrow in the ground; others do not. Some animals are nocturnal, as the owl and the bat; others use the hours of daylight. There are tame animals and wild animals. Man and the mule are always tame; the leopard and the wolf are invariably wild, and others, as the elephant, are easily tamed.

I had a very famous trainer tell me once, 'You can usually train a wild animal but never tame a wild animal, ever.' They are always going to be wild, no matter what anybody says.

Be a good animal, true to your animal instincts.

If a dog jumps into your lap, it is because he is fond of you; but if a cat does the same thing, it is because your lap is warmer.

I learned from a longtime farmer that pigs enjoy soothing music.

One thing about a pig. He thinks he's warm if his nose is warm. I saw a bunch of pigs one time that had frozen together in a rosette, each one's nose tucked under the rump of the one in front. We have a lot of pigs in politics.

Being asked what animal you'd like to be is a trick question; you're already an animal.

Man seems to be the only animal whose food soils him, making necessary much washing and shield-like bibs and napkins. Moles living in the earth and eating slimy worms are yet as clean as seals or fishes, whose lives are one perpetual wash.

True Scouts are the best friends of animals, for from living in the woods and wilds, and practising observation and tracking, they get to know more than other people about the ways and habits of birds and animals, and therefore they understand them and are more in sympathy with them.

We've got eight dogs, a cat, a turtle, kids... yeah we have a lot of dogs. It's a lot of fur, it's a lot of poop... and that's not even counting Robbie. He's the hairiest most feral animal of all.

Cats and dogs are a very good window into the natural world: a chance to see how another species lives and deals with its problems, what they like and what they don't like.

Every animal is related to its own constitution and the consciousness of it.

Cats are generally clean. They take care of themselves.