Havelock Ellis Quotes

In the animal world individuals cheat, as do we.

What I'm starting to really grapple with, as someone who likes to tell stories, is that humans more than any other animal species seem open and willing to control, assert dominance, and behave cruelly. That's a whole kind of new nightmare to really have to face about your own species. That we are, in some respects, cannibalistic, in that we are willing to destroy ourselves. That's really something for me to be exploring over the long haul.

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

Man is always something worse or something better than an animal; and a mere argument from animal perfection never touches him at all. Thus, in sex no animal is either chivalrous or obscene. And thus no animal invented anything so bad as drunkeness - or so good as drink.

Humans are the only animals that try to dwell in the future. You don't have to purely live in the present situation without a plan, but the future plans you make can only be based on the aspects of the future that manifest within the present situation.

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.

Man is an animal who more than any other can adapt himself to all climates and circumstances.

Most animals, including most domesticated primates (humans) show truly staggering ability to 'ignore' certain kinds of information - that which does not 'fit' their imprinted/ conditioned reality-tunnel

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

Humans are able to give very good feedback. You can't tell with an animal what they feel.

The animals have no need for speech, why talk when you are a word.

Impartial observers from other planets would consider ours an utterly bizarre enclave if it were populated by birds, defined as flying animals, that nevertheless rarely or never actually flew. They would also be perplexed if they encountered in our seas, lakes, rivers, and ponds, creatures defined as swimmers that never did any swimming. But they would be even more surprised to encounter a species defined as a thinking animal if, in fact, the creature very rarely indulged in actual thinking.

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.

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

The habits of every animal are, at least in the eyes of man, constantly similar in all ages. But the habits, the clothes, the words and the dwelling of a prince, a banker, an artist, a bourgeois, a priest and a pauper, are wholly dissimilar and change at the will of civilizations.

Man alone of animals plays the ape to his dreams .

Why do people shush animals? Theyve never spoken

Man is the only animal that is cruel. It kills just for the sake of it.

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

How many times do we pay for one mistake? The answer is a thousand times for the same mistake. The human is the only animal on earth that pays a thousand times for ONE mistake. The rest of the animals pay once for every mistake.

A notorious inability to express emotions makes human beings the only animals capable of suicide.

Animals teach us about the animals in ourselves. We need their spirits.

Man is the sole animal whose nudities offend his own companions, and the only one who, in his natural actions, withdraws and hides himself from his own kind.