Ivan Pavlov Quotes

Everything in the world of things and animals is still filled with happening, which you can take part in.

...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.

I do ask myself sometimes, what am I doing writing about animals that talk like we do? But I guess it's okay if it brings across a point.

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.

Why do people shush animals? Theyve never spoken

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

You know how chickens are, imagining the world coming to an end one moment, then pecking corn the next.

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

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

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

Animals have personalities like people and must be studied.

I had a wonderful teacher about animal behavior.

Animals make us Human.

Chimpanzees, more than any other living creature, have helped us to understand that there is no sharp line between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom. It's a very blurry line, and it's getting more blurry all the time.

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.

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain'd, I stand and look at them long and long.

If everything is perfect, language is useless. This is true for animals. If animals don't speak, it's because everything's perfect for them. If one day they start to speak, it will be because the world has lost a certain sort of perfection.

I have read a great deal about what animals dream, but none of it has ever really satisfied me. I believe they dream exactly the way we dream, and about everything in their lives--that they have good dreams and bad dreams in almost direct proportion, as we do, to whether their lives have been more good than bad. Unfortunately, because the majority of animals have it so much tougher than we do, I believe that the majority of dreams, except in the most fortunate petdom, are bad.

We talked about how easy it was to make the mistake of anthropomorphizing animals, and projecting our own feelings and perceptions on to them, where they were inappropriate and didn't fit. We simply had no idea what it was like being an extremely large lizard, and neither for that matter did the lizard, because it was not self-conscious about being an extremely large lizard, it just got on with the business of being one. To react with revulsion to its behavior was to make the mistake of applying criteria that are only appropriate to the business of being human.

Though our conduct seems so very different from that of the higher animals, the primary instincts are much alike in them and in us.

Animals don't know as much about jealousy as people, but they're not ignorant of it, either.

I'm not over-fond of animals. I am merely astounded by them.

The human is the only guilty animal.

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

Animals have personalities and minds and emotions.