Elizabeth Marshall Thomas Quotes

We are a naturally hierarchical species.

If you make a fool of yourself in front of a cat, he will sneer at you, if you are sober; he will leave the room if you are drunk. If you make a fool of yourself in front a dog, he will make a fool of himself, too.

Dogs will eat till they die. Cats will leave food in the dish, incomprehensible to a dog.

Dogs like everyone. Cats choose who to like.

Your dog thinks you're a god. Your cat thinks the dog's an asshole.

A dog will flatter you but you have to flatter the cat.

American society is very like a fish society. . . . Among certain species of fish, the only thing which determines order of dominance is length of time in the fishbowl. The oldest resident picks on the newest resident, and if the newest resident is removed to a new bowl, he, as oldest resident, will pick on the newcomers.

You are hierarchical. That's the older and more entrenched characteristic. We saw it in your closest animal relatives and in your most distant ones. It's a terrestrial characteristic. When human intelligence served it instead of guiding it, when human intelligence did not even acknowledge it as a problem, but took pride in it or did not notice it at all... That was like ignoring cancer.

Dogs own space and cats own time.

whereas the dog strives to lessen the distance between himself and man, seeks ever to be intelligent and intelligible, and translates into looks and actions the words he cannot speak, the cat dwells within the circle of her own secret thoughts.

A deck of cards is built like the purest of hierarchies, with every card a master to those below it, a lackey to those above it.

Girls, in particular, use storytelling to establish hierarchies, a pecking order. There is a sort of jockeying of who is in charge of shared history.

I was by far the least popular of the Blue Collar crew when we started. There was a definite pecking order, and everybody knew it.

I think kids are all focused on their hierarchy and status, and I was low status or something.

Humans want to know the hierarchy; it's important for there to be one leader.

There is the little matter of disposal of droppings in which the cat is far ahead of its rivals. The dog is somehow thrilled by what he or any of his friends have produced, hates to leave it, adores smelling it, and sometimes eats it.

All dogs look up to you. All cats look down on you. Only the pig looks at you as an equal

Cats aren't really friendly, they're just cozying up to the dominant life-form as a hedge against extinction.

Dogs are very different from cats in that they can be images of human virtue. They are like us.

Dogs want only love but cats demand worship.

Dogs would make totally incompetent criminals. If you could somehow get a group of dogs to understand the concept of the Kennedy assassination, they would all immediately confess to it. Whereas you'll never see a cat display any kind of guilty behavior, despite the fact that several cats were seen in Dallas on the grassy knoll area, not that I wish to start rumors.

Cats didn't start as mousers. Weasels and snakes and dogs are more efficient as rodent-control agents. I postulate that cats started as psychic companions, as Familiars, and have never deviated from this function.

You can keep a dog: but it is the cat who keeps people, because cats find humans useful domestic animals.

Dogs like to obey. It gives them security.