Joel Stein Quotes

I have a pretty good understanding of animals.

One of the things that I always think about is the emotional sophistication of animals and how much we're learning about the emotional sophistication of animals. If you're eating a pig, you're essentially eating the equivalent of a four-year-old human being.

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

Future benefits rarely figure in the minds of animals.

The more we learn of the true nature of non-human animals, especially those with complex brains and corresponding complex social behavior, the more ethical concerns are raised regarding their use in the service of man - whether this be in entertainment, as "pets," for food, in research laboratories, or any of the other uses to which we subject them.

Anyone who says that life matters less to an animal than it does to us has not held in his hands an animal fighting for its life. The whole of the being of the animal is thrown into that fight, without reserve. When you say that the fight lacks a dimension of intellectual or imaginative horror, I agree. It is not the mode of being animals to have an intellectual horror: their whole being is in the living flesh...I urge you to walk, flank to flank, beside the beast that is prodded down the chute to his executioner.

Animals give us their constant, unjaded faces, and we burden them with our bodies and civilized ordeals.

Animals don't have a voice, so I think it is our job to give them one.

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

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

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.

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 call them dumb animals, and so they are, for they cannot tell us how they feel, but they do not suffer less because they have no words.

Generally, or at least very often, people with a deep interest in animals are the best people around.

Animals are nicer than humans and they're conscious beings. If you stick your grandmother in an oven, she will probably be tasty. But is that any reason to eat your grandmother?

I do love animals so much, and have a great respect for them emotionally and intellectually, because they are so different from human beings.

The un-conscious distortion of the facts is almost harmless compared to the unconscious neglect of an animal's mental life until it verges on the unusual and marvelous.

I was always interested in animals, but when I was little, animal behavior was still a new science. It was available to become a veterinarian, it was available to study biology, but not specifically animal behavior. In the '60s, Jane Goodall was the founder of this new science.

There is no evidence that an animal can take on the sophisticated task of deciding to end his life and to communicate that decision to us.

I've always had a fascination for animals. I loved watching them, and even then I thought of them as beings rather than pets. I call it a birth affect!

I've always written about animals. I'm still trying to process why that is.

One of the things we found out as we filmed with people who dealt with chimps, and with all animals, and it's really incredible, is their levels of intelligence that we don't recognize right away.

I would love to be working in a hospital or in a completely different realm, working with or exploring the lives of animals.

There's animals like us existing and thinking and giving interviews on Australian television.

I believe that animals are on the planet so that we can know love and compassion.