Save Animals Quotes

“Tm merely trying to do my job. God, Scholscher, how can we talk of progress when we’re still destroying, all around us, life’s most beautiful and noble manifestations? Our artists, our architects, our scientists, our poets, sweat blood to make life more beautiful, and at the same time we force our way into the last forests left to us, with our finger on the trigger of an automatic weapon, and we poison the oceans and the very air we breathe with our atomic devices. Perhaps this madman Morel will succeed in rousing public opinion. By God, I feel I could join him in his maquis. We’ve got to resist this degradation. Are we no longer capable of respecting nature, or defending a living beauty that has no earning power, no utility, no object except to let itself be seen from time to time? Liberty, too, is a natural splendor on its way to becoming extinct. I’m speaking for myself to get it off my chest, because I haven't the courage to act like Morel. It’s absolutely essential that man should manage to preserve something other than what helps to make soles for shoes or sewing machines, that he should leave a margin, a sanctuary, where some of life’s beauty can take refuge and where he himself can feel safe from his own cleverness and folly. Only then will it be possible to begin talking of a civilization. A utilitarian civilization will always go on to its logical conclusion-forced labor camps. We must leave a margin. And besides, let me tell you . . . There's nothing to be so proud of, is there?”
― Romain Gary, The Roots of Heaven

“You see, if I simply told them that they're disgusting, that it's time to change, to respect nature at long last, to leave a margin of humanity in which there would be room even for all elephants in Africa, that wouldn't worry them much. They’d shrug their shoulders and say that I’m a visionary, a fanatic, just about fit to be locked up. So one’s got to outwit them. That’s why I’m quite willing to let them think that the elephants are only a pretext, a symbol, and that what’s underneath it is a terroristic movement for African independence, and that the defense of the elephants is merely a method of protest against the exploitation of Africa’s natural wealth by white men. That — there’s no doubt about it — has a good chance of waking them up, alarming them, making them do something, making them take me seriously; and the cleverest, most astute thing to do is obviously to deprive us of the pretext — that is to say, to ban elephant hunting completely.”
― Romain Gary, The Roots of Heaven

“It’s plain enough. But he’ll never be convinced. I’ve had long experience of this. They’ll explain to you that national independence is much more important than individual rights. In Finland, when I was defending the forests, the Russian officials kept explaining to me patiently that pulp for making paper is after all more important than the trees. They understood only when there were almost no forests left. And the whalers kept explaining to me that whale oil was needed on the market and was much more important than whales. It goes on and on.”
― Romain Gary, The Roots of Heaven

“All who come to me with help are welcome. Nationalism, you know — whether it's white hunters or black hunters, the old ones or the new ones — I’m against 'em all. I'm on the side of anyone who will take the necessary steps.'
[...]
He added as if incidentally, 'I was in the Resistance, during the Occupation. I fought not so much to defend France against Germany, but to defend elephants against hunters.”
― Romain Gary, The Roots of Heaven