Wildlife Quotes

“Crocodiles are easy. They try to kill and eat you. People are harder. Sometimes they pretend to be your friend first.”
― Steve Irwin

“Josh gathered his sense of injustice and faced Rodan Man-to-man, or rather, elk-to-elk, no, Netah-to-Netah.”
― Lisa Kaniut Cobb, Down in the Valley

“We hunt as we've always done, part sport, part grocery shopping.”
― Lisa Kaniut Cobb, Down in the Valley

“The only good cage is an empty cage.”
― Lawrence Anthony, The Elephant Whisperer

“If we can teach people about wildlife, they will be touched. Share my wildlife with me. Because humans want to save things that they love.”
― Steve Irwin

“Crocodiles are easy,' Steve said. 'They try to kill and eat you. People are harder. Sometimes they pretend to be your friend first.”
― Terri Irwin, Steve & Me

“Wild animals are less wild and more human than many humans of this world”
― Munia Khan

“That's what people do when they find a special place that wild and full of life, they trample it to death.”
― Carl Hiaasen, Flush

“Every creature was designed to serve a purpose. Learn from animals for they are there to teach you the way of life. There is a wealth of knowledge that is openly accessible in nature. Our ancestors knew this and embraced the natural cures found in the bosoms of the earth. Their classroom was nature. They studied the lessons to be learned from animals. Much of human behavior can be explained by watching the wild beasts around us. They are constantly teaching us things about ourselves and the way of the universe, but most people are too blind to watch and listen.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“The smaller the creature, the bolder its spirit.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“Much of human behavior can be explained by watching the wild beasts around us. They are constantly teaching us things about ourselves and the way of the universe, but most people are too blind to watch and listen.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“Sometimes, I am the beast in the darkness. Sometimes, I am the ghost.”
― Heather Durham, Going Feral: Field Notes on Wonder and Wanderlust

“A male frigate bird blows up a wild red pouch on his neck. He can keep it puffed up for hours. It is his way of impressing the girls.”
― Julie Murphy, Sea Birds

“The dangerous temptation of wildlife films is that they can lull us into thinking we can get by without the original models -- that we might not need animals in the flesh.”
― Doug Peacock, Grizzly Years: In Search of the American Wilderness

“In this image-driven age, wildlife filmmakers carry a heavy responsibility. They can influence how we think and behave when we’re in nature. They can even influence how we raise our kids, how we vote and volunteer in our communities, as well as the future of our wildlands and wildlife. If the stories they create are misleading or false in some way, viewers will misunderstand the issues and react in inappropriate ways. People who consume a heavy diet of wildlife films filled with staged violence and aggression, for example, are likely to think about nature as a circus or a freak show. They certainly won’t form the same positive connections to the natural world as people who watch more thoughtful, authentic, and conservation-oriented films.”
― Chris Palmer, Shooting in the Wild: An Insider's Account of Making Movies in the Animal Kingdom

“We forget, in a world completely transformed by man, that what we’re looking at is not necessarily the environment wildlife prefer, but the depleted remnant that wildlife is having to cope with: what it has is not necessarily what it wants.”
― Isabella Tree, Wilding

“It may be underfunded and at times mismanaged, but the [Endangered Species] Act is an unprecedented attempt to delegate human-caused extinction to the chapters of history we would rather not revisit: the Slave Trade, the Indian Removal Policy, the subjection of women, child labor, segregation. The Endangered Species Act is a zero-tolerance law: no new extinctions. It keeps eyes on the ground with legal backing-the gun may be in the holster most of the time, but its available if necessary to keep species from disappearing. I discovered in my travels that a law protecting all animals and plants, all of nature, might be as revolutionary-and as American-as the Declaration of Independence.”
― Joe Roman, Listed: Dispatches from America’s Endangered Species Act

“Imagination is haunted by the swiftness of the creatures that live on the mountain - eagle and peregrine falcon, red deer and mountain hare. The reason for their swiftness is severely practical: food is so scarce up there that only those who can move swiftly over vast stretches of ground may hope to survive. The speed, the whorls and torrents of movement, are in plain fact the mountain's own necessity. But their grace is not necessity. Or if it is - if the swoop, the parabola, the arrow-flight of hooves and wings achieve their beauty by strict adherence to the needs of function - so much the more is the mountain's integrity vindicated. Beauty is not adventitious but essential.”
― Nan Shepherd, The Living Mountain

“Remember that even just watching animals has an impact. Intrusion into their living space can expose them to predation, keep them from feeding or other essential activities, or cause them to leave their young exposed to predation or the elements. No photo or viewing opportunity is worth harassing or stressing wildlife. In appreciating and watching them, we have a responsibility to protect and preserve the animals that share our state.”
― Mary Taylor Young, The Guide to Colorado Mammals

“A trademark of something that works well, the cat body has hardly changed since its inception. Like with today's cats, their digestive systems could handle only flesh. The lesson of the cat is that if you are to become a full-fledged carnivore, you have to commit everything to it. A house cat fed vegetarian food will shrivel and die.”
― Craig Childs, The Animal Dialogues: Uncommon Encounters in the Wild

“Audiences see personalities on shows interacting with wild animals as if they were not dangerous or, at the other extreme, provoking them to give viewers an adrenaline rush. Mostly, the animals just want to be left alone, so it’s not surprising that these entertainers are seriously hurt or even killed on rare occasions. On one level, it’s that very possibility the shows are selling.”
― Chris Palmer, Shooting in the Wild: An Insider's Account of Making Movies in the Animal Kingdom

“I spent my summers at my grandparents’ cabin in Estes Park, literally next door to Rocky Mountain National Park. We had a view of Longs Peak across the valley and the giant rock beaver who, my granddad told me, was forever climbing toward the summit of the mountain. We awoke to mule deer peering in the windows and hummingbirds buzzing around the red-trimmed feeders; spent the days chasing chipmunks across the boulders of Deer Mountain and the nights listening to coyotes howling in the dark.”
― Mary Taylor Young, The Guide to Colorado Mammals

“Wisdom of the Wolf Pup: Know when you need to ask or receive help and surrender to it. Surrendering or letting go does not make you weak or deem you incapable but rather it is an act of honesty and trust. In many ways, like the pups, we are blind in this world and experience will open our eyes, but it is the alchemical transformation of knowledge into wisdom, via experience, that enables us to see. This takes time, patience, reflection, openness and allowance." Rachel S Roberts, WOLF. An inspirational guide to embodying your Inner Wolf.”
― Rachel S. Roberts, Wolf: Untamed. Courageous. Empowered. An Inspirational Guide to Embodying Your Inner Wolf

“Not just an evolutionary case study: a classic problem in ethics - perhaps utilitarian philosophy - probably sleeping a few metres from us. The close one, or the distant many. Two competing but quintessentially human traits: reason, which leads us to the greatest-good response, and empathy, which say - one death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic?”
― Graeme Simsion

“Too many people just like me, who want to tramp in here with cameras, with backpacks, or with dirt bikes or mining licences, with cats and dogs and bulldozers and building permits, with a hankering for palm oil or rhino horn or rainforest timber, the seven billion of my own species. All of us with a terrible hunger. All of us with a ready narrative about why we deserve to get what we want.”
― Cate Kennedy

“Earth Engineer (Sonnet 2336)

Earth has abundant resources to suffice our need,
but no planet has enough to suffice our greed.
Earth is rich, earth is bountiful, like a doting
mother, she provides for all her kids.

There is no economic depression,
only addiction of power and money.
There is no population explosion,
only outbreak of egocentricity.

What's the point of your architecture or engineering
degree, if you can't build a human habitat without
destroying entire ecosystems of other living things!
And you call yourself an engineer, an architect -
a sparrow has more sense than a stupid earthling.

Reach for the stars all you want,
but anchor your soul in the soil.
Human blood deficient of salt from earth,
leads to a history of mental turmoil.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Kral Fakir: When Calls The Kainat

“What's the point of your architecture or engineering degree, if you can't build a human habitat without destroying entire ecosystems of other living things!”
― Abhijit Naskar, Kral Fakir: When Calls The Kainat

“Reach for the stars all you want,
but anchor your soul in the soil.
Human blood deficient of salt from earth,
leads to a history of mental turmoil.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Kral Fakir: When Calls The Kainat

“What's the point of your architecture or engineering degree, if you can't build a human habitat without destroying entire ecosystems of other living things! And you call yourself an engineer, an architect - a sparrow has more sense than a stupid earthling.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Kral Fakir: When Calls The Kainat

“I'm not a vegetarian, I could eat anything if it's well cooked and tastes good, but preservation of wildlife is nonnegotiable, because it is only by preserving biodiversity, that we ensure a sustainable planet for humanity. It is one thing to consume animals for food, and another to destroy entire ecosystems for profit. There is nothing wrong in development, but development founded on destruction of nature, is the most expensive ticket to human extinction.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Kral Fakir: When Calls The Kainat