John Steinbeck Quotes

There are a lot of smart creatures out there. Dolphins, elephants, and whales are smart. And there are some really smart birds. I know some really intelligent fish. But they cannot know what humans know and are incapable of inflicting as much damage.

I never thought I could learn much from a dog or cat. They sleep when we sleep. They eat when we eat. I'm into observing animals being as wild as they can be in a captive environment.

I've always been interested in animal behavior, and I keep reading about it because it's so surprising all the time - so many things are happening around us that we neglect to look at. Part of the passion I have for biology is based on this wonderment.

The intelligence of the lower forms of animal life, like a great deal of human intelligence, does not involve a self.

I have come to know Bugs so well that I no longer have to think about what he is doing in any situation.

Cats and dogs are a very good window into the natural world: a chance to see how another species lives and deals with its problems, what they like and what they don't like.

Dalmatians are not only superior to other dogs, they are like all dogs, infinitely less stupid than men.

Any glimpse into the life of an animal quickens our own and makes it so much the larger and better in every way.

This face is a dog's snout sniffing for garbage, snakes nest in that mouth, I hear the sibilant threat.

The dog is almost human in its demand for living interest, yet fatally less than human in its inability to foresee.

Scientists have shown that pigs are capable of playing simple video games, learning from each other, and even learning names.

Cats are smarter than dogs. You can't get eight cats to pull a sled through snow.

I think that intelligence is such a narrow branch of the tree of life - this branch of primates we call humans. No other animal, by our definition, can be considered intelligent. So intelligence can't be all that important for survival, because there are so many animals that don't have what we call intelligence, and they're surviving just fine.

Dogs are a window on the natural world.

You can't train a penguin to act. You kind of have to take what you get.

Horses do sense things way before people.

It really sucks to be the number two intelligent species on this planet; you can just ask gorillas.

Based on my experience, it's considerably difficult to force a donkey into doing something it perceives to be dangerous for whatever reason.

One would wonder to hear skeptical men disputing for the reason of animals, and telling us it is only our pride and prejudices that will not allow them the use of that faculty. Reason shows itself in all occurrences of life; whereas the brute makes no discovery of such a talent, but in what immediately regards his own preservation, or the continuance of his species. Animals in their generation are wiser than the sons of men; but their wisdom is confined to a few particulars, and lies in a very narrow compass. Take a brute out of his instinct, and you find him wholly deprived of understanding.

I set my monkey on the log, and ordered him to do the Dog. He wagged his tail and shook his head, and he went and did the Cat instead.

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

Marvelous as may be the power of my dog to understand my moods, deathless as his affection and fidelity, his mental state is as unsolved a mystery to me as it was to my remotest ancestor.

Reason number 106 why dogs are smarter than humans: once you leave the litter, you server contact with your mothers.

Dogs do speak, but only to those who know how to listen.

Life cannot be classified in terms of a simple neurological ladder, with human beings at the top; it is more accurate to talk of different forms of intelligence, each with its strengths and weaknesses. This point was well demonstrated in the minutes before last December's tsunami, when tourists grabbed their digital cameras and ran after the ebbing surf, and all the 'dumb' animals made for the hills.