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We are not just rather like animals; we are animals. Our difference from other species may be striking, but comparisons with them have always been, and must be, crucial to our view of ourselves.

— Mary Midgley

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More quotes by Mary Midgley

The notion that we "have a nature" far from threatening the concept of freedom, is absolutely essential to it.

The symbolism of meat-eating is never neutral. To himself, the meat-eater seems to be eating life. To the vegetarian, he seems to be eating death.

Animals and Why They Matter (1983)

All moral doctrine, all practical suggestions about how we ought to live, depend on some belief about what human nature is like.

Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (1979)

Let us start by considering why the attempt to glorify science on its own cannot work.

Are You an Illusion (2014)

But if it only means "likely to have many descendants," then there is no reason for treating it as an advantage at all.

Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (1979)

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All breathing, existing, living, sentient creatures should not be slain, nor treated with violence, nor abused, nor tormented, nor driven away.

Mahavira

A dog cannot relate his autobiography; however eloquently he may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were honest but poor.

Bertrand Russell Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (1948)

Histories are more full of Examples of the Fidelity of dogs than of Friends.

Alexander Pope

True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power.

Milan Kundera The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Mary Midgley (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.