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1 " Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion--several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven....The higher animals have no religion. And we are told that they are going to be left out in the Hereafter. I wonder why? It seems questionable taste. "
― Mark Twain
2 " Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature. "
― Samuel Butler
3 " Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor. "
― Thomas Jefferson
4 " Historians are wont to name technological advances as the great milestones of culture, among them the development of the plow, the discovery of smelting and metalworking, the invention of the clock, printing press, steam power, electric engine, lightbulb, semiconductor, and computer. But possibly even more transforming than any of these was the recognition by Greek philosophers and their intellectual descendants that human beings could examine, comprehend, and eventually even guide or control their own thought process, emotions, and resulting behavior. With that realization we became something new and different on earth: the only animal that, by examining its own cerebration and behavior, could alter them. This, surely, was a giant step in evolution. Although we are physically little different from the people of three thousand years ago, we are culturally a different species. We are the psychologizing animal. "
― Morton Hunt , The Story of Psychology
5 " The human is the only animal on earth that pays a thousand times for the same mistake. The rest of the animals pay only once for every mistake they make. But not us. We have a powerful memory. We make a mistake, we judge ourselves, we find ourselves guilty, and we punish ourselves. "
― Miguel Ruiz
6 " I cannot now recall exactly what creatures I saw on that visit to the Antwerp Nocturama, but there were probably bats and jerboas from Egypt and the Gobi Desert, native European hedgehogs and owls, Australian opossums, pine martens, dormice, and lemurs, leaping from branch to branch, darting back and forth over the grayish-yellow sandy ground, or disappearing into a bamboo thicket. The only animal which has remained lingering in my memory is the raccoon. I watched it for a long time as it sat beside a little stream with a serious expression on its face, washing the same piece of apple over and over again, as if it hoped that all this washing, which went far beyond any reasonable thoroughness, would help it to escape the unreal world in which it had arrived, so to speak, through no fault of its own. Otherwise, all I remember of the denizens of the Nocturama is that several of them had strikingly large eyes, and the fixed, inquiring gaze found in certain painters and philosophers who seek to penetrate the darkness which surrounds us purely by means of looking and thinking. "
― W.G. Sebald
7 " Experience declares that man is the only animal which devours his own kind; for I can apply no milder term to the governments of Europe, and to the general prey of the rich on the poor. "
― Thomas Jefferson , Letters of Thomas Jefferson
8 " Man is the only animal on earth intelligent enough to invent God and foolish enough to believe in Him. "
9 " Some very common foods and drinks are aversive. Few people enjoy, at first, coffee, beer, tobacco, or chili pepper. Pleasure from pain is uniquely human. No other animal willingly eats such foods when there are alternatives. Philosophers have often looked for the defining feature of humans—language, rationality, culture, and so on. I'd stick with this: Man is the only animal that likes Tabasco sauce. "
10 " Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them. "
― Samuel Butler , The Note Books Of Samuel Butler
11 " And so we see the paradox that evolution has handed us. If man is the only animal whose consciousness of self gives him an unusual dignity in the animal kingdom, he also pays a tragic price for it. The fact that the child has to identify -first- means that his very first identity is a social product. His habitation of his own body is built from the outside in; not from the inside out. He doesn't unfold into the world, the world unfolds into him. As the child responds to the vocal symbols learned from his object, he often gives the pathetic impression of being a true social puppet, jerked by alien symbols and sounds. What sensitive parent does not have his satisfaction tinged with sadness as the child repeats with such vital earnestness the little symbols that are taught him? "
― Ernest Becker , The Birth and Death of Meaning: An Interdisciplinary Perspective on the Problem of Man
12 " One saw a bird dying, shot by a man. It was flying with rhythmic beat and beautifully, with such freedom and lack of fear. And the gun shattered it; it fell to the earth and all the life had gone out of it. A dog fetched it, and the man collected other dead birds. He was chattering with his friend and seemed so utterly indifferent. All that he was concerned with was bringing down so many birds, and it was over as far as he was concerned. They are killing all over the world. Those marvellous, great animals of the sea, the whales, are killed by the million, and the tiger and so many other animals are now becoming endangered species. Man is the only animal that is to be dreaded. "
― J. Krishnamurti , Krishnamurti to Himself: His Last Journal
13 " Mamoon went on, “The news I bring is to say that, man being the only animal who hates himself, the likely fate of the world is total self-destruction.” He raised his glass. “All the best then, my friends. Here’s to a happy apocalypse.”“Happy apocalypse,” murmured the other guests, obediently. "
― Hanif Kureishi , The Last Word
14 " Why do you think we are the only animal that kisses? She was near again. Because the area in front of our faces is our most intimate zone. She drew a breath. This is why humans are the only romantic animal! "
― Miranda July , No One Belongs Here More Than You
15 " Man is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight "
― Mark Twain , The Higher Animals: A Mark Twain Bestiary
16 " Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be. "
― Os Guinness , Fool's Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion
17 " Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they might have been. "
18 " Man is the only animal that can be bored. "
19 " Man is the only animal whose desires increase as they are fed the only animal that is never satisfied. "
20 " Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps for he is the only animal that is struck by the difference between what things are and what they might have been. "
