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I consider nothing low but ignorance, vice, and meanness, characteristics generally found where the animal propensities predominate over the higher sentiments.

The thing about animals is that they don't judge you. They accept you the way you are.

Sometimes I read about someone saying with great authority that animals have no intentions and no feelings, and I wonder, 'Doesn't this guy have a dog?'

There has been so much underestimating of animal cognition that to perhaps overestimate it, as I probably do, is probably a healthy reaction.

There is no reasoning, no process of inference or comparison; there is no thinking about things, no putting two and two together; there are no ideas - the animal does not think of the box or of the food or of the act he is to perform.

The un-conscious distortion of the facts is almost harmless compared to the unconscious neglect of an animal's mental life until it verges on the unusual and marvelous.

When, instead of merely associating some act with some situation in the animal way, we think the situation out, we have a set of particular feelings of its elements.

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

There is no evidence that an animal can take on the sophisticated task of deciding to end his life and to communicate that decision to us.