The Social Animal Quotes

#1. David Brooks's The Social Animal. I recommend chapters 3 through 9, which give a far richer account than what I think about the subject.

Mark M. Weber

#2. Architecture arises out of our need to shelter the human animal in a spatial environment and to enclose the social animal in a group space. In this sense architecture serves our institutions and expresses the values of our culture.

Robert L. Geddes

#3. The theory of animal rights simply is not consistent with the theory of animal welfare ... Animal rights means dramatic social changes for humans and non-humans alike; if our bourgeois values prevent us from accepting those changes, then we have no right to call ourselves advocates of animal rights.

Gary L. Francione

#4. Animal Rights is now the greatest Social Justice issue since the abolition of slavery.

Philip Wollen

#5. Animals in the wild lead lives of compulsion and necessity within an unforgiving social hierarchy in an environment where the supply of fear is high and the supply of food is low and where territory must constantly be defended and parasites forever endured.

Yann Martel

#6. Cruelty practiced as a matter of social principle or public policy, and presented to the community as a means to a higher goal is the most obscene and decadent phenomenon of any civilization.

Vernon Howard

#7. He won't be happy until he's banging the next big thing. And while he'd prefer a female, I think he'd fuck anything that moves if he thinks it'll ease his climb to the top. Male, female, or small farm animal.

J. Kenner

#8. I think what he loved about me the most was that I wasn't part of that world. But once we were together publicly, he wanted to change me into that social animal.

Marla Maples

#9. There is nothing more alone in the universe than man. He is alone because he has the intellectual capacity to know that he is separated by a vast gulf of social memory and experiment from the lives of his animal associates.

Loren Eiseley

#10. The social system based on and consonant with the altruist morality-with the code of self-sacrifice- is socialism, in all or any of its variants: fascism, Nazism, communism. All of them treat man as a sacrificial animal to be immolated for the benefit of the group, the tribe, the society, the state.

Ayn Rand

#11. The morphic fields include all kinds of organizing fields ... : The organizing fields of animal and human behaviour, of social and cultural systems, and of mental activity can all be regarded as morphic fields which contain an inherent memory.

Rupert Sheldrake

#12. The human animal has evolved as a preeminently social animal.

Leon Kass

#13. Like the good ape he is, man is a social animal, characterized by cronyism, nepotism, corruption, and gossip. That's the intrinsic blueprint for our 'ethical behavior,'" he argued. "It's pure biology.

Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#14. Anything that helps us know ourselves more deeply, love ourselves more fully, improve our social connections with family and friends, and engage us more completely with the earth, animals, and environment, is a good resource for healing.

Jed Diamond

#15. Everyone is a social animal and everyone is socially relevant..
Everyone is responsible to contribute in whatever way they can..
The 'Contribution' needs no one's approval..It just needs to be done

Abha Maryada Banerjee

#16. Whaling should stop because it brings needless suffering to social, intelligent animals capable of enjoying their own lives. But against the Japanese charge of cultural bias, Western nations will have little defense until they do much more about the needless animal suffering in their own countries.

Peter Singer

#17. Humans socialize in the largest groups of all primates because we are the only animals with brains large enough to handle the complexities of that social arrangement.

Malcolm Gladwell

#18. We're social animals; we're meant to be together, but we were never necessarily meant to be together without being together. That was never the plan, I don't think.

Goldie Hawn

#19. Everybody's strange everywhere. Most of the trick of being a social animal is pretending you're not. But who do you fool? Nobody worth talking to.

Catherynne M Valente

#20. Dogs are indeed the most social, affectionate, and amiable animals of the whole brute creation ...

Edmund Burke

#21. People who object to weapons aren't abolishing violence, they're begging for rule by brute force, when the biggest, strongest animals among men were always automatically 'right.' Guns ended that, and social democracy is a hollow farce without an armed populace to make it work.

L. Neil Smith

#22. Man is a social animal.

Seneca The Younger

#23. Man is not a solitary animal, and so long as social Life survives, self-realization cannot be the supreme principle of ethics.

Bertrand Russell

#24. Political rule is so natural and necessary to the human race that it cannot be withdrawn without destroying nature itself; for the nature of man is such that he is a social animal.

Robert Bellarmine

#25. There is no question that Francis was in advance of his age, as he anticipated all that is liberal and sympathetic in modern times: the love of nature, the love of animals, the sense of social compassion, the sense of the spiritual dangers of affluence.

Henryk Skolimowski

#26. Because the problems are objective features of the human situation - social animals without the capacities for making social life come easily - ethics is objectively constrained. It's not the case that "anything goes".

Philip Kitcher

#27. Vivisection is a social evil because if it advances human knowledge, it does so at the expense of human character.

George Bernard Shaw

#28. Words are a pretty blunt instrument. There's always going to be slippage between the words and the infinite complexities of a thought. As a writer, I find that frustrating, but as a social animal, I wouldn't have it any other way.

Kate Grenville

#29. Married, you're basically part of the herd, and that makes life easier in a lot of ways in terms of social support. But if you're not by nature a herd animal, you start to feel like you're passing.

Mary Gaitskill

#30. Human beings are social animals and nearly all of us are driven by the need to be loved and the desire to successfully sustain meaningful romantic relationships for life.

Matthew Hussey

#31. Often, vegan advocates assume that a person's defensiveness is the result of selfishness or apathy, when in fact it is much more likely the result of systematic and intensive social conditioning.

Melanie Joy

#32. If you don't like pictures of animal cruelty being posted on social media, you need to help stop the cruelty, not the pictures. You should be bothered that its happening, not that you saw it.

Marie Sarantakis

#33. No movement for social change has ever succeeded without 'the militarism component' ... Thinkers may prepare revolutions, but bandits must carry them out

Ingrid Newkirk

#34. He suddenly became convinced that if he didn't do something sensible, something to put his mind to some use, then before he knew it he would be wondering round the streets having fights with himself and inviting domestic animals to social occasions too.

John Boyne

#35. The evolutionary struggle for survival is really a self-serving series of blows and stabs, and yet it can lead to extremely social animals like dolphins, wolves or, for that matter, primates.

Frans De Waal

#36. Man owes his strength in the struggle for existence to the fact that he is a social animal.

Albert Einstein

#37. SSRIs augment social dominance behaviors, elevating an animal's status in the hierarchy. So they may well help women get along, and even get ahead, in the workplace, but at what cost?

Julie Holland

#38. If he had unlimited money at his disposal, he might go into the wilds somewhere and shoot big game. I never know what the big game have done to deserve it, but they do help to deflect the destructive energies of some of our social misfits.

Hector Hugh Munro

#39. The happiness and unhappiness of the rational, social animal depends not on what he feels but on what he does; just as his virtue and vice consist not in feeling but in doing.

Marcus Aurelius

#40. But once the ants and termites jumped the high barrier that prevents the vast variety of evolving animal groups from becoming fully social, they dominated the world.

E. O. Wilson

#41. Social existence remains a dream only because the thoughts and feelings of the human animal are blocked off from the simple and obvious.

Wilhelm Reich

#42. Using information about animal behavior to justify social or political ideology is wrong . . . People need to be able to make decisions about their lives without having to worry about keeping up with the bonobos.

Marlene Zuk

#43. This is my social face," he said lightly. "Don't confuse it with the animal beneath.

Elizabeth Hoyt