Anthropomorphism Quotes

“Long, blue, spiky-edged shadows crept out across the snow-fields, while a rosy glow, at first scarce discernible, gradually deepened and suffused every mountain-top, flushing the glaciers and the harsh crags above them. This was the alpenglow, to me the most impressive of all the terrestrial manifestations of God. At the touch of this divine light, the mountains seemed to kindle to a rapt, religious consciousness, and stood hushed like devout worshippers waiting to be blessed.”
― John Muir, The Wild Muir: Twenty-Two of John Muir's Greatest Adventures

“Lets build a happy little cloud.
Lets build some happy little trees.”
― Bob Ross

“Even if I take him out for three hours every day, and go and chat to him for another hour, that leaves twenty hours for him all alone with nothing to do. Oh, why can't dogs read?”
― Nancy Mitford, The Pursuit of Love

“There are talking dogs all over the place, unbelievably boring they are, on and on and on about sex and shit and smells, and smells and shit and sex, and do you love me, do you love me, do you love me.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, Changing Planes

“Anthropomorphism is usually thought of as an illusion that arises like a blister in soft human minds: untrained, undisciplined, unhardened. There are good reasons for this: when we humanise the world, we may prevent ourselves from understanding the lives of other organisms on their own terms. But are there things this stance might lead us to pass over – or forget to notice?”
― Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures

“The river loved to tell everybody (everybody being the sky, the wind, the few trees that grew around there, birds, deer and even the stars if you can believe that) what a great river it was. "I come roaring from the earth and return roaring to the earth. I am the master of my waters. I am the mother and father of myself. I don't need a single drop of rain. Look at my smooth strong white muscles. I am my own future!”
― Richard Brautigan, Revenge of the Lawn / The Abortion / So the Wind Won't Blow it All Away

“It was raining when Rahel came back to Ayemenem. Slanting silver ropes slammed into loose earth, plowing it up like gunfire. The old house on the hill wore its steep, gabled roof pulled over its ears like a low hat.”
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

“People will say we're being a little bit anthropomorphic?' I remembered Brendan's use of the word - 'human-like'.

'Anyone who doesn't believe that animals are aware that they have family and friends, and care about them, must also be a paid-up member of the Flat Earth Society, or still think the sun revolves around the earth,' replied Dylan disdainfully. 'I mean, how switched off can you be? How can anyone still believe animals don't have emotions? They're alive and emotions are a response to life. I've seen warthogs that are more intelligent and more responsible than some people I know. Not to say better parents.”
― Lawrence Anthony, The Last Rhinos: My Battle to Save One of the World's Greatest Creatures

“Unless disability and animal justice are incorporated into our other movements for liberation, ableism and anthropocentrism will be left unchallenged, available for use by systems of domination and oppression.”
― Sunaura Taylor, Beasts of Burden: Animal and Disability Liberation

“The multitude was a frothing octopus, pulsating anthropomorphically over the church steps.”
― Ondjaki, The Whistler

“The neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux has shown that the same neural mechanisms mediate the fear response in all sorts of animals, from pigeons and rats to cats and humans. The idea that other animals experience similar emotions to us is not anthropomorphism: it is based on sound scientific evidence.”
― Dylan Evans, A brief introduction to emotions

“But I learned at my expense that Father believed there was another animal even more dangerous than us, and one that was extremely common, too, found on every continent, in every habitat: the redoubtable species Animalus anthropomorphicus, the animal as seen through human eyes. We've all met one, perhaps even owned one. It is an animal that is "cute", "friendly", "loving", "devoted", "merry", "understanding". These animals lie in ambush in every toy store and children's zoo. Countless stories are told of them. They are the pendants of those "vicious", "bloodthirsty", "depraved" animals that inflame the ire of the maniacs I have just mentioned, who vent their spite on them with walking sticks and umbrellas. In both cases we look at an animal and see a mirror. The obsession with putting ourselves at the centre of everything is the bane not only of theologians but also of zoologists. I learned the lesson that an animal is an animal, essentially and practically removed from us, twice: once with Father and once with Richard Parker.

Martel, Yann. Life of Pi (p. 39). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“The language of a river inscribes
over eyes of moths and flies
the navel of the land is a lake.”
― Sneha Subramanian Kanta, Synecdoche

“Part of her soul ... gloried in the sheer bodacious unnaturalness of it. Putting a great blue-green water park smack down in the red desert complete with cactus, trading posts, genuine Navajo Indians, and five kinds of rattlesnakes was theater of the absurd at its most outrageous.”
― Nevada Barr, The Rope

“Of the sciences today, quantum physics alone seems to have found its way back to an equitable relationship with metaphors, those fundamental tools of the imagination. The other sciences are occasionally so bound by rational analysis, or so wary of metaphor, that they recognize and denounce anthropomorphism as a kind of intellectual cancer, instead of employing it as a tool of comparative inquiry, which is perhaps the only way the mind works, that parallelism we finally call narrative.”
― Barry Lopez

“- Vad är en ängel, frågade apan.
Madelene skakade på huvudet.
- Det har jag aldrig riktigt förstått, sa hon. Men kanske är det en tredjedel gud, en tredjedel djur och en tredjedel människa.”
― Peter Høeg, The Woman and the Ape

“Then there's the pillar statue in the semi-subterranean temple at Tiahuanaco [Bolivia]. Like the Totem Pole of Göbekli Tepe, it is anthropomorphic. Like the Totem Pole at Göbekli Tepe, it has serpents writhing up its side. Like the Totem Pole at Göbekli Tepe, the long fingers of its hands almost meet in front of its body. The face is human not animal, however, and it's heavily bearded. Nonetheless, the figure of an animal is carved on the side of its head and this animal resembles no known species more closely than it does Toxodon, a sort of New World rhino that went extinct during the cataclysms at the end of the Ice Age around 12,000 years ago. This isn't pareidolia--the figure is definitely there. So there's only one question--and it's difficult to answer: is this a depiction of Toxodon, or is it some creature of the artist's imagination?”
― Graham Hancock, Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization

“But you can reassure children; you can tell them what's happening or going to happen. Can you get such reassurance across to a cat? I suppose it is that sort of anthropomorphism that bugs the hell out of researchers whose job is to experiment on nonhuman animals. If they permit themselves such a comparison, they might not sleep well at night.”
― Paul Corey, Do Cats Think?: Notes of a Cat-Watcher

“A cat probably doesn't say to himself, 'Where did I go wrong? Why wasn't I able to get my idea across?' More likely, Leo's brain reacted very much like the human brain in such a situation, and he thought, 'That damned stupid human. He's too dumb to understand what I was trying to say.”
― Paul Corey, Do Cats Think?: Notes of a Cat-Watcher

“When company comes, you must walk the fine line between obvious rudeness and actually making the intruders feel welcome. Sniff the guests' feet, but don't rub up against them. Jump on their laps, but don't stay to be petted. Stick around long enough to hear them say how beautiful you are, but not long enough to let on that you care what they think.

The only exception to these rules is when the visitor is a confirmed cat-hater. That's when you need to pull out all the stops—purr, rub, cling and cuddle, until the offending human sneezes and departs abruptly.”
― Globe Digests, Cat Talk A Lighthearted Look at Living with Cats

“Anthropomorphism is unavoidable, I am finding, in writing about gardening: weeds don't just grow, they grow with intent, they grow aggressively. Well, they do, as any gardener knows. They sneak in and swarm up when your back is turned.”
― Penelope Lively, Life in the Garden

“They went down to the stream. It was all bearded with dirty grasses and was grumbling, for the rains had filled it with water. So it complained. It complained of being too fat. It was never satisfied. In summer it spent its time moaning that it was going to die, and then...Streams were always like that.”
― Jean Giono, Regain

“The Provider

Several crows were lined up along the ridge of a quite ordinary house. 'These ridge poles are a good idea,' said a young one. 'Who dreamed it up?' 'This place of rest is a fortuitous gift from the moon,' said a raven who was mixing with the hoi polloi today. 'The moon is a relative of the roc, a distant cousin of mine. Believe me,' he said, stretching his wings out to their full advantage and pushing the crows at the end off balance, so several leaped into the wind and cried, 'caw' . . . 'it depends on your original stock. I've got a piece of the roc.' The moon rose spectral and drained, a gossamer imprint of her nighttime self, a reminder of crystal fracture, the load of swinging primitive stones, the ancient hairy arms with slingshots. A sudden explosion and the sky was defined with flapping and cawing. 'What was that?' cried the young one who was addicted to awe. 'Who knows?' replied the raven. 'Often the moon demands a sacrifice. As a close relative, it is now my duty to go and eat the meat. For it is said, nothing is wasted; nothing is without purpose.' And the raven rose and flew toward the hunters.”
― Ruth Stone, In the Next Galaxy

“The chimpanzee with a bandaged forehead grabbed a hypodermic needle.
Michelle smiled and watched Cynthia stab a syringe into the laboratory director’s kneecap. The chimp appeared to be making a flower design. The other twelve needles she’d jabbed were arranged around the knee like daisy petals.”
― Alicia Hilton, Year's Best Hardcore Horror Volume 4

“There is an universal tendency amongst mankind to conceive all beings like themselves, and to transfer to every object those qualities, with which they are familiarly acquainted, and of which they are intimately conscious. We find human faces in the moon, armies in the clouds; and by a natural propensity, if not corrected by experience and reflection, ascribe malice and good-will to every thing, that hurts or pleases us. Hence the frequency and beauty of the prosopopoeia in poetry, where trees, mountains and streams are personified, and the inanimate parts of nature acquire sentiment and passion. (Section 3, paragraph 2).”
― David Hume, The Natural History of Religion

“I'll let you in on a little secret: This book is magic. All books are. So much so that they are picky about who picks them up and reads them.”
― Maria DeBlassie, Practically Pagan - An Alternative Guide to Magical Living

“The Waiting Room by Stewart Stafford

The waiting room lay empty,
Gloom-prowled, leather-studded seats,
A ceiling fan spun lonely circles above,
Keeping no one in particular cool at all.

Portrait of a rose in a shadowy alcove,
A pair of empty street scenes framed,
Mirroring the deserted room where they hung,
Creating the vacuum of an infinity void.

A wreath of hope on the door,
The first patient of the day lumbers in,
Where there's one, there'll be others,
Smiles from all at the start of the day.

© Stewart Stafford, 2021. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“This city with remnants of war. The roads glow with an overcharge of streetlights. I smell the ocean's combustion from the window. Inhale the sulphur of post-rain air. The town dissolves inside my body like crumbs, as the slow release of paracetamol into the liver.”
― Sneha Subramanian Kanta

“In me you exist,' says the house.”
― Rumer Godden, Take Three Tenses: A Fugue in Time

“..we create a culture and language that necessarily assumes we are special. In the face of all the mounting evidence to the contrary, our culture and language suggest that we may be guilty of anthropomorphising life-forms that show us that the assumed ‘human’ qualities are not only human ones.

Talk about stacking the deck against other animals. It is an ugly Orwellian feedback loop. Any approach to truth is lost in a deep corruption of logic and language. This wrong-headedness and unfairness sits very deep within us and our culture; it is time to call it out so we can root it out.”
― Peter Pink-Howitt, Ethics of Life: freedom and diversity