Farley Mowat Quotes

“And this is what happened, ands this is why the caribou and the wolf are one; for the caribou feeds the wolf, but it is the wolf that keeps the caribou strong.”

— Farley Mowat

“Whenever and wherever men have engaged in the mindless slaughter of animals (including other men), they have often attempted to justify their acts by attributing the most vicious or revolting qualities to those they would destory; and the less reason there is for the slaughter, the greater the campaign for vilification.”

— Farley Mowat

Inaction will cause a man to sink into the slough of despond and vanish without a trace.

— Farley Mowat

“It is to this new-found resolution to reassert our indivisibility with life, to recognize the obligations incumbent upon us as the most powerful and deadly species ever to exist, and to begin making amends for the havoc we have wrought, that my own hopes for a revival and continuance of life on earth now turn. If we persevere in this new way we may succeed in making man humane ... at last.”

— Farley Mowat

“Somewhere to the eastward a wolf howled; lightly, questioningly. I knew the voice, for I had heard it many times before. It was George, sounding the wasteland for an echo from the missing members of his family. But for me it was a voice which spoke of the lost world which once was ours before we chose the alien role; a world which I had glimpsed and almost entered ... only to be excluded, at the end, by my own self.”

— Farley Mowat

“You never know when the devil might come calling.”

— Farley Mowat

“The three cardinal tenets of rum drinking in Newfoundland. The first of these is that as soon as a bottle is placed on a table it must be opened. This is done to "let the air get at it and carry off the black vapors." The second tenet is that a bottle, once opened, must never be restoppered, because of the belief that it will then go bad. No bottle of rum has ever gone bad in Newfoundland, but none has ever been restoppered, so there is no way of knowing whether this belief is reasonable. The final tenet is that an open bottle must be drunk as rapidly as possible "before all to-good goes out of it.”

— Farley Mowat

“And so the pact of timelessness between us was broken and I went from him into the darkening tunnel of the years.”

— Farley Mowat

“I wonder now ... were my tears for Alex and Al and all the others who had gone and who were yet to go? Or was I weeping for myself ... and those who would remain?”

— Farley Mowat

The frozen fish were later put in deep holes in the moss and covered over to keep until they were needed.

— Farley Mowat

“Jamie was quick to see a use for the ice sheet.”

— Farley Mowat

“The new plan looked like the answer.”

— Farley Mowat

“Then he jumped up and shouted.”

— Farley Mowat

“I'll braid you one.”

— Farley Mowat

“I will take any liberty I want with facts as long as I don't trespass on the truth ... We confuse facts with truth.”

— Farley Mowat

“As the Siberian saying goes: One hundred versts (roughly a hundred miles) is no distance. A hundred rubles isn't worthwhile money. And a hundred grams of vodka just makes you thirsty.”

— Farley Mowat

“I write better in Cape Breton ... too many people around in Ontario. Down there I meet all sorts of non-human people, but they don't bother me, and I don't feel I have to apologize on behalf of my species quite so often.”

— Farley Mowat

“We're under some gross misconception that we're a good species, going somewhere important, and that at the last minute we'll correct our errors and God will smile on us. It's delusion.”

— Farley Mowat

“I write every day. I'm always in the process of writing my last book, until the next one.”

— Farley Mowat

Without a function, we cease to be. So, I will write till I die.

— Farley Mowat

“Stephen Harper is probably the most dangerous human being ever elevated to power in Canada.”

— Farley Mowat

“The wolf never kills for fun, which is probably one of the main differences distinguishing him from man.”

— Farley Mowat

“After all, we fought the Yanks in 1812 and kicked them the hell out of our country - but not with blanks.”

— Farley Mowat

“On my 70th birthday, I was asked how I felt about mankind's prospects. This is my reply: We are behaving like yeasts in a brewer's vat, multiplying mindlessly while greedily consuming the substance of a finite world. If we continue to imitate the yeasts, we will perish as they perish, having exhausted our resources and poisoned ourselves in the lethal brew of our own wastes. Unlike the yeasts, we have a choice. What will it be?”

— Farley Mowat

“Ah me son, we don't be takin' nothin' from the sea. We has to sneak up on what we wants and wiggle it away”

— Farley Mowat

“Don't make a big distinction between fiction and non-fiction. These are arbitrary distinctions ...”

— Farley Mowat

“If you are going to be a big personality, you've got to have some kind of characteristic gimmick.”

— Farley Mowat

“I never let the facts get in the way of the truth!”

— Farley Mowat

“Mutt enjoyed traveling by car, but he was an unquiet passenger. He suffered from the delusion, common to dogs and small boys, that when he was looking out the right-hand side, he was probably missing something far more interesting on the left-hand side.”

— Farley Mowat

“I have to go on writing because I wouldn't be able to go on without writing. It is the only function that works for me, and without that function, I would die.”

— Farley Mowat

“I believe in God the way my dog does”

— Farley Mowat

“It is in our nature to travel into our past, hoping thereby to illuminate the darkness that bedevils the present.”

— Farley Mowat

“Don't let the facts interfere with the truth.”

— Farley Mowat

“Truth I have no trouble with, it's the facts I get all screwed up.”

— Farley Mowat