Quotes About Animals In Captivity

“It is up to you whether social, intelligent and wonderful creatures are to be freed from their chains and cages where ruthless people keep them. The animals would, if they could, flee as I did, because a life in captivity is a life full of deprivation.”

— Natascha Kampusch

“Many animals experience pain, anxiety and suffering, physically and psychologically, when they are held in captivity or subjected to starvation, social isolation, physical restraint, or painful situations from which they cannot escape. Even if it is not the same experience of pain, anxiety, or suffering undergone by humans- or even other animals, including members of the same species- an individual's pain, suffering, and anxiety matter.”

— Marc Bekoff

“For animals that are overworked, underfed, and cruelly treated; for all wistful creatures in captivity that beat their wings against bars; for any that are hunted or lost or deserted or frightened or hungry; for all that must be put to death ... and for those who deal with them we ask a heart of compassion and gentle hands and kindly words.”

— Albert Schweitzer

“Every time you go to the zoo, you prolong the captivity of the animals there! If no one goes to the zoos, there will be no zoos! Destroying the evil is very simple and it is in your hand!”

— Mehmet Murat Ildan

“I hate to witness animals in captivity - or see circus elephants paraded down the streets. When animals are caged, it's a loss of what they are.”

— K.A. Applegate

“I think we have a real obligation when we do have animals in captivity to understand their needs and to care for them as well as we can.”

— K.A. Applegate

“I was watching a Storyville documentary called 'Blackfish' about killer whales in captivity. I was emotionally drained by the end. It revealed a real behind-the-scenes truth on what we do with animals.”

— Rupert Evans

“I've always had a repulsion going in a place where animals are in captivity.”

— Marion Cotillard

“Federal legislation is urgently needed to stop this insanity of wild animals in captivity.”

— Tippi Hedren

“I've had a love of animals from birth. I love getting to know other species. We should all be aware that there is not one thing we can give a wild animal in captivity that they need.”

— Tippi Hedren

“On entering a place where animals are bred, my first thoughts are always about enslavement. Force. Captivity.”

— Alice Walker

“He didn't like to see animals in captivity. When he looked into their eyes, something in their eyes looked back at him.”

— Rick Yancey

“In his eyes, as in the eyes of all Forsytes, the pleasure of seeing these beautiful creatures in a state of captivity far outweighed the inconvenience of imprisonment to beasts whom God had so improvidently placed in a state of freedom! It was for the animals' good, removing them at once from the countless dangers of open air and exercise. Indeed, it was doubtful what wild animals were made for but tobe shut up in cages!
The Man of Property, p. 191”

— John Galsworthy

“Sea World's killer whale collection needs constant replenishing. The average life span of the animals in captivity is less than half the average for killer whales in the ocean.”

— Nina Easton

“Attempts to defend amusement parks and circuses on the grounds that they 'educate' people about animals should not be taken seriously. Such enterprises are part of the commercial entertainment industry. The most important lesson they teach impressionable young minds is that it is acceptable to keep animals in captivity for human amusement.”

— Peter Singer

“It was wrong to capture wild animals and confine them in captivity for people to go and gawk at them. And that's basically how zoos got started. But once you do that, and once you have animals that have been bred in captivity, you're really stuck with them in some sense. You can't return them to the wild.”

— Peter Singer

“[T]he imagination, like certain wild animals, will not breed in captivity.”

— George Orwell

“Orwell's short and intense life has for years borne witness to some of those verities of which we were already aware. Parties and churches and states cannot be honest, but individuals can. Real books cannot be written by machines or committees. The truth is not always easy to discern, but a lie can and must be called by its right name. And the imagination, like certain wild animals, as Orwell himself once put it, will not breed in captivity. Actually, that last metaphor is beautiful but inaccurate. Even in the most dire conditions, there is a human will to resist coercion. We must believe that even now in North Korea, there are ideas alive inside human brains that were not put there by any authority.”

— Christopher Hitchens

“The less control people had over their work, the higher their blood pressure during work hours. Moreover, blood pressure at home was unrelated to the level of job control, indicating that the spike during work hours was specifically caused by lack of choice on the job. People with little control over their work also experienced more back pain, missed more days of work due to illness in general, and had higher rates of mental illness-the human equivalent of stereotypies, resulting in the decreased quality of life common to animals reared in captivity.”

— Sheena Iyengar

“Dolphins : Animals that are so intelligent that, within a few weeks of captivity, they can train a man to stand on the edge of their pool and throw them food three times a day.”

— Hal Roach

“I became very critical of zoos and circuses and keeping animals in captivity. I wish it was against the law.”

— Christopher Walken

“John Burroughs has stated that experimental study of animals in captivity is absolutely useless. Their character, their habits, their appetites undergo a complete transformation when torn from their soil in field and forest. With human nature caged in a narrow space, whipped daily into submission, how can we speak of its potentialities?”

— Emma Goldman