I spend a lot of time learning about bird watching.

All of my friends are animal people. To me, cats are people, too. Animals are people, too. I travel a lot and when I go overseas, it's really hard on me because the animals are treated much differently, especially in developing countries.

Pets are humanizing. They remind us we have an obligation and responsibility to preserve and nurture and care for all life.

Animals are such agreeable friends - they ask no questions; they pass no criticisms.

The quicker we humans learn that saving open space and wildlife is critical to our welfare and quality of life, maybe we'll start thinking of doing something about it.

We all have our preferences - some people go for birds - but for me, there's just something about the wolf; the design of it is really aesthetically pleasing.

I like animals. I like natural history. The travel bit is not the important bit. The travel bit is what you have to do in order to go and look at animals.

Animals, in their generation, are wiser than the sons of men; but their wisdom is confined to a few particulars, and lies in a very narrow compass.

Walking in the mountains helps me unwind, but it also reminds me in a painful way that the real beauty in life is nature and animals, and that the human race, in all its arrogance, is intent on destroying it.

Leopard is an animal design, and my designs come from nature.

Pets, like their owners, tend to expand a little over the Christmas period.

These days, most nature photographers are deeply committed to the environmental message.

When I was younger, my family would go camping and fishing on our ranches. My dad loves being around all kinds of animals. He's the one who got me to be a really big animal lover.

Not all is doom and gloom. We are beginning to understand the natural world and are gaining a reverence for life - all life.

Kittens are wide-eyed, soft and sweet. With needles in their jaws and feet.

In all works on Natural History, we constantly find details of the marvellous adaptation of animals to their food, their habits, and the localities in which they are found.

Cats and dogs are a very good window into the natural world: a chance to see how another species lives and deals with its problems, what they like and what they don't like.

Animals are my friends... and I don't eat my friends.

Humans are amphibians - half spirit and half animal. As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time.

I have lived long enough to witness the vanishing of wild mammals, butterflies, mayflies, songbirds and fish that I once feared my grandchildren would not experience: it has all happened faster than even the pessimists predicted.

The best thing about animals is that they don't talk much.

Life is a zoo in a jungle.

Strictly speaking, my interest is not in legal rights for animals but in a change of heart towards animals.

I really want a pet, and I really love animals.

I can find God in nature, in animals, in birds and the environment.

Cherish sunsets, wild creatures and wild places. Have a love affair with the wonder and beauty of the earth.

My mother and dad were big animal lovers, too. I just don't know how I would have lived without animals around me. I'm fascinated by them - both domestic pets and the wild community. They just are the most interesting things in the world to me, and it's made such a difference in my lifetime.

The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated.

The Safari Club International has worked the legal system hard to try to keep polar bears - threatened primarily by climate change, but also by hunting - on the list of creatures people can import as trophies after shooting.

In their sympathies, children feel nearer animals than adults.

Animal rights can be as extreme as not riding a horse, or not wearing leather, not having a pet at all. Animal welfare advocates are preventing the suffering of animals. And then there's conservation and species conservation and what conservation biologists do.

I wish people would realize that animals are totally dependent on us, helpless, like children, a trust that is put upon us.

When it comes to wildlife photography, you need to have luck and patience.

The truth is that at the White House and in Congress, you are as likely to find sympathy for animal issues among Republicans as among Democrats.

Birds are indicators of the environment. If they are in trouble, we know we'll soon be in trouble.

I have always brought home stray animals - everything from squirrels to wild rabbits to foxes and turtles.

The heart of our relationship, this natural environment that has blessed us really all along the west coast of North America, on both sides of the border we've realized that this incredible natural wealth comes with a price.

Experiments with animals have long been handicapped by our anthropocentric attitude: We often test them in ways that work fine with humans but not so well with other species.

I love to be surrounded by nature.

Man and animals are in reality vehicles and conduits of food, tombs of animals, hostels of Death, coverings that consume, deriving life by the death of others.

The more I see of deer, the more I admire them as mountaineers. They make their way into the heart of the roughest solitudes with smooth reserve of strength, through dense belts of brush and forest encumbered with fallen trees and boulder piles, across canons, roaring streams, and snow-fields, ever showing forth beauty and courage.

The fate of animals is of greater importance to me than the fear of appearing ridiculous; it is indissolubly connected with the fate of men.

Animals are such agreeable friends - they ask no questions; they pass no criticisms.

I guess you could say I'm a closeted animal person, because a lot of my life I did it in secrecy. I was always fascinated with exotic animals, particularly reptiles, from the age of 6 when I got a pet tortoise.

I like animals because they are not consciously cruel and don't betray each other.

Animals are the main victims of history, and the treatment of domesticated animals in industrial farms is perhaps the worst crime in history.

My wife and I, we started a foundation about companion animal rescue, but there's a group called Performing Animal Welfare Society just outside of Sacramento... and they offered me a job as an elephant keeper.

Every animal has his or her story, his or her thoughts, daydreams, and interests. All feel joy and love, pain and fear, as we now know beyond any shadow of a doubt. All deserve that the human animal afford them the respect of being cared for with great consideration for those interests or left in peace.

Nature is full of drama. I know nothing about biology, about birds, about insects, about the details of politics. I just make movies about human interest stories.

The good news is that real-world hands-on conservation is alive and well and catching on across the America I travel.

Those who wish to pet and baby wild animals 'love' them. But those who respect their natures and wish to let them live normal lives, love them more.

During all these years there existed within me a tendency to follow Nature in her walks.

Animals are reliable, many full of love, true in their affections, predictable in their actions, grateful and loyal. Difficult standards for people to live up to.

It is odd that we have so little relationship with nature, with the insects and the leaping frog and the owl that hoots among the hills calling for its mate. We never seem to have a feeling for all living things on the earth.

The raccoons, foxes, beavers, chinchillas, minks, rabbits, and yes, sometimes even dogs and cats that are killed for fur are not very different from your beloved dog or cat. They all have eyes, ears and hearts. They all experience pain when they are physically maimed. They shake with fear when they experience terror.

Animals are sentient, intelligent, perceptive, funny and entertaining. We owe them a duty of care as we do to children.

My favorite animal is steak.

I've learned so much about what you can do to help animals, the environmental issues around meat production.

It would probably surprise people to know that I'm interested in wildlife. I read a lot of poetry, too.

We're so much more likely to feel sympathy for an animal than another person; thus, the best fiction uses animals to define truly humane behavior.

Like all animals, human beings have always taken what they want from nature. But we are the rogue species. We are unique in our ability to use resources on a scale and at a speed that our fellow species can't.