21 Quotes by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

...the illusion of differences is maintained out of fear that seeing similarity will create an obligation to accord respect and perhaps even equality.

Questers of the truth, that’s who dogs are; seekers after the invisible scent of another being’s authentic core.

What struck me whenever I visited a farm was how much more sophisticated was the life the animals were capable of living than was assumed by those exploiting them. The more we are willing to see about their lives, the more we will see. Humans seem to take perverse pleasure in attributing stupidity to animals when it is almost always entirely a question of human ignorance.

Farmers today keep themselves in ignorance of the needs and true nature of pigs precisely because to know would put their conscience in a terrible bind. Wilful ignorance of this kind is no better than complicity.

Us" versus "them" is not in our genes. It is something we learn.

We might miss the sign or we may be unable to read the expression, but it is almost a contradiction in terms to say that a dog feels something but does not show it. What a dog feels, a dog shows, and, conversely, what a dog shows, a dog actually does feel.

Perhaps one central reason for loving dogs is that they take us away from this obsession with ourselves. When our thoughts start to go in circles, and we seem unable to break away, wondering what horrible event the future holds for us, the dog opens a window into the delight of the moment.

Then in a great crash they threw themselves to the floor, ears flopped down, the whites of their eyes showing, looking the way only a dog can look who is totally disappointed. Indeed, they were the very pictures of disappointment.

incest is unfortunately commonplace, but that recognition of this, is less so