“I love all men who dive.” — Herman Melville in a letter (italics in original)

“My Gods! What a Commentator is this Ann Alexander whale. What he has to say is short and pithy but very much to the point.” — Herman Melville writing to his friend Evert Duyckinck about a whale that attacked a whaler, the Ann Alexander, just a few months after Moby-Dick was published.

“[The industry was] at its best, hard, and at its worst represented perhaps the lowest condition to which free American labor had ever fallen.” — Elmo Paul Hohman, The American Whaleman, 1928

“We patronize the animals for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses that we have lost or never attained, listening to voices that we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth.” — Henry Beston, The Outermost House

“We are in a flat part of Africa...The manuals of guerrilla warfare generally state that a country has to be of a certain size to be able to create what is called a base, and, further, that mountains are the best place to develop guerrilla warfare….As for the mountains, we decided that our people had to take their place, since it would be impossible to develop our struggle otherwise. So our people are our mountains.” — Amilcar Cabral, The People Are Our Mountains

“The trouble with whitefellas is that they keep all their brains in books.” — Inuit elder Dempsy Bob

We have always known that the plants and animals have their own councils, and a common language.” — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass

“However baby man may brag of his science and skill, and however much, in a flattering future, that science and skill may augment; yet for ever and for ever, to the crack of doom, the sea will insult and murder him, and pulverize the stateliest, stiffest frigate he can make.” — Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

“Many of humanity’s most intractable problems are caused by disregarding the voices of the Other—including non-humans.” — cetologist Roger Payne

“The quality of our personal lives and of our social worlds is directly related to the quality of communication in which we engage.” — Barnett Pearce, Introducing Communications Theory.

“Some people think that sailors have no feeling, and that it is not worth their while to regard them as anything but a kind of marine animal that isn’t exactly fit to be on shore, and intirly [entirely] beneath their notice.” — George Blanchard, whaleman, in a letter. (italics in original)

“When Mr. Dunott fastened to his whale, the loose [whale] went alongside of the first one, threw his fins over his head, & moaned as if he felt for his mate, & seemed to try to get him clear. But as soon as he got the lance & began to spout blood, he left him to his fate & tried to save himself. I could not help pitying them.” — John F. Martin, whaleman,in his journal

Whales has feelings as well as any body. They don’t like to be stuck in the gizzards, and hauled alongside, and cut in, and tried out in them ‘ere boilers no more than I do.” — Enoch Cloud, whaleman, in a letter home, 1852

“When something precious is at stake, why not slow down and consider the options, not just for yourself but for, as Waya put it, a future you will never see. His words struck at the heart of a paradox that had been nagging at me: In a time when we’ve never had more knowledge to inform our actions, we’ve never been more heedless. 'You are living for the moment,' Wishtoya whispered. 'While everything else around you is living in geological time.'” — Susan Casey Voices in The Ocean

“The Sperm Whales, instead of almost invariably sailing in small detached companies, as in former times, are now frequently met with in extensive herds, sometimes embracing so great a multitude that it would almost seem as if numerous nations of them had sworn solemn league and covenant for mutual assistance and protection.” — Moby-Dick

“[The bowhead whales'] culture...became one of choosing not to die for the market.” — environmental historian Bathsheba Demuth, Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait

“In their behavior toward animals, all people are Nazis. For the animals, it is an eternal Treblinka.” — Isaac Bashevis Singer

“Sooner or later, the machine you built eats you” — The Man in the High Castle (TV series)

“All the armed prophets conquered and the unarmed were ruined.” — Machiavelli

“As a young Rastafarian I was taught not to hate, and it wasn’t in my nature to hate—after all, we were listening to music that was all about peace and love and bringing people together...But we knew that if we did nothing we would be killed on the streets. We knew that the National Front was a Nazi front, so our slogan became “Self-defence is no offense,” and we meant it.” – Benjamin Zephaniah

“[The whaleship’s captain] stood up and looked down at us with a smile. He brought his finger slowly across his throat, and that was when we realized that Gandhi was not going to work for us that day.” — Captain Paul Watson, formerly of Sea Shepherd

“But I also saw something else in [the dying whale’s] eye, and that was pity. Not for himself nor his kind, but for us.” — Captain Paul Watson

“From love one gains courage.” — Tao Te Ching

“Being paid—what will compare with it? The urbane activity with which a man receives money is really marvellous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!” — Moby-Dick

“Though man loved his fellow, yet man is a money-making animal, which propensity too often interferes with his benevolence." — Moby-Dick

“There is no folly of the beasts of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men.” — Moby-Dick

“...or still worse and more detestable, a hideous and intolerable allegory.” — Moby-Dick