Farley Mowat

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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
Collection: Smile
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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
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I write every day. I'm always in the process of writing my last book, until the next one.
- Farley Mowat
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Without a function, we cease to be. So, I will write till I die.
- Farley Mowat
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Stephen Harper is probably the most dangerous human being ever elevated to power in Canada.
- Farley Mowat
Collection: Power
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We have doomed the wolf not for what it is, but for what we deliberately and mistakenly perceive it to be –the mythologized epitome of a savage ruthless killer – which is, in reality, no more than a reflected image of ourself.
- Farley Mowat
Collection: Motivational
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The wolf never kills for fun, which is probably one of the main differences distinguishing him from man.
- Farley Mowat
Collection: Fun
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Inaction will cause a man to sink into the slough of despond and vanish without a trace.
- Farley Mowat
Collection: Men
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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
Collection: Choices
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It is in our nature to travel into our past, hoping thereby to illuminate the darkness that bedevils the present.
- Farley Mowat
Collection: Past
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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
Collection: Animal
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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
Collection: Strong
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I never let the facts get in the way of the truth!
- Farley Mowat
Collection: Way
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I believe in God the way my dog does
- Farley Mowat
Collection: Dog
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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
Collection: Dog
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Don't make a big distinction between fiction and non-fiction. These are arbitrary distinctions.
- Farley Mowat
Collection: Arbitrary
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Truth I have no trouble with, it's the facts I get all screwed up.
- Farley Mowat
Collection: Facts
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Don't let the facts interfere with the truth.
- Farley Mowat
Collection: Facts
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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
Collection: Writing
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If you are going to be a big personality, you've got to have some kind of characteristic gimmick.
- Farley Mowat
Collection: Character
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After all, we fought the Yanks in 1812 and kicked them the hell out of our country - but not with blanks.
- Farley Mowat
Collection: Country
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You never know when the devil might come calling.
- Farley Mowat
Collection: Devil
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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
Collection: Son