#animal

If intelligence and capability are not criteria for the possession of rights, why would animals -who have the capacity to feel fear and pain- be excluded from our moral consideration? ↗

— Jack Norris

#kind #life #philosophy #vegan #vegetarian

Humans are the only animals that have children on purpose, keep in touch (or don't), care about birthdays, waste and lose time, brush their teeth, feel nostalgia, scrub stains, have religions and political parties and laws, wear keepsakes, apologize years after an offense, whisper, fear themselves, interpret dreams, hide their genitalia, shave, bury time capsules, and can choose not to eat something for reasons of conscience. The justifications for eating animals and for not eating them are often identical: we are not them. ↗

— Jonathan Safran Foer

#ethics #humans #vegetarianism #dreams

In order to be a teacher you've got to be a student first ↗

— Gary L. Francione

#education #learn #reality #teach #teacher

You cannot live a nonviolent life as long as you are consuming violence. Please consider going vegan. ↗

— Gary L. Francione

#abolitionist #ahimsa #animals #education #exploitation

Not responding is a response - we are equally responsible for what we don't do. ↗

— Jonathan Safran Foer

#food-safety #non-fiction #vegetarinism #equality

I made the choice to be vegan because I will not eat (or wear, or use) anything that could have an emotional response to its death or captivity. I can well imagine what that must feel like for our non-human friends - the fear, the terror, the pain - and I will not cause such suffering to a fellow living being. ↗

— Rai Aren

#animals #compassion #equality #ethical-vegan #kindness

Not responding is a response--we are equally responsible for what we don't do. In the case of animal slaughter, to throw your hands in the air is to wrap your fingers around a knife handle. ↗

— Jonathan Safran Foer

#eating #meat #responsibility #slaughter #equality

Know that the same spark of life that is within you, is within all of our animal friends, the desire to live is the same within all of us... ↗

— Rai Aren

#compassion #equality #kindness #life #life-affirming

The day may come when the rest of animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may one day come to be recognized that the number of legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day or a week or even a month old. But suppose they were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? ↗

— Jeremy Bentham

#jeremy-bentham #equality

But those who are incapable of pitying animals are, as a matter of fact, incapable of pitying men. A physician who would cut a living rabbit in pieces -- laying bare the nerves, denuding them with knives, pulling them out with forceps -- would not hesitate to try experiments with men and women for the gratification of his curiosity. ↗

— Robert Ingersoll

#compassion #vivisection #experience