#avery

Veganism is an act of nonviolent defiance. It is our statement that we reject the notion that animals are things and that we regard sentient nonhumans as moral persons with the fundamental moral right not to be treated as the property or resources of humans. ↗

— Gary L. Francione

#abolitionist #ahimsa #animals #education #exploitation

To say that a being who is sentient has no interest in continuing to live is like saying that a being with eyes has no interest in continuing to see. Death—however “humane”—is a harm for humans and nonhumans alike. ↗

— Gary L. Francione

#abolitionist #ahimsa #animals #education #exploitation

Speciesism is morally objectionable because, like racism, sexism, and heterosexism, it links personhood with an irrelevant criterion. Those who reject speciesism are committed to rejecting racism, sexism, heterosexism, and other forms of discrimination as well. ↗

— Gary L. Francione

#abolitionist #ahimsa #animals #education #exploitation

In the nineteenth century, the central moral challenge was slavery. In the twentieth century, it was the battle against totalitarianism. We believe that in this century the paramount moral challenge will be the struggle for gender equality around the world. ↗

— Nicholas D. Kristof

#morality #slavery #women #equality

If men were equal in America, all these Poles and English and Czechs and blacks, then they were equal everywhere, and there was really no such thing as foreigner; there were only free men and slaves. ↗

— Michael Shaara

#foreigners #patriotism #slavery #equality

We believed that it was most desirable that the North should win, we believed in the principle that the Union is indissoluable, we, or many of us at least, also believed that the conflict was inevitable, and that slavery had lasted long enough. But we equally believed that those who stood against us held just as sacred conviction that were the opposite of ours, and we respected them as every men with a heart must respect those who give all for their belief. ↗

— Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

#slavery #war #equality

In Will's experience, when someone who ought to be afraid wasn't, the reason was rarely bravery. Usually it meant that they knew something you didn't. ↗

— Cassandra Clare

#will-herondale #experience

I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight, I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice. ↗

— Theodore Parker

#atheism #barack-obama #justice #martin-luther-king-jr #morality

In trying to make the slave experience intimate, I hoped the sense of things being both under control and out of control would be persuasive throughout; that the order and quietitude of every day life would be violently disrupted by the chaos of the needy dead; that the herculean effort to forget would be threatened by memory desperate to stay alive. To render enslavement as a personal experience, language must first get out of the way. ↗

— Toni Morrison

#experience

But nothing will persuade me that the mere fact of being in a place is enough in itself to justify the effort of getting out of bed to become a tourist, or even a traveller. I don't have the slightest wish to be intrepid. I don't want to prove myself to myself or anyone else. I don't care if no one thinks me brave or hardy. I have no concern at all that I did not have whatever it is I should have had to take a dive out of a plane or off a building. None of that matters to me in the least. ↗

— Jenny Diski

#bravery #discretion #experiences #tourism #travel