#species

Homo sapiens is the species that invents symbols in which to invest passion and authority, then forgets that symbols are inventions. ↗

— Joyce Carol Oates

#forgets #homo #homo sapiens #inventions #invents

Certainly it is wrong to be cruel to animals and the destruction of a whole species can be a great evil. The capacity for feelings of pleasure and pain and for the form of life of which animals are capable clearly impose duties of compassion and humanity in their case. ↗

— John Rawls

#capacity #case #certainly #clearly #compassion

Species conversation is beyond a doubt an issue that truly matters to the American public. ↗

— Ian Somerhalder

#american public #beyond #conversation #doubt #issue

Just as we reject racism, sexism, ageism, and heterosexism, we reject speciesism. The species of a sentient being is no more reason to deny the protection of this basic right than race, sex, age, or sexual orientation is a reason to deny membership in the human moral community to other humans. ↗

— Gary L. Francione

#ageism #basic #being #community #deny

With the exception of certain rodents, no other vertebrate except Homo sapiens habitually destroys members of his own species. ↗

— Anthony Storr

#destroys #except #exception #habitually #his

THE TRUTH OF THE VERY SMALL When he is born, a baby's head is filled with the knowledge of space. The circumference of his skull is as infinite as the twirlings of the universe. His eyes look out with the blur of eyes which see for all species. He has remembered his own nature from past patterns. Now his heart beats through rock, sky, oceans. He feels the silence and the sound all around the world beneath his skin. We all hold somewhere deep within us the truth we accepted in innocence. The seas, the forests, the soil, the atmosphere, are all vital parts of an ongoing system. By harming any part of it we must ultimately harm ourselves. It is that simple. ↗

— Jay Woodman

#eyes #harm #head #heart #innocence

Workable solutions for Earth are urgently needed. Saving seals and tigers, or fighting yet another oil pipeline through a wilderness area, while laudable, is merely shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic. ↗

— Lawrence Anthony

#endangered-species #environmentalism #science #science

Crime is a fact of the human species, a fact of that species alone, but it is above all the secret aspect, impenetrable and hidden. Crime hides, and by far the most terrifying things are those which elude us. ↗

— Georges Bataille

#alone #aspect #crime #elude #fact

It is a pleasant thing to reflect upon, and furnishes a complete answer to those who contend for the gradual degeneration of the human species, that every baby born into the world is a finer one than the last. ↗

— Charles Dickens

#baby #born #complete #contend #degeneration

We don't protect our young, and we tolerate predators of our own species. ↗

— Andrew Vachss

#own #predators #protect #species #tolerate