#welfare

There can be no question that parrots have more intellect than any other kind of bird, and it is this that makes them such favourite pets and brings upon them so many sorrows. ...Men will buy them ... and carry them off to all quarters of the native town, intending, I doubt not, to treat them kindly; but "the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel", and confinement in a solitary cell, the discipline with which we reform hardened criminals, is misery enough to a bird with an active mind, without the superadded horrors of ... life in a tin case, hung from a nail in the wall of a dark shop... Why does the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals never look into the woes of parrots? ... However happy you make her captivity, imagination will carry her at times to the green field and blue sky, and she fancies herself somewhere near the sun, heading a long file of exultant companions in swift career through the whistling air. Then she opens her mouth and rings out a wild salute to all parrots in the far world below her. ↗

— E.H. Aitken

#captivity #intelligence #parrots #imagination

Even if only one person’s respect for animals increases, then writing Talon would have been worthwhile. ↗

— Christopher Gerard

#animal-welfare #animals #animals-stories-heroism #respect

Beyond the queues, the vacancy screens listed jobs in a multitude of languages. Invariably, they were low-paid and short-term dead-ends. Nearby, people in headphones sat at a bank of machines: the blind and the illiterate force-fed with ‘opportunities’ by soothing machine voices. On the far wall, in large print, a poster declared: BEGGARS CANNOT BE CHOOSERS. ↗

— Mark Cantrell

#science-fiction #social-justice #totalitarian-system-mechanisms #unemployment #welfare

I'm sorry, my child, I just find it hard to whip up an interest in the subject. It's admirable, what you do, what she does, but to me animal-welfare people are a bit like Christians of a certain kind. Everyone is so cheerful and well-intentioned that after a while you itch to go off and do some raping and pillaging. Or to kick a cat. ↗

— J.M. Coetzee

#disgrace #kick-a-cat #rape

I think there should be better child support laws to make it easier for those single moms to support their children so they don't have to go on welfare. ↗

— Gloria Allred

#child #child support #children #easier #go

The balance of private good and general welfare is at the bottom of civilized morals; but the morals of the Heroic Age are founded on individuality, and on nothing else. ↗

— Lascelles Abercrombie

#balance #bottom #civilized #else #founded

By encouraging its citizens to violate our border, Mexico is pushing a tremendous welfare burden off of its shoulders and onto ours, while also benefiting from the significant sums of U.S. currency that these workers will eventually send back home to their families. ↗

— Spencer Bachus

#back #benefiting #border #burden #citizens

But when I see a story on welfare on television, they only show black people. ↗

— Charles Barkley

#i #i see #only #people #see

The well-being and welfare of children should always be our focus. ↗

— Todd Tiahrt

#always #children #focus #our #should

The problem of how we finance the welfare state should not obscure a separate issue: if each person thinks he has an inalienable right to welfare, no matter what happens to the world, that's not equity, it's just creating a society where you can't ask anything of people. ↗

— Jacques Delors

#anything #ask #creating #each #equity