Best 272 quotes in «animal rights quotes» category

One day, soon, the oddness of the seemingly universal belief of human in other animals’ slavery will be palpable. Then, we will be worthier of sharing this planet with them because we will have discovered our souls.” -Shenita Etwaroo

One of my beliefs when it comes to animals is that they should be adored and respected as citizens of this earth. They should have the right to their own families, their own life and their own freedom.” -Shenita Etwaroo

One's interest or need does not annul other's right.

Opposition to animal research ranges considerably in degree. “Minimalists” tolerate animal research under certain conditions. They accept some kinds of research but wish to prohibit others depending on the probable value of the research, the amount of distress to the animal, and the type of animal. (Few people have serious qualms about hurting an insect, for example.) They favor firm regulations on research. The “abolitionists” take a more extreme position and see no room for compromise. Abolitionists maintain that all animals have the same rights as humans. They regard killing an animal as murder, whether the intention is to eat it, use its fur, or gain scientific knowledge. Keeping an animal (presumably even a pet) in a cage is, in their view, slavery. Because animals cannot give informed consent to research, abolitionists insist it is wrong to use them in any way, regardless of the circumstances. According to one opponent of animal research, “We have no moral option but to bring this research to a halt. Completely. . . . We will not be satisfied until every cage is empty” (Regan, 1986, pp. 39–40). Advocates of this position sometimes claim that most animal research is painful and that it never leads to important results. However, for a true abolitionist, neither of those points really matters. Their moral imperative is that people have no right to use animals, even if the research is useful and even if it is painless. The disagreement between abolitionists and animal researchers is a dispute between two ethical positions: “Never knowingly harm an innocent” and “Sometimes a little harm leads to a greater good.” On the one hand, permitting research has the undeniable consequence of inflicting pain or distress. On the other hand, banning the use of animals for human purposes means a great setback in medical research as well as the end of animal-to-human transplants (e.g., using pig heart valves to help people with heart diseases) (Figure 1.12).

Our treatment of animals and our attitude toward them are crucial not only to any pretensions we have to ethical behavior but the humankind's intellectual and moral evolution. Which is how the human animal is meant to evolve, isn't it?

Out there is South Dakota," Kitch had said, "Matt said they treated Fern like some kind of animal.

People always say they have a deer heads on their walls because it’s such a beautiful animal. There you go! I have photographs of my mother because I think she’s attractive.” -Shenita Etwaroo

People care about animals. I believe that. They just don’t want to know or to pay. A fourth of all chickens have stress fractures. It’s wrong. They’re packed body to body, and can’t escape their waste, and never see the sun. Their nails grow around the bars of their cages. It’s wrong. They feel their slaughters. It’s wrong, and people know it’s wrong. They don’t have to be convinced. They just have to act differently. I’m not better than anyone, and I’m not trying to convince people to live by my standards of what’s right. I’m trying to convince them to live by their own.

People who do not love animals, I find, are more often than not, beasts of a special kind. At the very least, deep within, to their fellow human beings too they're equally unkind.

People will say we're being a little bit anthropomorphic?' I remembered Brendan's use of the word - 'human-like'. 'Anyone who doesn't believe that animals are aware that they have family and friends, and care about them, must also be a paid-up member of the Flat Earth Society, or still think the sun revolves around the earth,' replied Dylan disdainfully. 'I mean, how switched off can you be? How can anyone still believe animals don't have emotions? They're alive and emotions are a response to life. I've seen warthogs that are more intelligent and more responsible than some people I know. Not to say better parents.

Rabbits will always have a special place in my heart. They are often discredited as being good pets because they don’t ‘do anything’—ask any rabbit owner and watch how they laugh!” -Shenita Etwaroo

Peradventure a new group of beings landed on planet earth, and these beings believe they are superior over us, humans… just like most of you exercise superiority over other animals, would you ever allow such beings right over you just like you assume rights over other animals?” -Shenita Etwaroo

Places of confinement providing free food and medical care are called prisons.

Poor animals, how jealously they guard their bodies, for to us is merely an evening’s meal, but to them is life itself.

Remember at all time that just as your life is precious to you, so too is all life precious to those living one.

Riding an elephant isn't as exotic or special as it looks on websites about jungles.

Roaches should never trust humans. We’re all doomed.

Si chinò per accarezzarmi. Fece scorrere la mano lungo la schiena e poi sotto al mento. «Ogni cane dovrebbe iniziare la giornata con una bella grattatina sotto il mento» dichiarò. Spostò la mano sopra la testa. «Posso accarezzarti qui?» mi chiese. «Sulla testa? So che non piace a tutti i cani». Rimasi immobile, e chiusi gli occhi. «Socchiudi gli occhi!» esclamò Susan. «Ottimo segno».

Sadly, we live in a world where if you do good things, there are no financial rewards. If you poison the earth, there is a fortune to be made.

She wasn't soft, but she never saw the sense of a living thing dying such a cruel death just for some woman's vanity. Still, she thought, a fur coat when the wind blew down off the Tenmile Range would feel mighty good. Maybe they made fur coats out of foxes that died of old age.

Sie töten so gerne Tiere, weil es unter Strafe steht, Menschen umzubringen, und weil sie doch so gerne auslöschen, am liebsten sich. Wie die Augen blind werden, im Augenblick des Übergangs von einem beseelten Lebewesen zu einem Fleisch. Seele. Das Wort für den Herzschlag.

Some animal rights activists are demanding vegetarianism, even veganism now, or nothing. But since only 4 or 5 percent of Americans claim to be vegetarians, 'nothing' is the far more likely outcome. I ask these activists to weigh the horrors of Bladen County's industrial farms and the Tar Heel slaughterhouse against the consequences of doing nothing to alleviate the hour-to-hour sufferings of its victims. Is not a life lived off the factory farm and a death humanely inflicted superior to the terrible lives we know they lead and the horrible deaths we know they suffer in Bladen County today?

Societies that lack respect for animals eventually lose respect for human beings.

Some folks insist that believing in animal rights is like a religion. But religion asks followers to believe in things nobody can see, while animal rights advocates ask followers to see things nobody can believe.

The animals themselves are incapable of demanding their own liberation, or of protesting against their condition with votes, demonstrations, or bombs. Human beings have the power to continue to oppress other species forever, or until we make this planet unsuitable for living beings. Will our tyranny continue, proving that we really are the selfish tyrants that the most cynical of poets and philosophers have always said we are? Or will we rise to the challenge and prove our capacity for genuine altruism by ending our ruthless exploitation of the species in our power, not because we are forced to do so by rebels or terrorists, but because we recognize that our position is morally indefensible? The way in which we answer this question depends on the way in which each one of us, individually, answers it.

Special needs animals need special homes with special hearts in order to take care of them. These animals deserve forever homes, too. It’s so disheartening, how often I see posts for adoptions for a dog or cat that have aged twelve years without ever finding their family because of some perceived defect. Shenita Etwaroo

Su mundo de humanos standard: Una burbuja donde nada sino lo humano es oído o visto realmente, donde nada más que lo humano importa y lo demás es paisaje, mercancía o comida.

The Americans were understandably on hair triggers. There was a good reason for all of this security. For despite TV images of quick victory, much of Baghdad certainly had not fallen and firefights with die-hard Ba’athists loyal to Saddam Hussein were raging all over the city.

The eternal being which, as it lives in us, also lives in every animal ... the animal is in essence absolutely the same thing that we are. - On Religion

The choice-obsessed modern West is probably more accommodating to individuals who choose to eat differently than any other culture has ever been, but ironically, the utterly unselective omnivore - “I’m easy; I’ll eat anything” - can appear more socially sensitive than the individual who tries to eat in a way that is good for society. Food choices are determined by many factors, but reason (even consciousness) is not generally high on the list.

The cognitive abilities of chimpanzees force us, I think, to raise searching questions about the boundaries of the community of beings to which special ethical considerations are due.

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?

The day we become silent about the things that matter is the moment our lives begin to end.” -Shenita Etwaroo

The Easter egg which was not found contained a letter from the hen who laid it, saying "Fuck your kids, What about mine?

The existential fact is, we do need to use animals compromising their right to live, if we are to sustain health and welfare in human life, but we can reduce that consumption to a great extent. For example, you can avoid clothing that are made by slaughtering animals. We need animals for food, because vegan diet is not necessarily healthy, as I said earlier, but the same is not true for clothing. We do use animals for clothing, but we don't need to. We could do just fine with non-animal and non-cruel clothing and other apparels.

The fact that rescue animals exist is a blaring siren signal that all pet adoptions should be of rescue animals. Until that moniker no longer exists, there is no reason whatsoever to get any other kind of animal.” -Shenita Etwaroo

The best friend a man can have is an animal—they are so agreeable, they don’t hate on you and they embrace you without passing any criticism.” -Shenita Etwaroo

The fact that things never end well for the rest of the creatures in this world does not seem to bother the least those who think that there is a divine plan. - On the Divine Plan

The future of wildlife and the habitat that they depend on is being destroyed. It is time to make nature and all the beauty living within it our priority.

The future of wildlife and the habitat that they depend on is in being destroyed. It is time to make nature and all the beauty living within it our priority.

The heart of a person can be judged through the way he treats animals.” -Shenita Etwaroo

The greatest achievement ever accomplished in this universe is life on earth. Let's take care of it.

The idiots who say they're having a great day at the zoo must know that the animals there are just having a terrible time every day!

The horse and the cow, the rabbit and the cat, the deer and the hare, the pheasant and the lark, please us better as friends than as meat.

The indifference, callousness, and contempt that so many people exhibit toward animals is evil first because it results in great suffering towards animals, and second because it results in an incalculably great impoverishment of human spirit.

The question is not, "Can they reason?" nor, "Can they talk?" but "Can they suffer?

The persistence of the story of animal consent into the contemporary era tells of a human appreciation of the stakes, and a desire to do the right thing.

The power brokers of factory farming know that their business model depends on consumers not being able to see (or hear about) what they do.

The most striking quality that humans and animals have in common is the capacity to experience suffering.

There is no honour in exploiting people and there is also no honour in exploiting animals! Using people or using animals for our own interests is nothing but an arrogant immorality!