Best 272 quotes in «animal rights quotes» category

The theory behind vegetarian eating as the highest form of purity led me to campaign tirelessly for animal rights. Many times I considered animal rights to be more important than human priorities. I didn't realize until years later that I was developing an attitude towards animals I had rejected growing up in India. Some animals were becoming sacred in my eyes. And I was placing their value well above that of human beings.

The U.S. system of justice contains laws whereby nonhuman animals have no legal standing, but are defined as “property,” as wives and enslaved Africans once were. Other animals (including mice, rats, and birds) are excluded from the legal definition of “animal” in the U.S., thereby denying these individuals whatever slight protection might be provided by U.S. animal welfare laws, and allowing science to use these sentient beings in any way researchers see fit, without fear of legal sanction. Other speciesist laws prevent animal advocates from using free speech on behalf of hunted animals, while protecting right-to-life advocates who speak out on behalf of fetuses. Institutionalized support for the systematic oppression of nonhuman animals is also evident in the recent Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, as well as in the mainstream media, both of which – unbelievably – label animal advocates as “terrorists.

The word animal is a derivative of the Greek word anima, which also means soul.

Vegans avoid animal products because we oppose any use of animals, regardless of how small- or large-scale, but as we live in a non-vegan world we have to accept that some of those products are unavoidable at this point in time.

This downward spiral of major politics is a slap in the face, but it’s reality. Now we just have to fight back.” -Shenita Etwaroo

Thus far, our responsibility for how we treat chickens and allow them to be treated in our culture is dismissed with blistering rhetoric designed to silence objection: “How the hell can you compare the feelings of a hen with those of a human being?” One answer is, by looking at her. It does not take special insight or credentials to see that a hen confined in a battery cage is suffering, or to imagine what her feelings must be compared with those of a hen ranging outside in the grass and sunlight. We are told that we humans are capable of knowing just about anything that we want to know—except, ironically, what it feels like to be one of our victims. We are told we are being “emotional” if we care about a chicken and grieve over a chicken’s plight. However, it is not “emotion” that is really under attack, but the vicarious emotions of pity, sympathy, compassion, sorrow, and indignity on behalf of the victim, a fellow creature—emotions that undermine business as usual. By contrast, such “manly” emotions as patriotism, pride, conquest, and mastery are encouraged.

To be full of being is to live as a body-soul. One name for the experience of full being is joy.

Violence takes on many forms, sadly violence is such an everyday part of our lives that we have mostly become oblivious to it. It goes on behind closed doors, far away from our vision. Screams that go unheard by the masses. Yet the butchered remains of miserable lives land with a sizzle on our dinner plates, and are rarely fully recognised for what they really are.

Time will come and riding horses will be seen by the whole society as a severe animal rights violation!

To protest about bullfighting in Spain, the eating of dogs in South Korea, or the slaughter of baby seals in Canada while continuing to eat eggs from hens who have spent their lives crammed into cages, or veal from calves who have been deprived of their mothers, their proper diet, and the freedom to lie down with their legs extended, is like denouncing apartheid in South Africa while asking your neighbors not to sell their houses to blacks.

Vegan is just pure love. Love for animals, love for the planet, and love for yourself.

We don’t make a distinction between factory slavery and humane slavery or cruel genocide and painless genocide. We, rightly so, condemn the entire institution.

We, animal and human, come to this time and space to have an experience embedded with our own divine purpose.

We are the collateral damage of carnism; we pay for it with our health, our environment, and our taxes - $7.64 billion a year, to be exact.

We generally accept that it's natural for carnivorous wild animals to kill other animals in order to live. But people don't often think (or even know) about the extraordinary and unnatural suffering that humans inflict on the animals that we freely harvest for food, with the help of modern high technology and the animal food sciences.

We have advanced from canoes to galleys to steamships to space shuttles - but nobody knows where we’re going. We are more powerful than ever before, but have very little idea what to do with all that power. Worse still, humans seem to be more irresponsible than ever. Self-made gods with only the laws of physics to keep us company, we are accountable to no one. We are consequently wreaking havoc on our fellow animals and on the surrounding ecosystem, seeking little more than our own concord and amusement, yet never-ending satisfaction. Is there anymore more dangerous than dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who don’t know what they want?

We don't live in a world of perfect non-violent beauty. If we don't do the trials on animal specimens first, would you rather give yourself or a relative of yours up for experimentation! Some may say, why don't we avoid experimentation on live specimens all together - to them I say, modern medicine is not magic to work without errors - and hard and cruel as it may sound, a live animal specimen is expendable, but not a live human being. You may say, that's not fair - and indeed, it is in no way fair, but that's the reality. The only fairer alternative is to let humans suffer and die from diseases, like they used to, until about a few centuries ago.

We have the power to build a new consensus, which rejects killing as a method for achieving results. And we can look forward to a time when the wholesale slaughter of animals in shelters is viewed as a cruel aberration of the past. We have a choice.

We have to speak up on behalf of those who cannot speak for themselves.

We know we cannot be kind to animals until we stop exploiting them -- exploiting animals in the name of science, exploiting animals in the name of sport, exploiting animals in the name of fashion, and yes, exploiting animals in the name of food.

We should not need to have a "Save an Animal Day", Save from what?, It is in fact "Save from who". It is Human Kindness, Compassion and Caring that so desperately needs to be saved.

We look at the world through our own eyes, naturally. But by looking from the inside out, we see an inside-out world. This book takes the perspective of the world outside us—a world in which humans are not the measure of all things, a human race among other races. ...In our estrangement from nature we have severed our sense of the community of life and lost touch with the experience of other animals. ...understanding the human animal becomes easier in context, seeing our human thread woven into the living web among the strands of so many others.

We need to protect the defenders of nature, environmentalists, Animal Rights and Human Rights activists. It's a call for all humans to show courage and solidarity.

We think of dogs as being more like people than pigs; but pigs are highly intelligent animals and if we kept pigs as pets and reared dogs for food, we would probably reverse our order of preference. Are we turning persons into bacon?

We use horses as our slaves; we chain dogs; we steal eggs from the chickens, honey from the bees; we make wallets out of crocodiles; we imprison the birds; we torture the bulls in the arenas; we whip the lions and beat the tigers in the circuses! What are we? Definitely not ethical creatures!

We would all do well to remember that the food chain is more like a network, and everything within that network deserves respect.” -Shenita Etwaroo

What we see in the world around us is just a reflection of what is inside of us.

What's with all the cheering over the apocalypse, anyway? Oh, yay, we get to kill poor helpless humans." "The excitement over the apocalypse had nothing to do with humans." "Could have fooled me." "Humans are incidental." "Killing and destroying an entire species is incidental?" I can't help but sound like I'm accusing him (Raffe), even though I know he wasn't part of the plan to wipe us out. Or at least, I think he wasn't personally involved, but I don't really know that, do I? "Your people have been doing it to all kinds of species." "That's not the same." "Why not?

What we need most is to realize that human beings are fantastic resources for change.” -Shenita Etwaroo

Whenever we encounter wild animals in nature, we must only ever show kindness and compassion.

Whenever and wherever men have engaged in the mindless slaughter of animals (including other men), they have often attempted to justify their acts by attributing the most vicious or revolting qualities to those they would destroy; and the less reason there is for the slaughter, the greater the campaign for vilification.

Who knows what the long-term effects of saving rescue dogs are and the healing lessons and love they bring to Earth? Each one of us has the capacity to influence hundreds - even thousands of people or animals through the way we live our lives.

When you're on the path to do what's right, you're never alone.

Who are we to say dogs and cats have more rights than cows and pigs. They're all conscious. They feel the same. They hurt the same. God help us understand!

Who’s gonna bring the wild animals some hope? If we don’t love them the way they are..

Why do human egos seem so threatened by the thought that other animals think and feel? Is it because acknowledging the mind of another makes it harder to abuse them?

Willkommen in einem kurzen Leben, das beendet werden wird, von Leuten, die dich verzehren werden, danach ausscheiden, ohne dich zu fragen. Sie werden sich nicht erkundigen, ob du vielleicht depressiv bist, in deinem Scheißstall, weil es zu dunkel ist und zu eng, und ob du darum sterben und gefressen werden willst. Sie verfügen über dich, weil sie es so geschrieben haben, in ihren Märchenbüchern, damit sie sagen können: Es steht geschrieben, dass das Tier dem Menschen zu dienen habe und die Frau dem Mann, und das haben sich Männer ausgedacht, die gerne Fleisch fressen und Frauen prügeln, weil es ihnen hilft, mit diesem unwürdigen Leben zurechtzukommen, wo sie doch am Ende in die Hosen machen, da ist es doch ein Moment der Größe, ein Tier töten und das Bein auf seine Brust stellen.

Women and other animals are exploited for their reproductive abilities, and both are devalued as they age and wear out – when they are no longer able to reproduce.

Writer Brigid Brophy exposes [their motives] with great precision: "Whenever people say 'We mustn't be sentimental,' you can take it they are about to do something cruel. And if they add 'We must be realistic,' they mean they are going to make money out of it. These slogans have a long history. After being used to justify slave traders, ruthless industrialists, and contractors who had found that the most economically 'realistic' method of cleaning a chimney was to force a small child to climb it, they have now been passed on, like an heirloom, to the factory farmers. 'We mustn't be sentimental' tries to persuade us that factory farming isn't, in fact, cruel. It implies that the whole problem had been invented by our sloppy imaginations.

You do not need to change people. Simply pull back the curtain obscuring their view of the truth and let them stare. Common sense, compassion and kindness will take it from there.

You humans drink our milk and eat the eggs of the chickens and the ducks. Isn't that enough for you? Isn't it enough that we give you our children and what's meant for our children? And if not, when is it enough? All you humans do is take, take, take from the earth and its beautiful creatures, and what do you give back? Nothing. I know humans consider it a grave insult to be called an animal. Well, I would never give a human the fine distinction of being called an animal, because an animal may kill to live but an animal never lives to kill. Humans have to earn the right to be called animals again.

You kill life and call it an act of religion. Then what is irreligion?

Your perception of meat being nice is blurred by the likely fact that you are excluded from participating in, or even witnessing the untimely mortal demise of the animals you gluttonously devour.

You took a seal club and threw it in the water." Watson's response: "Well holy shit. The jerk was about to bash in the brains of a baby seal, for Christ's sake, I was not going to stand there and watch it.

A human being has been given an intellect to make choices, and we know there are other food sources that do not require the killing of a creature that would protest being killed.

Getting arrested is fun.

Awareness is bad for the meat business. Conscience is bad for the meat business. Sensitivity to life is bad for the meat business. DENIAL, however, the meat business finds indispensable.

Cruelty must be whitewashed by a moral excuse, and pretense of reluctance.

Animals for the most part just need to be left alone.

Eating meat is primitive, barbaric, and arrogant.