"For it must be remembered that there was a time when no set of beings tyrannized and terrorized the planet as do the reigning cutthroats to-day. Estimate finally, if you can, and history will help you, the amount of bloodshed and war and woe necessary to develop those unfinished Troglodytes into beings clever enough to write history and invent gin and originate the hope of heaven. Compute these totalities, and you will know what it has cost to teach you and me and the rest to talk politics and wax sarcastic with our fore limbs in the air. Question: If it has required two or three millions of species struggling for life twenty millions of years to produce a being barely above derision, how long will it take and how many millions of species to evolve a being as nearly divine as the average man thinks he is?"
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Activists from the United StatesAtheists from the United StatesPhilosophers from the United StatesAnimal rights activistsAnti-vivisectionists
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
pp. 191–192
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/J._Howard_Moore
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
J. Howard Moore
John Howard Moore (December 4, 1862 – June 17, 1916) was an American zoologist, philosopher, educator and social reformer. He advocated for the ethical consideration and treatment of animals and authored several articles, books, essays and pamphlets on topics including education, ethics, evolutionary biology, humanitarianism, utilitarianism and vegetarianism. He is best known for his work The Universal Kinship (1906), which advocated for a secular sentiocentric philosophy he called the doctrine
292 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by J. Howard Moore →
Related Quotes
"Well may we be dazed by the horrific metamorphosis. Dark days are upon us. The pendulum of civilization trembles, as …"
"We preach the Golden Rule with an enthusiasm that is well-nigh vehement, and then freckle the globe with huge murder-…"
"There is nothing more frightful to the philosopher than the unconscious tragedies of human reason. Men are somnambuli…"
"It is simply monstrous, this horrible savagery and somnambulism in which we grope. It is the climax of mundane infamy…"
"I sit here tonight in this great city and think back along the years. Life is so full and so different now – full of …"
"Religion is a strictly human infirmity. No other animal has it. It originated far back in the past, when the human wo…"
"It is a crime to start a child learning to read and write as soon as it is out of the cradle. We should get ideas bef…"
"I came to the conclusion out there on the Kansas prairies that the animals were not treated right by human beings. I …"
"Much of the vagueness of the human mind is due to the fact that the mind is largely composed of material derived seco…"
"I have just finished your little book on 'The Logic of Vegetarianism.' It is the best thing on this subject in existe…"