Ethics

"All breathing, existing, living, sentient creatures should not be slain, nor treated with violence, nor abused, nor tormented, nor driven away."

"The custom of tormenting and killing of beasts will, by degrees, harden their minds even towards men."

"At one level, this movement on behalf of oppressed farm animals is emotional […] Yet the movement is also the product of a deep intellectual ferment pioneered by the Princeton scholar Peter Singer. […] This idea popularized by Professor Singer — that we have ethical obligations that transcend our species — is one whose time appears to have come. […] What we're seeing now is an interesting moral moment: a grass-roots effort by members of one species to promote the welfare of others. […] animal rights are now firmly on the mainstream ethical agenda."

"The free movement of the moral impulse to establish justice for animals generally and the claim of their rights from mankind are hidden in a natural psychic sensibility in the deeper layers of the . In the ancient value system of humanity […] the moral sense had risen to a point of demanding justice for animals. […] Just as the democratic aspiration will reach outward through the general intellectual and moral perfection […] so will the hidden yearning to act justly towards animals emerge at the proper time."

"I cannot help anticipating the time, when men shall acknowledge the ; instead of bestowing their upon the creatures, whom, with themselves, God made, and made to be happy!—If any part of their condition is to be compassionated,—it is that they are liable to the tyranny of man."

"Though a small proportion manage to lead successful lives, [Animal Rights] theorists cannot restrict their concern to successful r-strategists. Any sentient being is morally significant from an [Animal Rights] perspective, and thus all sentient individuals born into r-strategist species must be taken into account when determining whether r-strategists are flourishing. And the facts about r-strategists’ life histories suggest that they aren’t [...] most r-strategists die very painful deaths, e.g., starvation, exposure, and being eaten by predators [...] most of them die minutes, days, or weeks after birth, and thus do not have the opportunity to experience the enjoyment associated with reaching a stage in life where one has learned to competently manage and be comfortable in one’s environment [...] these facts suggest that, at best, most r-strategists fail to live flourishing lives. At worst, they suggest that most r-strategists experience more suffering than enjoyment in their lives: that they do not even have lives worth living. Furthermore, since one of the defining characteristics of r-strategist species is that they produce far greater numbers of offspring than K-strategist species, it seems that we’re left with an even more depressing conclusion: at best, most wild animals born into the world fail to flourish, and at worst, most do not have lives worth living."

"After looking at this building there appeared a white dome on the top of a hill, to which men were coming from all quarters. When I asked about this they said that a Jogi lived there, and when the simpletons come to see him he places in their hands a handful of flour, which they put into their mouths and imitate the cry of an animal which these fools have at some time injured, in order that by this act their sins may be blotted out. I ordered them to break down that place and turn the Jogi out of it, as well as to destroy the form of an idol there was in the dome."

"If they [animals] were capable of formulating a religion, they might differ considerably as to the shape of the beneficent Creator, but they would nearly all agree that the Devil must be very like a big white man. For we have always treated our poor relations in fur and feathers as if they had no rights at all. We have not only enslaved them, and killed and eaten them, but we have made it one of our chief pleasures to take away their lives, and not infrequently we have tortured them. Our ancestors sinned in ignorance; they were taught (as I deeply regret to say one great Christian Church still teaches) that the world, with all that it contains, was made for man, and that the lower orders of creation have no claims whatever upon us. But we have no longer the excuse of saying that we do not know; we do know that organic life on this planet is all woven of one stuff, and that if we are children of our Heavenly Father, it must be true, as Christ told us, that no sparrow falls to the ground without His care. The new knowledge has revolutionised our ideas of our relations to the other living creatures who share the world with us, and it is our duty to consider seriously what this knowledge should mean for us in matters of conduct."

"So, we’re outside of a dumpster at Circle Four, and they literally just took a mother pig who is sick and not able to stand any longer, threw her in here headfirst with a pile of probably a hundred dead babies. And when we just got here, we could still hear the blood dripping from her body. And, you know, she probably died from blunt force trauma to the head. She’s covered with all sorts of disgusting feces, blood, rotten corpses. And again, this is what happens at every single pig farm in the world, because they treat these animals as if they’re just things. But they’re not things, they’re living creatures. And they deserve better than this."

"Opening the eyes, the minds, and the hearts of the American people to the evil of eating animals. I care about this issue because it goes to the core of all I believe in: justice, public health, world hunger, and environmental quality. Other people should care about this because it defines who they are. Animal rights is not so much about "them" as it is about us."

"Animals are the main victims of history, and the treatment of domesticated animals in industrial farms is perhaps the worst crime in history. The march of human progress is strewn with dead animals. (...) the fate of farm animals is not an ethical side issue. It concerns the majority of Earth’s large creatures: tens of billions of sentient beings, each with a complex world of sensations and emotions, but which live and die on an industrial production line."

"In general, the core moral and philosophical question at the heart of animal rights activism is now being seriously debated: Namely, what gives humans the right or justification to abuse, exploit, and torture non-human species? If there comes a day when some other species (broadly defined) — such as machines — surpass humans in intellect and cognitive complexity, will they have a valid moral claim to treat humans as commodities whose suffering and death can be assigned no value? The irreconcilable contradiction of lavishing love and protection on dogs and cats, while torturing and slaughtering farm animals capable of a deep emotional life and great suffering, is becoming increasingly apparent."

"The more we learn of the true nature of non-human animals, especially those with complex brains and corresponding complex social behavior, the more ethical concerns are raised regarding their use in the service of man—whether this be in entertainment, as "pets," for food, in research laboratories, or any of the other uses to which we subject them."

"Researchers find it very necessary to keep blinkers on. They don't want to admit that the animals they are working with have feelings. They don't want to admit that they might have minds and personalities because that would make it quite difficult for them to do what they do; so we find that within the lab communities there is a very strong resistance among the researchers to admitting that animals have minds, personalities and feelings."

"In what terms should we think of these beings, nonhuman yet possessing so very many human-like characteristics? How should we treat them? Surely we should treat them with the same consideration and kindness as we show to other humans; and as we recognize human rights, so too should we recognize the rights of the great apes? Yes."

"The least I can do is speak out for the hundreds of chimpanzees who, right now, sit hunched, miserable and without hope, staring out with dead eyes from their metal prisons. They cannot speak for themselves."

"You have just dined, and, however scrupulously the slaughter-house is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity, — expensive races, — race living at the expense of race."

"Our ethics and our politics assume, largely without question or serious discussion, that the division between human and 'animal' is absolute. 'Pro-life', to take just one example, is a potent political badge, associated with a gamut of ethical issues such as opposition to abortion and euthanasia. What it really means is pro-human-life. Abortion clinic bombers are not known for their veganism, nor do Roman Catholics show any particular reluctance to have their suffering pets 'put to sleep'. In the minds of many confused people, a single-celled human zygote, which has no nerves and cannot suffer, is infinitely sacred, simply because it is 'human'. No other cells enjoy this exalted status."

"The director of a zoo is entitled to "put down" a chimpanzee that is surplus to requirements, while any suggestion that he might "put down" a redundant keeper or ticket-seller would be greeted with howls of incredulous outrage. The chimpanzee is the property of the zoo. Humans are nowadays not supposed to be anybody's property, yet the rationale for discriminating against chimpanzees is seldom spelled out, and I doubt if there is a defensible rationale at all. Such is the breathtaking speciesism of our Christian-inspired attitudes, the abortion of a single human zygote (most of them are destined to be spontaneously aborted anyway) can arouse more moral solicitude and righteous indignation than the vivisection of any number of intelligent adult chimpanzees! [...] The only reason we can be comfortable with such a double standard is that the intermediates between humans and chimps are all dead."

"Many believers in animal rights and the relevance of animal welfare do not critically examine their basic assumptions [...] [T]ypically these individuals hold two conflicting views. The first view is that animal welfare counts, and that people should treat animals as decently as possible. The second view is a presumption of human non-interference with nature, as much as possible [...] [T]he two views are less compatible than is commonly supposed. If we care about the welfare and rights of individual animals, we may be led to interfere with nature whenever the costs of doing so are sufficiently low."

"Every system of law is a system of education, and, in extending legal sanction to the scientific torture of animals, the State educates the nation in a false view of the relations of man to the lower creatures, encourages selfishness and cruelty and the disregard of the rights of the weak by the strong."

"There is a healthy and an unhealthy love of animals: and the nearest definition of the difference is that the unhealthy love of animals is serious. I am quite prepared to love a rhinoceros, with reasonable precautions: he is, doubtless, a delightful father to the young rhinoceroses. But I will not promise not to laugh at a rhinoceros. . . . I will not worship an animal. That is, I will not take an animal quite seriously: and I know why. Wherever there is Animal Worship there is Human Sacrifice. That is, both symbolically and literally, a real truth of historical experience."

"I believe that animals have rights which, although different from our own, are just as inalienable. I believe animals have the right not to have pain, fear or physical deprivation inflicted upon them by us. [...] They have the right not to be brutalized in any way as food resources, for entertainment or any other purpose."

"I don't hold animals superior or even equal to humans. The whole case for behaving decently to animals rests on the fact that we are the superior species. We are the species uniquely capable of imagination, rationality and moral choice—and that is precisely why we are under the obligation to recognise and respect the rights of animals."

"Many humans look at nature from an aesthetic perspective and think in terms of biodiversity and the health of ecosystems, but forget that the animals that inhabit these ecosystems are individuals and have their own needs. Disease, starvation, predation, ostracism, and sexual frustration are endemic in so-called healthy ecosystems. The great taboo in the animal rights movement is that most suffering is due to natural causes. Any proposal for remedying this situation is bound to sound utopian, but my dream is that one day the sun will rise on Earth and all sentient creatures will greet the new day with joy."

"The US and other governments are business partners and active participants in the exploitation of animals. The US government sponsors or hires many thousands of scientists and staff to experiment on animals every year. The industry is large and has many vested supporters like the cage, equipment, food and instrument manufacturers, the animal breeders, and the journals that publish articles by vivisectors. It is unlikely that any of these business partners are interested in disturbing the status quo. There is too much money at stake."

"The entire human species gains at the expense of millions of nonhuman animal species and countless billion of animals that humans enslave, exploit, and kill. In the greatest zero-sum game of all, human advances exist in inverse relation to the massive loss of freedom and life suffered by animals. Thus, the more humans gain, the more animals lose; the greater the human comfort, the more suffering and death for animals; and growth in human population numbers bring extinction to other animals and reduces biodiversity. While helping humanity in highly uneven ways (as determined by class, state power, imperialism, systems of hierarchy, and so on), modern techno-science intensified the misery and slaughter of animals, and exacerbated the destruction of the earth. This is evident in the growing horrors of vivisection, factory farming, slaughterhouses, fur farming, and sundry systems of exploitation, which polluted and poisoned all aspects of their immediate physical surroundings, and provoked catastrophic climate change on a global scale."

"If physical force is needed to save an animal from attack, then that force is a legitimate form of what I call "extensional self defense." This principle mirrors US penal code statutes known as the "necessity defense," which can be invoked when a defendant believed that an illegal act was necessary to avoid great and imminent harm. One only needs to expand this concept slightly to cover actions that are increasingly desperate and necessary to protect animals from the total war against them."

"To my apprehension, every act by which, without prospect of preponderant good, pain is knowingly and willingly produced in any being whatsoever, is an act of cruelty; and, like other bad habits, the more the correspondent habit is indulged in, the stronger it grows, and the more frequently productive of its bad fruit. I am unable to comprehend how it should be, that to him to whom it is a matter of amusement to see a dog or a horse suffer, it should not be matter of like amusement to see a man suffer; seeing, as I do, how much more morality as well as intelligence, an adult quadruped of those and many other species has in him, than any biped has for some months after he has been brought into existence."

"The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been witholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. [...] 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 the case were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, Can they reason?, nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?"

"Certainly in the case of the treatment of animals, the scales are heavily weighted against us. Although it is true that some humans do some good for animals, much of this is merely rescuing animals from the maltreatment of other humans. At the level of the human species such benefits cannot be used to offset the harms. If there were no humans to inflict the harms, these benefits would not be necessary. Of course, humans do bestow some other benefits, such as veterinary care for their companion animals. However, the number of animals affected and the amount of good done is massively outweighed by the harm the human species does to non-human animals."

"Humans inflict untold suffering and death on many billions of animals every year, and the overwhelming majority of humans are heavily complicit."

"PETA has a proven track record of success. Each victory PETA wins for the animals is a stepping stone upon which we build a more compassionate world for all beings - and we will never give up our fight until all animals are treated with respect and kindness."

"I'm in better condition [after going vegan]. My endurance has gone up, and I haven't gotten tired at all during the whole season. … I don't think you should eat something that had a mother."

"Someone said that Capitalism will eat itself, and I think that’s like the meat industry, the meat industry itself will become dead meat and compassion will reign supreme."

"There's no vegan who is the greatest Because all you vegans are great, Just like the peace dove You symbolise love, And there is no death on your plate."

"That little, small voice in your mind and in your heart that makes you curious about being vegan is something you should listen to, because that’s the sound of your conscience making you be compassionate."

"It was my sophomore year at Yale, going through the food line for dinner, and I wanted a chicken breast, but the way they put it on my plate – all of a sudden it reminded me of my mom’s dog – and at that moment I was instantly on the outside of the food chain. I just couldn’t be a part of it. It was very personal to me in an instant, all because of a big breast of chicken that was oddly plated and slightly pink and I couldn’t do it. At first all I could think to eat was peanut butter and bread, so I put on a bunch of weight, but over the years it’s gotten a lot easier because people are much hipper to the fact that a plant based lifestyle is healthier for us. So it’s gotten so easy and so delicious to be vegan."

"So far from vegetarianism springing from the anthropomorphism of predominantly urban dwellers, as has been suggested by its more superficial critics, it and its inevitable successor veganism are increasingly being recognised as a logical, even inescapable, process, essentially relevant, essentially practical, essentially compassionate to all species."

"I've been a vegan for two years, so that's helped my already good-looking self. I think that eating healthy is important. … I'm motivating people to do something about how we are living on this planet."

"Veganism will come about as a result of the traits in humans that we are most proud of – ingenuity, intellectual honesty, progressiveness and self-reflection – while rejecting many of the traits that are most damaging – stubbornness, wilful ignorance, violence, selfishness and apathy. We are already seeing this in action, and though getting accurate population statistics is challenging, a clear theme is being revealed by polling and surveys: veganism is growing."

"People often call vegans extremists, and yet veganism is merely living by the principle that if I am against cruelty then I will do what I can to avoid perpetuating systems that cause physical and mental harm to animals. It is a clear indictment of how ingrained our state of cognitive dissonance is that we see attempts at moral consistency as signs of extremism. Is it not strange that we call those who kill dogs animal abusers, those who kill pigs normal and those who kill neither extremists? Is it not odd that someone who smashes a car window to rescue a dog on a hot day is viewed as a hero but someone who rescues a piglet suffering on a farm is a criminal?"

"I started [following a vegan diet] for health reasons. I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, and I wanted to maintain my performance on the court. Once I started I fell in love with the concept of fueling your body in the best way possible. Not only does it help me on the court, but I feel like I’m doing the right thing for me. … I literally couldn’t play tennis anymore, so it really changed my life. Because it was starting to take away what I loved, I had to make some changes, I had to change my life. Thankfully, I was able to find something that helped me get back to doing what I loved. … It changed the pace that I live at. It changed everything."

"If you look at the incidence of hypertension and diabetes and mortality in men, they actually get reduced when you get higher and higher in how much you restrict animal products."

"I have a dog who looks a lot like a pig and I would look at him and think: “You know? I can not eat pig anymore.” And besides, is my dog really all that different from a pig on a factory farm? They both have their own lives and big personalities and most importantly the same capacity to feel pain. Once I made the connection, animal suffering became something I could not ignore. So if you have ever loved a cat or a dog, or even a human, I hope you will extend your compassion to include all animals."

"Around the time I was first getting into hardcore/metal/punk and going to shows, I had a lot of friends who were vegan and vegetarian and after having a few conversations with them regarding the subject I realised I'd never really thought about things the way they did. I was never pressured into anything and I found myself doing my own research on the subject matter and after finding some cold hard facts about the meat and dairy industry which disturbed me deeply, I made the decision to go veg and then a year later vegan and I've now been vegan for eleven years with no problems whatsoever."

"V Stands for Verity, Virtue, Valor, Validity and Veganism. … Veganism is real conservation in action. It goes beyond talking about climate change and diminishment of biodiversity and actually does something to address the problems."

"Veganism denotes a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practical—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing, or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of humans, animals, and the environment."

"The good news is that our bodies thrive on a conscious plant-based diet, and that this diet is infinitely more compassionate to animals and people and more environmentally sustainable than eating animal foods."

"The contemporary vegan movement is founded on loving-kindness and mindfulness of our effects on others. It is revolutionary because it transcends and renounces the violent core of the herding culture in which we live."