#animal

If you believe that humans are animals, there can be no such thing as the history of humanity, only the lives of particular humans. If we speak of the history of the species at all, it is only to signify the unknowable sum of these lives. As with other animals, some lives are happy, others wretched. None has a meaning that lies beyond itself. ↗

— John Gray

#humanity #humans #life #man #straw-dogs

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

— T. Casey Brennan

#vegan #veganism #life

Long after the traces of the human animal have disappeared, many of the species it is bent on destroying will still be around, along with others that have yet to spring up. The Earth will forget mankind. The play of life will go on. ↗

— John Gray

#extinction #humans #the-coast-opposite-of-humanity #unsaved #life

Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened. ↗

— Anatole France

#love #pets #love

Besides love and sympathy, animals exhibit other qualities connected with the social instincts which in us would be called moral. ↗

— Charles Darwin

#love #morality #sympathy #love

Often, vegan advocates assume that a person's defensiveness is the result of selfishness or apathy, when in fact it is much more likely the result of systematic and intensive social conditioning. ↗

— Melanie Joy

#animal-advocates #animals #apathy #defensiveness #social-condition

Cats are there to be indulged. That's their function: to receive the love we never fully gave our parents. Not like dogs. Dogs are there to give us the love and devotion our children will never fully give us. ↗

— Alex Shakar

#love

Some people say they love animals and yet harm them nonetheless; I'm glad those people don't love me. ↗

— Marc Bekoff

#consistency #ethics #love

Love the animals. God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled. Don't trouble it, don't harass them, don't deprive them of their happiness, don't work against God's intent. ↗

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#love #love

The path of the norm is the path of least resistance; it is the route we take when we're on auto-pilot and don't even realize we're following a course of action that we haven't consciously chosen. Most people who eat meat have no idea that they're behaving in accordance with the tenets of a system that has defined many of their values, preferences, and behaviors. What they call 'free choice' is, in fact, the result of a narrowly obstructed set of options that have been chosen for them. They don't realize, for instance, that they have been taught to value human life so far above certain forms of nonhuman life that it seems appropriate for their taste preferences to supersede other species' preference for survival. ↗

— Melanie Joy

#carnism #meat #norms #veganism #life