#species

Animals have genes for altruism, and those genes have been selected in the evolution of many creatures because of the advantage they confer for the continuing survival of the species. ↗

— Lewis Thomas

#altruism #because #been #confer #continuing

Any species capable of producing, at this earliest, juvenile stage of its development... the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, cannot be all bad. ↗

— Lewis Thomas

#bach #bad #cannot #capable #development

As a species, taking all in all, we are still too young, too juvenile, to be trusted. We have spread across the face of the earth in just a few thousand years, no time at all as evolution clocks time, covering all livable parts of the planet, endangering other forms of life, and now threatening ourselves. ↗

— Lewis Thomas

#clocks #covering #earth #endangering #evolution

At this early stage in our evolution, now through our infancy and into our childhood and then, with luck, our growing up, what our species needs most of all, right now, is simply a future. ↗

— Lewis Thomas

#early #evolution #future #growing #growing up

Once you have become permanently startled, as I am, by the realization that we are a social species, you tend to keep an eye out for the pieces of evidence that this is, by and large, good for us. ↗

— Lewis Thomas

#become #evidence #eye #good #i

Well, I think breathing life into the Endangered Species Act, taking those wolves back into Yellowstone, restoring the salmon in the rivers of the Pacific Northwest. ↗

— Bruce Babbitt

#back #breathing #endangered #endangered species #endangered species act

I certainly look at the modern guys and think they are a different species to when we played. They are fitter and their conditioning is extraordinary. ↗

— Will Carling

#conditioning #different #extraordinary #fitter #guys

Taught to regard a part of our own Species in the most abject and contemptible Degree below us, we lose that Idea of the dignity of Man which the Hand of Nature had implanted in us, for great and useful purposes. ↗

— George Mason

#below #contemptible #degree #dignity #great

To be ethical is to endeavor to find one's proper place in the larger scheme of things rather than to seek to assert human superiority over the natural world. ↗

— Gary Steiner

#humanity #morality #speciesism #life

Dominion does not mean domination. We hold dominion over animals only because of our powerful and ubiquitous intellect. Not because we are morally superior. Not because we have a "right" to exploit those who cannot defend themselves. Let us use our brain to move toward compassion and away from cruelty, to feel empathy rather than cold indifference, to feel animals' pain in our hearts. ↗

— Marc Bekoff

#brain #feel #pain #speciesism #vegan