All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
George Orwell
(1903 - 1950)
Source: Animal Farm
All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals.
Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals.
We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.
The question is not 'can they reason?' nor 'can they talk?' but, 'can they suffer?'
"Riding a horse is not a gentle hobby, to be picked up and laid down like a game of Solitaire. It is a grand passion."
Saving One Animal Will Not Save The World... But Surely, For That One Animal The World Will Change Forever!
"Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will precieve the divine mystery in things. Once you precieve it, you will begin to comprehend it better everyday. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love."
Love and care for all animals, don't kill or eat them.
My work has also given me the chance to participate in national and international advisory groups exploring some of the deeper issues about food and how to work together to deal with them. Primary topics have included the short- and long-term of pesticides and other pollutants on out food supply, sustainable agriculture, genetic engineering, sustainability of wild seafood, aquaculture, and the welfare of food-producing animals from birth through slaughter.
Animals are reliable, many full of love, true in their affections, predictable in their actions, grateful and loyal. Difficult standards for people to live up to.
Lots of people talk to animals.... Not very many listen, though.... That's the problem.
"Peace begins on your plate."
Humans - who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals - have an understandable penchant for pretending animals do not feel pain.. A sharp distinction between humans and "animals" is essential is we are to bend them to our will, wear them, eat them - without any disquieting tinges of guilt or regret.
Whatever the cause, the effect is an unusual amount of confusion on the subject of animals. For at the same time many of us seem eager to extend the circle of our moral consideration to other species, in our factory farms we’re inflicting more suffering on more animals than at any time in history. One by one science is dismantling our claims to uniqueness as a species, discovering that such things as culture, tool making, language, and even possibly self consciousness are not, as we used to think, the exclusive properties of Homo sapiens. And yet most of the animals we eat lead lives organized very much in the spirit of Descartes, who famously claimed that animals were mere machines, incapable of thought or feeling. There’s a schizoid quality to our relationship with animals today in which sentiment and brutality exist side by side. Half the dogs in America will receive Christmas presents this year, yet few of us ever pause to consider the life of a pig – an animal easily as intelligent as a dog – that becomes the Christmas ham.
We tolerate this schizophrenia because the life of a pig has moved out of view; when’s the last time you saw a pig in person? Meat comes from the grocery store, where it is cut and packaged to look as little like parts of animals as possible. (When was the last time you saw a butcher at work?) The disappearance of animals from our lives has opened a space in which the Peter Singers and the Frank Perdues of the world fair equally well.
When we were children, clouds became animals.
Now that we are adults, the vast, blue sky is a metaphor
for the infinite, upward potential of the human spirit.
When a man wants to murder a tiger, he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.
Look deep withing your soul, how can you say you love animals, yet you sanction the ultimate cruelty which can be done to any animal, their murder?
Quote from: Isonofwoman
I am not so arrogant as to presume that only my intellectual superiors can teach me. If such were the case then the teacher would learn nothing from her disciples, the parents nothing from their children, and I nothing from the animals, from whom I have learned so much.
Of all God's creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the lash; that one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat.
A home without a cat—and a well-fed, well-petted and properly revered cat—may be a perfect home, perhaps, but how can it prove its title?
If everything is perfect, language is useless. This is true for animals. If animals don't speak, it's because everything's perfect for them. If one day they start to speak, it will be because the world has lost a certain sort of perfection.
An enlightened person - by perceiving God in all - looks at a learned person, an outcast, even a cow, an elephant, or a dog with an equal eye. (See also 6.29) (5.18)
The very beginning of Genesis tells us that God created man in order to give him dominion over fish and fowl and all creatures. Of course, Genesis was written by a man, not a horse. There is no certainty that God actually did grant man dominion over other creatures. What seems more likely, in fact, is that man invented God to sanctify the dominion that he had usurped for himself over the cow and the horse. Yes, the right to kill a deer or a cow is the only thing all of mankind can agree upon, even during the bloodiest of wars.
Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances of survival for life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.
All of the elements of the comic way tend to spread to others, insinuating joy where it was previously absent. Conversation has a way of leaping among persons, as it does at parties and celebratory gatherings. Storytelling always begets storytelling. It is difficult to watch others at play without wanting to join them. This is not only a human phenomenon, for researchers have consistently noted that animals at play are often imitated by other animals. So wherever it is possible to initiate a playful activity, it will have a good chance of replicating itself through other parts of the system.
God loved the birds and invented trees. Man loved the birds and invented cages.
Charles Darwin, naturalist and author (1809-1882) The Descent of Man
Even in the worm that crawls in the earth there glows a divine spark. When you slaughter a creature, you slaughter God.
Compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind.
LIke any other animal, human beings will fight to the death when threatened or cornered, but as a species we are perhaps alone in imagining that our survival depends on such elusive properties as recognition, love, identity, honor, prestige, and wealth. Only we will feel that our very existence is endangered when our name is taken in vain, our pride is hurt, our nation threatned, our reputation impugned, our voice ignored, our loyalty betrayed. No other animal will figh t tooth and nail, not only to see that such symbolic losses are made good, but that those hwo have allegedly taken these things fro us are themselves subject to all the torment, degradation, and loss that we have suffered at their hands. This is why violators seldom admit to guilt. For they believe they were fully justified in their excesses; they were only taking back what was rightfully theirs, preserving their civilization, defending their rights, upholding their honor, and, of course, obeying orders from above.
