Animal Rights Activists Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Animal Rights Activists. Here they are! All 66 of them:

Hide yourself in God, so when a man wants to find you he will have to go there first.
Shannon L. Alder
Real women fight for something, other than their own emotions.
Shannon L. Alder
The ship was sinking---and sinking fast. The captain told the passengers and crew, "We've got to get the lifeboats in the water right away." But the crew said, "First we have to end capitalist oppression of the working class. Then we'll take care of the lifeboats." Then the women said, "First we want equal pay for equal work. The lifeboats can wait." The racial minorities said, "First we need to end racial discrimination. Then seating in the lifeboats will be allotted fairly." The captain said, "These are all important issues, but they won't matter a damn if we don't survive. We've got to lower the lifeboats right away!" But the religionists said, "First we need to bring prayer back into the classroom. This is more important than lifeboats." Then the pro-life contingent said, "First we must outlaw abortion. Fetuses have just as much right to be in those lifeboats as anyone else." The right-to-choose contingent said, "First acknowledge our right to abortion, then we'll help with the lifeboats." The socialists said, "First we must redistribute the wealth. Once that's done everyone will work equally hard at lowering the lifeboats." The animal-rights activists said, "First we must end the use of animals in medical experiments. We can't let this be subordinated to lowering the lifeboats." Finally the ship sank, and because none of the lifeboats had been lowered, everyone drowned. The last thought of more than one of them was, "I never dreamed that solving humanity's problems would take so long---or that the ship would sink so SUDDENLY.
Daniel Quinn
Some animal rights activists are demanding vegetarianism, even veganism now, or nothing. But since only 4 or 5 percent of Americans claim to be vegetarians, 'nothing' is the far more likely outcome. I ask these activists to weigh the horrors of Bladen County's industrial farms and the Tar Heel slaughterhouse against the consequences of doing nothing to alleviate the hour-to-hour sufferings of its victims. Is not a life lived off the factory farm and a death humanely inflicted superior to the terrible lives we know they lead and the horrible deaths we know they suffer in Bladen County today?
Steven M. Wise (An American Trilogy: Death, Slavery, and Dominion on the Banks of the Cape Fear River)
A big reason for optimism about the end of animal farming is that it doesn't have to be the end of meat.
Jacy Reese Anthis (The End of Animal Farming: How Scientists, Entrepreneurs, and Activists Are Building an Animal-Free Food System)
… the animal rights activist Erwin Kessler who like Brigitte Bardot cannot abide the Muslims practicing to butcher the lambs like Dracula, that is, slowly drawing their blood. For criticizing it, he got two months in prison.
Oriana Fallaci (The Force of Reason)
Animal rights activists are actually abolitionists. They do not require larger and more spacious cages, but empty cages.
Maja Vučković (Da složimo kockice: Zbornik radova sa 1. kongresa o zaštiti životinja)
If you want to see philosophy in action, pay a visit to a robo-rat laboratory. A robo-rat is a run-ofthe-mill rat with a twist: scientists have implanted electrodes into the sensory and reward areas in the rat’s brain. This enables the scientists to manoeuvre the rat by remote control. After short training sessions, researchers have managed not only to make the rats turn left or right, but also to climb ladders, sniff around garbage piles, and do things that rats normally dislike, such as jumping from great heights. Armies and corporations show keen interest in the robo-rats, hoping they could prove useful in many tasks and situations. For example, robo-rats could help detect survivors trapped under collapsed buildings, locate bombs and booby traps, and map underground tunnels and caves. Animal-welfare activists have voiced concern about the suffering such experiments inflict on the rats. Professor Sanjiv Talwar of the State University of New York, one of the leading robo-rat researchers, has dismissed these concerns, arguing that the rats actually enjoy the experiments. After all, explains Talwar, the rats ‘work for pleasure’ and when the electrodes stimulate the reward centre in their brain, ‘the rat feels Nirvana’. To the best of our understanding, the rat doesn’t feel that somebody else controls her, and she doesn’t feel that she is being coerced to do something against her will. When Professor Talwar presses the remote control, the rat wants to move to the left, which is why she moves to the left. When the professor presses another switch, the rat wants to climb a ladder, which is why she climbs the ladder. After all, the rat’s desires are nothing but a pattern of firing neurons. What does it matter whether the neurons are firing because they are stimulated by other neurons, or because they are stimulated by transplanted electrodes connected to Professor Talwar’s remote control? If you asked the rat about it, she might well have told you, ‘Sure I have free will! Look, I want to turn left – and I turn left. I want to climb a ladder – and I climb a ladder. Doesn’t that prove that I have free will?
Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow)
We middles see the world in shades of grey rather than in the clear blacks and whites of committed animal activists and their equally vociferous opponents
Hal Herzog (Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It's So Hard to Think Straight About Animals)
If we accept a mere tenth of what animal-rights activists are claiming, then modern industrial agriculture might well be the greatest crime in history. When
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
Because I'm a civil rights activist, I am also an animal rights activist. Animals and humans suffer and die alike. Violence causes the same pain, the same spilling of blood, the same stench of death, the same arrogant, cruel and vicious taking of life. We shouldn't be a part of it
Dick Gregory
Finally, we can congratulate ourselves on the unprecedented accomplishments of modern Sapiens only if we completely ignore the fate of all other animals. Much of the vaunted material wealth that shields us from disease and famine was accumulated at the expense of laboratory monkeys, dairy cows and conveyor-belt chickens. Over the last two centuries tens of billions of them have been subjected to a regime of industrial exploitation whose cruelty has no precedent in the annals of planet Earth. If we accept a mere tenth of what animal-rights activists are claiming, then modern industrial agriculture might well be the greatest crime in history. When evaluating global happiness, it is wrong to count the happiness only of the upper classes, of Europeans or of men. Perhaps it is also wrong to consider only the happiness of humans.
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
Zeena Schreck is a Berlin-based interdisciplinary artist, author, musician/composer, tantric teacher, mystic, animal rights activist, and counter-culture icon known by her mononymous artist name, ZEENA. Her work stems from her experience within the esoteric, shamanistic and magical traditions of which she's practiced, taught and been initiated. She is a practicing Tibetan Buddhist yogini, teaches at the Buddhistische Gesellschaft Berlin and is the spiritual leader of the Sethian Liberation Movement (SLM).
Zeena Schreck
The accused rapist, Calvin Smith, had graduated from a small-town high school the previous June, where he'd distinguished himself as an athlete. Individuals who knew Smith have described him as "kind," "easygoing," and "goofy." But he had never had sex before meeting Kaitlynn Kelly, and a look at what he has posted on a social media site suggests that he was a frustrated, involuntary celibate. On January 11, 2011, Smith posted a line from the animated sitcom Family Guy on his Facebook page: "women are not people god just put them here for mans entertainment.
Jon Krakauer (Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town)
Religion asks followers to believe in things nobody can see, however, animal activists ask people to see things they can prove. When Christian animal and environmental activists finally demand that their church be better stewards over the world, we will see change. Until then, one percent of sermons will teach parishioners about the importance of being stewards over our animals in a year. Mega churches and corporate religious empires will continue to own stock in companies that pollute our earth and exploit our animals. Ignorance and hypocrisy will continue to corrupt the pureness of the Gospel. From here, we will not be truly “saved” because we choose not to save ourselves.
Shannon L. Alder
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident. — Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher, animal rights activist (1788-1860)
Steven Ray Ozanich (The Great Pain Deception: Faulty Medical Advice Is Making Us Worse)
When animal rights activists or moral philosophers try to draw moral judgments about wild animal populations, they often suffer from a bad case of “Bambi Ethics” or “Bambi Environmentalism.” They apply human morals to nature in a superficial way, without considering the actual ethical or environmental consequences of their actions.
John Durant (The Paleo Manifesto: Ancient Wisdom for Lifelong Health)
If we accept a mere tenth of what animal-rights activists are claiming, then modern industrial agriculture might well be the greatest crime in history. When evaluating global happiness, is it wrong to count the happiness only of the upper classes, of Europeans or of men? Perhaps it is also wrong to consider only the happiness of humans.
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
Much of the vaunted material wealth that shields us from disease and famine was accumulated at the expense of laboratory monkeys, dairy cows and conveyor-belt chickens. Over the last two centuries tens of billions of them have been subjected to a regime of industrial exploitation whose cruelty has no precedent in the annals of planet Earth. If we accept a mere tenth of what animal-rights activists are claiming, then modern industrial agriculture might well be the greatest crime in history. When evaluating global happiness, it is wrong to count the happiness only of the upper classes, of Europeans or of men. Perhaps it is also wrong to consider only the happiness of humans.
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
As the van door starts to close, Brad suddenly realizes that the instant the doors close completely, the van interior will become the terrifying bland gray space he's heard about all his life, the place one goes when one has been Written Out. The van interior becomes the bland gray space. From the front yard TV comes the brash martial music that indicates UrgentUpdateNewsMinute. Animal rights activists have expressed concern over the recent trend of spraying live Canadian geese with a styrene coating which instantaneously kills them while leaving them extremely malleable, so it then becomes easy to shape them into comical positions and write funny sayings in DryErase cartoon balloons emanating from their beaks, which, apparently, is the new trend for outdoor summer parties.
George Saunders (In Persuasion Nation)
What are you reading?" Darling asked. "The latest issue of Beast Weekly," Rosabella said. As an activist who stood up for the rights of beasts everywhere, she liked to keep up with beastly matters.
Suzanne Selfors (A Semi-Charming Kind of Life (Ever After High: A School Story, #3))
Veganism is merely the continuation of Christianity by other means. It’s the Sermon on the Mount extended from the poor, weak and meek to animals. It gives every vegan the opportunity to posture as a Messiah, saving the poor little animals from Leviathan. Vegans are addicted to having a Messiah Complex. The powerless often posture as activists on behalf of the even more powerless. It makes them feel better about themselves.
David Sinclair (The Wolf Tamers: How They Made the Strong Weak)
Animal welfare - yes. Animal rights - don't make me laugh. I'm not an animals rights activist. I certainly do not love animals. In fact, I secretly mistrust all four-legged / furry / two-winged / feathered / shelled ar scaly brothers and sisters. If I were them, I would by now be plotting ultimate revenge on a scale previously unknown to man. ... I stick to a vegan diet only for reasons of self-preservertion. Call it insurance. When the time of the great animal uprising comes, I may have a small chance of escaping ...
Sharon Dodua Otoo (the things i am thinking while smiling politely …)
THE YEAR 1977 marked the first significant victory in the history of the anti-vivisection movement, which had existed for over a century without stopping a single experiment. The campaign, run by activist Henry Spira, succeeded in ending experiments on mutilated cats at the American Museum of Natural History and was such a triumph that it mobilized the modern animal rights movement.
Melanie Joy (Strategic Action for Animals: A Handbook on Strategic Movement Building, Organizing, and Activism for Animal Liberation)
The victims of right-wing violence are typically immigrants, Muslims, and people of color, while the targets of environmental and animal rights activism are among “the most powerful corporations on the planet” — hence the state’s relative indifference to the one and obsession with the other. The broader pattern helps to explain one partial exception to the left/right gap in official scrutiny—namely, the domestic aspects of the “War on Terror.” Al Qaeda is clearly a reactionary organization. Like much of the American far right, it is theocratic, anti-Semitic, and patriarchal. Like Timothy McVeigh, the 9/11 hijackers attacked symbols of institutional power, killing a great many innocent people to further their cause. But while the state’s bias favors the right over the left, the Islamists were the wrong kind of right-wing fanatic. These right-wing terrorists were foreigners, they were Muslim, and above all they were not white. And so, in retrospect and by comparison, the state’s response to the Oklahoma City bombing seems relatively restrained—short-lived, focused, selectively targeting unlawful behavior for prosecution. The government’s reaction to the September 11th attacks has been something else entirely — an open-ended war fought at home and abroad, using all variety of legal, illegal, and extra-legal military, police, and intelligence tactics, arbitrarily jailing large numbers of people and spying on entire communities of immigrants, Muslims, and Middle Eastern ethnic groups. At the same time, law enforcement was also obsessively pursuing — and sometimes fabricating—cases against environmentalists, animal rights activists, and anarchists while ignoring or obscuring racist violence against people of color. What that shows, I think, is that the left/right imbalance persists, but sometimes other biases matter more.
Kristian Williams (Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America)
Much of the vaunted material wealth that shields us from disease and famine was accumulated at the expense of laboratory monkeys, dairy cows and conveyor-belt chickens. Over the last two centuries tens of billions of them have been subjected to a regime of industrial exploitation whose cruelty has no precedent in the annals of planet earth. If we accept a mere tenth of what animal-rights activists are claiming, then modern industrial agriculture might well be the greatest crime in history.
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
In accepting as two primary texts, Singer's Animal Liberation and Regan's The Case for Animal Rights--texts that valorize rationality--the animal defense movement reiterates a patriarchal disavowal of emotions as having a legitimate role in theory making. The problem is that while on the one hand it articulates positions against animal suffering, on the other hand animal rights theory dispenses with the idea that caring about and emotionally responding to this suffering can be appropriate sources of knowledge. Emotions and theory are related. One does not have to eviscerate theory of emotional content and reflection to present legitimate theory. Nor does the presence of emotional content and reflection eradicate or militate against thinking theoretically. By disavowing emotional responses, two major texts of animal defense close off the intellectual space for recognizing the role of emotions in knowledge and therefore theory making. As the issue of caring about suffering is problematized, difficulties with animal rights per se become apparent. Without a gender analysis, several important issues that accompany a focus on suffering are neglected, to the detriment of the movement. Animal rights theory offers a legitimating language for animal defense without acknowledging the indebtedness of the rights-holder to caring relationships. Nor does it provide models for theoretically engaging with our own emotional responses, since emotions are seen as untrustworthy. Because the animal advocacy movement has failed to incorporate an understanding of caring as a motivation for so many animal defense activists, and because it has not addressed the gendered nature of caring--that it is woman's duty to provide service to others, while it is men's choice--it has not addressed adequately the implications that a disproportionate number of activists are women motivated because they care about animal suffering. Animal rights theory that disowns or ignores emotions mirrors on the theoretical level the gendered emotional responses inherent in a patriarchal society. In this culture, women are supposed to do the emotional work for heterosexual intimate relationships: 'a man will come to expect that a woman's role in his life is to take care of his feelings and alleviate the discomfort involved in feeling.' At the cultural level, this may mean that women are doing the emotional work for the animal defense movement. And this emotional work takes place in the context of our own oppression.
Carol J. Adams
Roxy was bi, and in my opinion she was—and still is—a total badass. Of all my childhood friends, this girl’s my bestie. Even when we were young, I knew deep down that Roxy was going to conquer the world. Her brilliance, coupled with her unwavering commitment to feminism and human rights, made her truly exceptional. And she cared, really cared, about animals and the pressing issues in our world. She wasn’t just one of these people that wore shirts and posted awareness videos online. She dedicated her weekends to protests and taking action. And I loved that she was hooking up with Amren, or whoever this girl was, if she made Roxy happy. I loved her. I loved all of her. Hopefully Amren would see how awesome Roxy was and make her feel special.
Kayla Cunningham
THIS IS MY ABC BOOK of people God loves. We’ll start with . . .           A: God loves Adorable people. God loves those who are Affable and Affectionate. God loves Ambulance drivers, Artists, Accordion players, Astronauts, Airplane pilots, and Acrobats. God loves African Americans, the Amish, Anglicans, and Animal husbandry workers. God loves Animal-rights Activists, Astrologers, Adulterers, Addicts, Atheists, and Abortionists.           B: God loves Babies. God loves Bible readers. God loves Baptists and Barbershop quartets . . . Boys and Boy Band members . . . Blondes, Brunettes, and old ladies with Blue hair. He loves the Bedraggled, the Beat up, and the Burnt out . . . the Bullied and the Bullies . . . people who are Brave, Busy, Bossy, Bitter, Boastful, Bored, and Boorish. God loves all the Blue men in the Blue Man Group.           C: God loves Crystal meth junkies,           D: Drag queens,           E: and Elvis impersonators.           F: God loves the Faithful and the Faithless, the Fearful and the Fearless. He loves people from Fiji, Finland, and France; people who Fight for Freedom, their Friends, and their right to party; and God loves people who sound like Fat Albert . . . “Hey, hey, hey!”           G: God loves Greedy Guatemalan Gynecologists.           H: God loves Homosexuals, and people who are Homophobic, and all the Homo sapiens in between.           I: God loves IRS auditors.           J: God loves late-night talk-show hosts named Jimmy (Fallon or Kimmel), people who eat Jim sausages (Dean or Slim), people who love Jams (hip-hop or strawberry), singers named Justin (Timberlake or Bieber), and people who aren’t ready for this Jelly (Beyoncé’s or grape).           K: God loves Khloe Kardashian, Kourtney Kardashian, Kim Kardashian, and Kanye Kardashian. (Please don’t tell him I said that.)           L: God loves people in Laos and people who are feeling Lousy. God loves people who are Ludicrous, and God loves Ludacris. God loves Ladies, and God loves Lady Gaga.           M: God loves Ministers, Missionaries, and Meter maids; people who are Malicious, Meticulous, Mischievous, and Mysterious; people who collect Marbles and people who have lost their Marbles . . . and Miley Cyrus.           N: God loves Ninjas, Nudists, and Nose pickers,           O: Obstetricians, Orthodontists, Optometrists, Ophthalmologists, and Overweight Obituary writers,           P: Pimps, Pornographers, and Pedophiles,           Q: the Queen of England, the members of the band Queen, and Queen Latifah.           R: God loves the people of Rwanda and the Rebels who committed genocide against them.           S: God loves Strippers in Stilettos working on the Strip in Sin City;           T: it’s not unusual that God loves Tom Jones.           U: God loves people from the United States, the United Kingdom, and the United Arab Emirates; Ukrainians and Uruguayans, the Unemployed and Unemployment inspectors; blind baseball Umpires and shady Used-car salesmen. God loves Ushers, and God loves Usher.           V: God loves Vegetarians in Virginia Beach, Vegans in Vietnam, and people who eat lots of Vanilla bean ice cream in Las Vegas.           W: The great I AM loves will.i.am. He loves Waitresses who work at Waffle Houses, Weirdos who have gotten lots of Wet Willies, and Weight Watchers who hide Whatchamacallits in their Windbreakers.           X: God loves X-ray technicians.           Y: God loves You.           Z: God loves Zoologists who are preparing for the Zombie apocalypse. God . . . is for the rest of us. And we have the responsibility, the honor, of letting the world know that God is for them, and he’s inviting them into a life-changing relationship with him. So let ’em know.
Vince Antonucci (God for the Rest of Us: Experience Unbelievable Love, Unlimited Hope, and Uncommon Grace)
The Commissioner asserts 'motivated intruders' evidence from Professor Anderaon was accepted under cross-examination as an 'over-extension' from his personal experiences with completely unrelated animal rights activists - see para.24 of the closing submissions, Professor Anderson's "wild speculations" about the possibility of "young men, borderline sociopathic or psychopathic" attaching themselves to the PACE trial criticism 'do him no credit". Nor do his extrapolations from benign Twitter requests for information to an "organised campaign” from an "adversarial group" show that he has maintained the necessary objectivity and accuracy that he is required to maintain. He does not distinguish between legitimate ethical and political disagreement, and the use of positions of access to confidential data. He stated that where there was legitimate disagreement one should assume that people will act in unlawful ways, This proposition that one should in every case assume the absolute worst about data disclosure is clearly neither sensible nor realistic. Freedom of Information Act tribunal judgment
Brian Kennedy
Sadiq al-Mahdi, former prime minister of Sudan, would agree. On March 24, 1999, he wrote to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, that “the traditional concept of JIHAD does allow slavery as a by-product.”11 And so slavery persists to this day in some areas of the Islamic world. The BBC reported in December 2008 that “strong evidence has emerged of children and adults being used as slaves in Sudan’s Darfur region”—where a jihad rages today.12 Mauritanian human rights activist Boubakar Messaoud asserted in 2004 that in that country, people are born and bred as slaves: “A Mauritanian slave, whose parents and grandparents before him were slaves, doesn’t need chains. He has been brought up as a domesticated animal.”13 Three years later, nothing had changed. Messaoud explained in March 2007, “It’s like having sheep or goats. If a woman is a slave, her descendants are slaves.”14 Likewise in Niger, which formally abolished slavery only in 2003, slavery is a long-standing practice. Journalist and anti-slavery activist Souleymane Cisse explained that even Western colonial governments did nothing to halt the practice: “The colonial rulers preferred to ignore it because they wanted to co-operate with the aristocracy who kept these slaves.”15 Islamic slavery has not been unknown even in the United States. When the Saudi national Homaidan Al-Turki was imprisoned for holding a woman as a slave in Colorado, he complained that “the state has criminalized these basic Muslim behaviors. Attacking traditional Muslim behaviors was the focal point of the prosecution.”16 Where did he get the idea that slavery was a “traditional Muslim behavior”? From the Koran. Slavery: it’s in the Koran. And if it’s in the Koran, it is unquestionably right.
Robert Spencer (The Complete Infidel's Guide to the Koran)
we accept a mere tenth of what animal-rights activists are claiming, then modern industrial agriculture might well be the greatest crime in history.
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
Ain't My Fourth of July (The Sonnet) Fourth of July comes and goes, Yet slavery remains and thrives. It kills in the name of supremacy, It causes ruin in a pro-life guise. Real advocates of life value life, And place life above all belief. Belief that values guns over person, Is only pro-death and pro-disease. Freedom involves accountability, Without which we are just free animals. Those who turn superstition into law, Are no judge but a bunch of dumbbells. This ain't my Fourth of July, for I actually value life. Till all lives are deemed equal, I'll continue to strive.
Abhijit Naskar (Amantes Assemble: 100 Sonnets of Servant Sultans)
Humans and animals all are welcome in my house, but not fundamentalists and nationalists.
Abhijit Naskar (Amantes Assemble: 100 Sonnets of Servant Sultans)
Every Culture is My Culture (The Sonnet) If America fails in advancement, so will the world, If South America fails in liberty, so will the world. If Mexico fails in passion, so will the world, If India fails in diversity, so will the world. Every atom of planet earth is teeming with potential, Yet most see nothing beyond the rim of their culture. Culture is peddled in the world as a sectarian prison, Yet the fact is, culture integrated is culture empowered. Every culture belongs in every heart, every heart that is human, While stoneage notions of culture still dominate the animal. Simply put, till all cultures are ours, no culture is ours, Any culture that claims supremacy belongs on a surgeon's table. If humanity fails to embrace the strength of each culture, There will be no humanity, there will be no culture.
Abhijit Naskar (Amantes Assemble: 100 Sonnets of Servant Sultans)
In a world of animals one who is human has more haters than admirers.
Abhijit Naskar (Find A Cause Outside Yourself: Sermon of Sustainability)
Final Human (The Sonnet) Only animal I'm afraid of is myself, When I'm scared, I lose control. I am the height of violence extreme, Kept tamed by conscience whole. I am the maker of all law and order, I decide what's right, what's wrong. I am a grenade waiting to go off, At the sight of humanity done wrong. To the helpless I'm humility incarnate, To the discriminated I'm love unbound. To all intolerance I am judgment day, To paranoid hate I'm piety paramount. If I don't bulldoze your castles of prejudice, Abhijit Vicdansaadet Naskar is not my name. Till the last ounce of hate is obliterated, The final human will emerge time and again.
Abhijit Naskar (Bulletproof Backbone: Injustice Not Allowed on My Watch)
If fighting for animal rights means being annoying, I'd rather be far away from nice people.
Daniel Gumiero
A lighter chain does not make the slave any less of a slave.
Daniel Gumiero
Vegans are still considered as sort of “out there,” a fringe group of animal rights activists with pasty skin and protein issues. However,
Steven D. Levitt (When to Rob a Bank: ...And 131 More Warped Suggestions and Well-Intended Rants)
Over the last two centuries tens of billions of them have been subjected to a regime of industrial exploitation whose cruelty has no precedent in the annals of planet Earth. If we accept a mere tenth of what animal-rights activists are claiming, then modern industrial agriculture might well be the greatest crime in history. When evaluating global happiness, it is wrong to count the happiness only of the upper classes, of Europeans or of men. Perhaps it is also wrong to consider only the happiness of humans.
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
In the words of Paul Johnson: The Temple, now, in Herod’s1 version, rising triumphantly over Jerusalem, was an ocular reminder that Judaism was about Jews and their history—not about anyone else. Other gods flew across the deserts from the East without much difficulty, jettisoning the inconvenient and embarrassing accretions from their past, changing, as it were, their accents and manners as well as their names. But the God of the Jews was still alive and roaring in his Temple, demanding blood, making no attempt to conceal his racial and primitive origins. Herod’s fabric was elegant, modern, sophisticated—he had, indeed, added some Hellenic decorative effects much resented by fundamentalist Jews who constantly sought to destroy them—but nothing could hide the essential business of the Temple, which was the ritual slaughter, consumption, and combustion of sacrificial cattle on a gigantic scale. The place was as vast as a small city. There were literally thousands of priests, attendants, temple-soldiers, and minions. To the unprepared visitor, the dignity and charity of Jewish disapora life, the thoughtful comments and homilies of the Alexandrian synagogue, was quite lost amid the smoke of the pyres, the bellows of terrified beasts, the sluices of blood, the abattoir stench, the unconcealed and unconcealable machinery of tribal religion inflated by modern wealth to an industrial scale. Sophisticated Romans who knew the Judaism of the diaspora found it hard to understand the hostility towards Jews shown by colonial officials who, behind a heavily-armed escort, had witnessed Jerusalem at festival time. Diaspora Judaism, liberal and outward-minded, contained the matrix of a universal religion, but only if it could be cut off from its barbarous origins; and how could so thick and sinewy an umbilical cord be severed? This description of “Herod’s” Temple (actually the Second Temple, built in the sixth century B.C. and rebuilt by Herod) is more than a bit overwrought. The God of the Jews did not roar in his Temple: the insoluble problem was that, since the destruction of the First Temple and, with it, the Ark of the Covenant, God had ceased to be present in his Temple. Nor would animal sacrifice have disgusted the gentiles, since Greeks, Romans, and all ancient peoples offered such sacrifices (though one cannot help wondering whether, had the Second Temple not been destroyed, it would today be ringed from morn to night by indignant animal-rights activists). But Johnson is right to emphasize that Judaism, in its mother city, could display a sweaty tribalism that gentiles would only find unattractive. The partisan, argumentative ambience of first-century Jerusalem, not unlike the atmosphere of the ultra-Orthodox pockets of the contemporary city, could repel any outsider, whether gentile or diaspora Jew. Perhaps most important is Johnson’s shrewd observation that Judaism “contained the matrix of a universal religion.” By this time, the more percipient inhabitants of the Greco-Roman world had come to the conclusion that polytheism, whatever manifestation it might assume, was seriously flawed. The Jews alone, by offering monotheism, offered a unitive vision, not the contradictory and flickering epiphanies of a fanciful pantheon of gods and goddesses. But could Judaism adapt to gentile needs, could it lose its foreign accent and outlandish manners? No one saw the opportunity more clearly than Luke; his gospel and its sequel, the Acts of the Apostles, present a Jesus and a Jesus Movement specifically tailored to gentile sensibility.
Thomas Cahill (Desire of the Everlasting Hills: The World Before & After Jesus)
Historically and still today, men of many cultures have sought to transcend their own bodies while reducing women and animals to their body parts. Seeing themselves as more rational and self-determined, men claim the right to rule over those they see as more emotional, impulsive, and bound to bodily rhythms. Reduced to their bodies, women and animals are liable to be made into meat either literally, as in butchery, or figuratively, as in pornography.
pattrice jones (Aftershock: Confronting Trauma in a Violent World: A Guide for Activists and Their Allies (Flashpoint))
No matter what animal rights activists felt about the practice of “pig lab” training for military corpsmen and combat rescue officers, there was no mannequin or “lifelike” device that came close to working on something that was actually alive. Quivering flesh, the copper scent, and even the slickness of warm blood could be duplicated. But life, that vital essence that made animals different from sugar beets or ears of corn, was inimitable, no matter how sophisticated the tech.
Marc Cameron (State of Emergency (Jericho Quinn #3))
If we accept a mere tenth of what animal-rights activists are claiming, then modern industrial agriculture might well be the greatest crime in history. When evaluating global happiness, it is wrong to count the happiness only of the upper classes, of Europeans or of men. Perhaps it is also wrong to consider only the happiness of humans.
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
To selflessly love another creature is to be open to loving other humans, who are animals as much as pandas, cows, or Shih Tzus. This is why I never trust an animal rights activist who is misogynistic or thinks that Homo sapiens are, at heart, more rotten than any other species. Human rights activists are animal rights activists by default. The reverse should also be true.
Anonymous
Maya the Chihuahua wound up dead in 2014. Maya was a beloved member of Wilbur Cerate’s family on Virginia’s Eastern Shore. One Saturday in October when Cerate came home from work, according to local TV station WAVY, Maya was gone. Cerate checked his security cameras, which had captured video of two women in a PETA van backing into the driveway, snatching Maya off the porch and driving off. Three days later, two women from PETA returned to the home and explained that Maya had been killed. They brought a fruit basket.27, 28 Perhaps it was the tiniest bit of solace for Cerate’s little daughter that her beloved Maya did not die a painful death, other than the terror of being snatched up by strangers and hauled to some foreign facility that, at best, must have seemed like a veterinarian’s office. Many of the other animals who die at the hands of bird-brained animal-rights activists suffer horrible deaths.
Eric Bolling (Wake Up America: The Nine Virtues That Made Our Nation Great—and Why We Need Them More Than Ever)
If we accept a mere tenth of what animal-rights activists are claiming, then modern industrial agriculture might well be the greatest crime in history.
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
kill, peradventure, a fox, it follows that if the hounds veer onto a real scent and make a kill, no law has been broken. The huntsman who welcomed your columnist explained that, in practice, this means that before a hunt one of his helpers films himself laying a pretend scent-trail—by dragging a rag theoretically, but not actually, soaked in fox scent, from a quad bike—to provide evidence for a possible defence in court. Then the hunt goes out and hunts as it always has, but illegally. The police—one of whose officers was riding with the hounds that wintry day—understand this, but do not much care. Animal rights activists know it, and it makes them mad, but it is so hard to collect evidence of lawbreaking, in the form of video footage showing a huntsman urging hounds on to a fox, that prosecutions are rare. Only a couple of dozen huntsmen have been convicted for contravening the ban, for which they mostly received small fines.
Anonymous
Left wing, whacko groups like animal rights activists and right-to-lifers were easy targets for my humor.  I enjoyed poking fun at these closed-minded groups.
Bill Bernico (Apprentice Foole (Bernico's 188 Humorous Newspaper Columns))
The coalition's internal talking points are written with startling candor. They reveal the groups' description of what they see as the true threat of the animal rights movement. Activists are dangerous not because of violence, or the potential for violence. 'These tactics have been very successful,' the talking points say, in 'damaging the financial footing of corporations involved in animal enterprise.
Will Potter (Green Is the New Red: An Insider's Account of a Social Movement Under Siege)
Sometimes, matadors got gored (...) Aficionados viewed their dramatic deaths like martyrdom in a holy war. Some animal rights activists also marked these gruesome occasions in their mental calendars.
Rachael Adam (Sangre De Toro)
Hate is animal handicap, Love is divine prosthetic. Amidst the herd of self-lovers, Be the anomalous self-anihilist.
Abhijit Naskar (World War Human: 100 New Earthling Sonnets (Sonnet Centuries))
Today, although many such strikes continue—the Walmart strike of 2012, for example—many industrial work sites have been moved offshore to Mexico, China, Vietnam, and elsewhere. Other forms of social conflict have arisen in different theaters. One theater animates the politics of the left. It focuses on conflict in the private sector between the very richest 1 percent and the rest of America. Occupy Wall Street has such a focus. It is not between owner and worker over a higher wage or shorter hours of work. It is between haves and have-nots, the ever-more-wealthy 1 percent and the other 99 percent of Americans. What feels unfair to Occupy activists is not simply unfair recompense for work (the multi-million dollar bonuses to hedge fund managers alongside the $8.25 hourly rate for Walmart clerks) but the absence of tax policies that could help restore America as a middle-class society. For the right today, the main theater of conflict is neither the factory floor nor an Occupy protest. The theater of conflict—at the heart of the deep story—is the local welfare office and the mailbox where undeserved disability checks and SNAP stamps arrive. Government checks for the listless and idle—this seems most unfair. If unfairness in Occupy is expressed in the moral vocabulary of a “fair share” of resources and a properly proportioned society, unfairness in the right’s deep story is found in the language of “makers” and “takers.” For the left, the flashpoint is up the class ladder (between the very top and the rest); for the right, it is down between the middle class and the poor. For the left, the flashpoint is centered in the private sector; for the right, in the public sector. Ironically, both call for an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work.
Arlie Russell Hochschild (Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right)
Leave the pedestals for the stuffed animals. You for one, take the ground. Take the ground, work the ground, live the ground, and lift the ground.
Abhijit Naskar (Ingan Impossible: Handbook of Hatebusting)
The Gaza Sonnet, 1264 (All Free or None Free) Al-Shams to Alpha Centauri, All occupied lands will be free. Till there is smile on every face, All happiness is blasphemy. Happiness is not an imperial merch, Freedom is no colonizer's heirloom. Joy is no bigot's ancestral bequest, Earth is not a zionist hand-me-down. Divide and rule is the law of animals, Unite and integrate is law of humanity. One human life is worth more, than all the gas reserves underneath. Gaza is not a place, Gaza is a wake up call, to the peace-crying humanity. Awake, Arise, O Citizens of Earth - Till all of us are free, none of us are free!
Abhijit Naskar (Yaralardan Yangın Doğar: Explorers of Night are Emperors of Dawn)
the moral convictions of animal rights activists lasted about as long as it took them to get a fatal disease that could be cured by receiving a valve from a pig’s heart. Suddenly that pig didn’t seem so goddamned sacred after all.
Greg Iles (True Evil)
We need to protect the defenders of nature, environmentalists, Animal Rights and Human Rights activists. It's a call for all humans to show courage and solidarity.
Oliver Gediminas Caplikas
animals “have been subjected to a regime of industrial exploitation whose cruelty has no precedent in the annals of planet Earth. If we accept a mere tenth of what animal-rights activists are claiming, then modern industrial agriculture might well be the greatest crime in history. When evaluating global happiness, it is wrong to count the happiness only of the upper classes, of Europeans, or of men. Perhaps it is also wrong to consider only the happiness of humans.” [Harari, 2011].
Andres Campero (Genes vs Cultures vs Consciousness: A Brief Story of Our Computational Minds)
An important example is the debate around Black Lives Matter, Blue Lives Matter, and All Lives Matter. Can you believe that black lives matter and also care deeply about the well-being of police officers? Of course. Can you care about the well-being of police officers and at the same time be concerned about abuses of power and systemic racism in law enforcement and the criminal justice system? Yes. I have relatives who are police officers—I can’t tell you how deeply I care about their safety and well-being. I do almost all of my pro bono work with the military and public servants like the police—I care. And when we care, we should all want just systems that reflect the honor and dignity of the people who serve in those systems. But then, if it’s the case that we can care about citizens and the police, shouldn’t the rallying cry just be All Lives Matter? No. Because the humanity wasn’t stripped from all lives the way it was stripped from the lives of black citizens. In order for slavery to work, in order for us to buy, sell, beat, and trade people like animals, Americans had to completely dehumanize slaves. And whether we directly participated in that or were simply a member of a culture that at one time normalized that behavior, it shaped us. We can’t undo that level of dehumanizing in one or two generations. I believe Black Lives Matter is a movement to rehumanize black citizens in the hearts of those of us who have consciously or unconsciously bought into the insidious, rampant, and ongoing devaluation of black lives. All lives matter, but not all lives need to be pulled back into moral inclusion. Not all people were subjected to the psychological process of demonizing and being made less than human so we could justify the inhumane practice of slavery. Is there tension and vulnerability in supporting both the police and the activists? Hell, yes. It’s the wilderness. But most of the criticism comes from people who are intent on forcing these false either/or dichotomies and shaming us for not hating the right people. It’s definitely messier taking a nuanced stance, but it’s also critically important to true belonging.
Brené Brown (Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone)
The myth of the radical animal rights activist is still alive and well today, thanks to some well-publicized stunts from over twenty years ago. I’m not going to throw paint on your fur coat, but I will look at you and be unable to see anything but suffering and a lack of compassion.” -Shenita Etwaroo
Shenita Etwaroo
Because the oppression of nonhuman individuals is normative, it is largely invisible, and most of us are complicit in one way or another. While social justice activists now widely recognize that the poor, elderly, and non-white racialized minorities are harmed by patriarchy, few are willing to similarly recognize the harm of patriarchal dualisms and hierarchy on nonhuman animals – even ecofeminist theorists. Very few social justice activists have even a rudimentary understanding of speciesism, or of the harmful exploitation that stems from such marginalization and cruel domination of nonhuman animals.
Lisa Kemmerer (Sister Species: Women, Animals and Social Justice)
On reflection, most of us recognize that we would rather protect citizens than corporations—human rights rather than corporate capitalism. On reflection, most of us recognize that anymal advocates who defend life against exploitative industries hold the high moral ground—their compassionate motivation and social justice actions are supported by core teachings in every major religion. Anymal liberationists demonstrate self-sacrificing service on behalf of the exploited. They risk long-term imprisonment on behalf of the defenseless and downtrodden, the maimed and condemned. Those who take core religious teachings seriously will respect anymal liberationists because these dedicated activists treasure life above property and profits, and risk their freedom on behalf of those who cannot help themselves. Anymal liberationists exemplify religious commitment in action, most notably compassionate, self-sacrificing service to those who are most in need.
Lisa Kemmerer (Animals and World Religions)
Acknowledging and protecting nonhuman individuals places limits on human power, and will put an end to a host of ill-gotten gains – just as emancipation curtailed white power and put an end to the ill-gotten gains of Caucasian-Americans. Consequently, animal activists who push for change are often met with derision and indifference by those who wish to continue their accustomed diet, those who do not want to rethink their leather shoes, toiletries, or treasured forms of entertainment. Feminists and civil rights protesters who asked others to change for the sake of justice – to give up their ill-gotten gains – were and are met with similar insults and raucous rejections.
Lisa Kemmerer (Sister Species: Women, Animals and Social Justice)
The Sufi Sonnet For your ascension I became a lover, For your rights I became a revolution. Ask me not who I am, Look in my eyes, you'll find your reflection. Our world is a new world, The soul of this world is conscience. Without conscience we all are animals, March ahead o conscientious with valiance. There is no other religion but love, There is no other nationality but humanity. The story of human is a story of kindness, If not, life is but an utter futility. We are all heroes when we are together, Togetherness forever whether alive or six feet under.
Abhijit Naskar (Generation Corazon: Nationalism is Terrorism)
He was vegan, animal rights activists, environmentalists who believe in conscious and compassionate living just like me. He listened to almost every bands that i listen to and more importantly he reads books. He was the person that i could talk to about almost everything that exists in this planet. He was just so close to perfection. Only thing that was missing out was long hair and beard. If only had he had hair and beard. The kind which makes guys look cool and hot at the same time. How can people look cool and hot the same time? what the fuck is wrong with me?
Aila Assad