Loretta Swit Quotes

The belief that 'animals' are superior or inferior to humans because they live in an eternal now is untrue, because no being lives in a now.

The question is not, 'Can they reason?' nor, 'Can they talk?' but rather, 'Can they suffer?'

There is no doubt that there is a huge difference between human and nonhuman animals. But what we are overlooking is the fact that nonhuman animals are conscious beings, that they can suffer.

Future benefits rarely figure in the minds of animals.

Sometimes I read about someone saying with great authority that animals have no intentions and no feelings, and I wonder, 'Doesn't this guy have a dog?'

Every animal has his or her story, his or her thoughts, daydreams, and interests. All feel joy and love, pain and fear, as we now know beyond any shadow of a doubt. All deserve that the human animal afford them the respect of being cared for with great consideration for those interests or left in peace.

It's very likely that most mammals have consciousness, and probably birds, too.

If it is indeed impossible - or at least very difficult - to inhabit the consciousness of an animal, then in writing about animals there is a temptation to project upon them feelings and thoughts that may belong only to our own human mind and heart.

I do love animals so much, and have a great respect for them emotionally and intellectually, because they are so different from human beings.

Farm animals are just as interesting and intelligent as the dogs and cats who we know a bit betterYet they are treated by the meat industry as though they are inanimate objects with no feelings or personalities.

There is a growing scientific consensus that animals have emotions and feel pain. This awareness is going to effect change: better treatment of animals in agribusiness, research and our general interaction with them. It will change the way we eat, live and preserve the planet.

We're all animals.

The industrial food system is so cruel and so horrific in its treatment of animals. It never asks the question: 'Should a pig be allowed to express its pig-ness?'

There are a lot of obstacles in the way of our understanding animal intelligence - not the least being that we can't even agree whether nonhuman species are conscious. We accept that chimps and dolphins experience awareness; we like to think dogs and cats do. But what about mice and newts? What about a fly? Is anything going on there at all?

We are not the only animal that mourns; apes do, and elephants, and dogs. Yet we are the only one that tortures.

When I write about animals, I use anthropological techniques and the language you would use for a person. You don't have to anthropomorphize animals, just acknowledge their individuality.

People didn't think animals thought or remembered or had minds! They most certainly do: any pet owner knows more than a lot of scientists about animals.

For me, animals are not that much different from human beings.

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.

Anyone who says that life matters less to an animal than it does to us has not held in his hands an animal fighting for its life. The whole of the being of the animal is thrown into that fight, without reserve. When you say that the fight lacks a dimension of intellectual or imaginative horror, I agree. It is not the mode of being animals to have an intellectual horror: their whole being is in the living flesh...I urge you to walk, flank to flank, beside the beast that is prodded down the chute to his executioner.

One of the things that I always think about is the emotional sophistication of animals and how much we're learning about the emotional sophistication of animals. If you're eating a pig, you're essentially eating the equivalent of a four-year-old human being.

Researchers find it very necessary to keep blinkers on. They don't want to admit that the animals they are working with have feelings.

"Animals are happy," said the queen. "They run no risk of going to hell." "They are there already," replied Josiana.

Ich glaube sogar, durch Leidensk a« mpfe k o« nnten dieTiere zu Menschen werden. I believe that by suffering even animals could be made human.

What is it that should trace the insuperable line? ...The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?