Moby Quotes

We call them dumb animals, and so they are, for they cannot tell us how they feel, but they do not suffer less because they have no words.

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.

As an animal lover and as a sometime-meat-eater, I've read so much about the emotional sophistication of pigs and cows and sheep that I do think twice when I do still eat them on occasion.

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

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

I believe that animals are on the planet so that we can know love and compassion.

The animal liberation movement is saying that where animals and humans have similar interests - we might take the interest in avoiding physical pain as an example, for it is an interest that humans clearly share with other animals - those interests are to be counted equally, with no automatic discount just because one of the beings is not human.

In justifying cruelty to animals we put ourselves also on the animal level. We choose the jungle and must abide by our choice.

Any glimpse into the life of an animal quickens our own and makes it so much the larger and better in every way." ... "Surely a better time must be drawing nigh when godlike human beings will become truly humane, and learn to put their animal fellow mortals in their hearts instead of on their backs or in their dinners.

Farm animals feel pleasure and sadness, excitement and resentment, depression, fear, and pain. They are far more aware and intelligent than we ever imagined...they are individuals in their own right.

Human cruelty knows no limits and that one needs immense courage and a will of iron to help others understand that animals are made of flesh and blood like us, that they suffer the same pains as us, that they deserve the same respect as us and that their continuous slaughter should not be part of human entertainment.

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.

Humans - who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals - have had an understandable penchant for pretending animals do not feel pain.

If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegetarian. We feel better about ourselves and better about the animals, knowing we're not contributing to their pain.

In 1968, I became a vegetarian after realizing that animals feel afraid, cold, hungry, and unhappy like we do.

Do you not believe that animals know grief and fear and pain? The world of men is not an easy one for them.

The deeper minds of all ages have had pity for animals.

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.

I was always empathetic with animals. It's a terrible and self-involved point of view that we do something because someone else is exploitable.

There are many people out there (me being one of them) who can vouch that animals have feelings; they feel compassion and love, as well as pain!

Humans — who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals — have had an understandable penchant for pretending animals do not feel pain. A sharp distinction between humans and 'animals' is essential if we are to bend them to our will, make them work for us, wear them, eat them — without any disquieting tinges of guilt or regret. It is unseemly of us, who often behave so unfeelingly toward other animals, to contend that only humans can suffer. The behavior of other animals renders such pretensions specious. They are just too much like us.

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

One day the absurdity of the almost universal human belief in the slavery of other animals will be palpable. We shall then have discovered our souls and become worthier of sharing this planet with them.

I have always felt that the way we treat animals is a pretty good indicator of the compassion we are capable of for the human race.

Researchers find it very necessary to keep blinkers on. They don't want to admit that the animals they are working with have feelings. They don't want to admit that they might have minds and personalities because that would make it quite difficult for them to do what they do; so we find that within the lab communities there is a very strong resistance among the researchers to admitting that animals have minds, personalities and feelings.