Michael Pollan Quotes

This, for many people, is what's most offensive about hunting—to some, disgusting: that it encourages, or allows, us not only to kill but to take a certain pleasure in killing

Cruelty...prefers abstraction. Some have tried to resolved this gap by hunting or butchering an animal themselves, as if those experiences might somehow legitimize the endeavor of eating animals. This is very silly. Murdering someone would surely prove that you are capable of killing, but it woudln't be the most reasonable way to understand why you should or shouldn't do it.

Vivisection is a social evil because if it advances human knowledge, it does so at the expense of human character.

Hunting is a relic of the barbarism that once thirsted for human blood, but is now content with the blood of animals.

...the proposed air force and army experiments were designed so that many animals would suffer and die without any certainty that this suffering and death would save a single human life or benefit humans in any way at all; but the same can be said of millions of their experiments performed each year in the United States alone.

I tend not to be so attracted to films that force me into an intellectual place over an emotional one.

Killing a stag is like killing a child.

I reluctantly soldiered on to the raccoon. It actually would have tasted quite good had I not had the image of a raccoon rummaging through the garbage stuck in my head.

This [human cloning] is an unethical human experiment on the child to be. It is a major step in the conversion of procreation to manufacture.

After my performance 'The Artist is Present (2010)' at MoMA in New York, many scientists became interested in why so many people who sat across from me began to cry. I was incredibly moved by this experience also, and was very curious to know what happens in our brains when we spend time not talking, just looking at one another.

Movies aren't machines. They interact with our brains.

Music emotionally and psychologically transports you immediately.

I guess that's always the mystery of music. It's like why does this song make me feel so grey or why does it make me feel sad or happy or nostalgic and so I'm most fascinated by breaking that down in my music.

Hunting really divides people in Britain. We keep pets, and we name our animals, but we're not too worried about industrial hunting practices.

Detested sport, That owes its pleasures to another's pain.

The time will come when public opinion will no longer tolerate amusements based on the mistreatment and killing of animals. The time will come, but when? When will we reach the point that hunting, the pleasure in killing animals for sport, will be regarded as a mental aberration?

I strongly oppose cloning, as do most Americans. We recoil at the idea of growing human beings for spare body parts or creating life for our convenience. And while we must devote enormous energy to conquering disease, it is equally important that we pay attention to the moral concerns raised by the new frontier of human embryo stem cell research. Even the most noble ends do not justify any means.

It was one of those pictures that children are supposed to like but don't. Full of endearing little animals doing endearing things, you know?

We cannot talk simultaneously about animal rights and the 'humane' slaughter of animals.

The idea that hunting is one against one is ludicrous. It's one animal versus the hunter, the manufacturer of the rifle, the bullet maker, the designer and manufacturer of the telescopic sight, the auto manufacturer who made the car the hunter got to the edge of the wild in, the maker of his waterproof shoes, the various manufacturers of his mittens, glasses, overcoat - and that's only the beginning of the list. The "sportsman" who shoots an animal should then make a speech, like the actor who wins an Oscar does, thanking the multitudes behind the scenes who made this "victory" possible.

Those who experiment on animals should never be able to quiet their own conscience by telling themselves that these cruelties have a worthy aim.

I'd go to work early, before anyone got there, and I would just kill the animals myself...I must have killed a thousand of them, sometimes dozens every day.

For more than a century, people have often thought that the conclusion to draw from Darwin's vision is that Homo sapiens, our species - and we're just animals too, we're just mammals - that there is nothing morally special about us. I myself don't think this follows at all from Darwin's vision, but it is certainly the received view in many quarters.

Music just affects people's feelings. It brings out emotions in you and makes you happy and sad.

Vivisection is wrong because it is an abuse of man's power over the helpless, involving pain and suffering. The name for this is cruelty, and cruelty is immoral, no matter what the reason for its introduction.