Isaac Bashevis Singer Quotes

Through our entire history we have become accustomed to pushing [animals] around in ways dictated by our own wants and needs without much regard for theirs.

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.

Not only are the philosophies of animal rights and animal welfare separated by irreconcilable differences... the enactment of animal welfare measures actually impedes the achievement of animal rights... Welfare reforms, by their very nature, can only serve to retard the pace at which animal rights goals are achieved.

We do not advocate 'right to life' for animals.

We ought to consider the interests of animals because they have interests and it is unjustifiable to exclude them from the sphere of moral concern; to make this consideration depend on beneficial consequences for human beings is to accept the implication that the interests of animals do not warrant consideration for their own sakes.

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.

As often as Herman had witnessed the slaughter of animals and fish, he always had the same thought: in their behavior toward creatures, all men were Nazis. The smugness with which man could do with other species as he pleased exemplified the most extreme racist theories, the principle that might is right.

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.

In relation to them (animals), all people are Nazis for the animals, it is an eternal Treblinka.

Animal liberationists do not separate out the human animal, so there is no rational basis for saying that a human being has special rights. A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. They're all mammals.

The life of an animal is misery and slavery: that is the plain truth.

If possessing a higher degree of intelligence does not entitle one human to use another for his or her own ends, how can it entitle humans to exploit non-humans?

Four legs good, two legs bad.

We do not think clearly about our moral obligations to animals.

Although we have, in theory, abolished human slavery, recognized women's rights, and stopped child labor, we continue to enslave other species who, if we simply pay attention, show quite clearly that they experience parental love, pain, and the desire for freedom, just as we do.

Animals weren't put on this earth to entertain us.

If an animal has any rights at all, it's got the right not to be eaten.

The way animals are carted around reminds me of the slavery of my people... The slavery of animals has to be ended too.

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

You don't have to love animals to recognize that it is immoral and unjust to exploit them. But if you do love animals, but you continue to participate in their exploitation, you need to rethink your idea of what love means.

To a man whose mind is free there is something even more intolerable in the sufferings of animals than in the sufferings of man. For with the latter it is at least admitted that suffering is evil and that the man who causes it is a criminal. But thousands of animals are uselessly butchered every day without a shadow of remorse. If any man were to refer to it, he would be thought ridiculous. And that is the unpardonable crime.

The idea that it is funny to see wild animals coerced into acting like clumsy humans, or thrilling to see powerful beasts reduced to cringing cowards by a whip-cracking trainer, is primitive and medieval. It stems from the old idea that we are superior to other species and have the right to hold dominion over them.

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.

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

Let animals live like animals; let humans live like humans. That's my whole philosophy in a sentence.