Non Human Animals Quotes

What the new science of anthrozoology reveals is that our attitudes, behaviors, and relationships with the animals in our lives- the ones we love, the ones we hate, and the ones we eat- are, likewise, more complicated than we thought. ~ Hal Herzog

It's not that there are no differences between human and non-human animals, any more than there are no differences between black people and white people, freeborn citizens and slaves, men and women, Jews and gentiles, gays or heterosexuals. The question is rather: are they morally relevant differences? This matters because morally catastrophic consequences can ensue when we latch on to a real but morally irrelevant difference between sentient beings. ~ David Pearce

The Talmud specifically defines all who are not Jews as non-human animals.

-- Judaism's Strange Gods, page 43 ~ Michael A. Hoffman II

The only consistency in the way humans think about animals is inconsistency. ~ Hal Herzog

To me, it is one world, and the non-human animals bear the brunt of oppression and suffering. ~ Ingrid Newkirk

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. ~ Jane Goodall

Animal liberation is also human liberation. Animal liberationists care about the quality of life for all. We recognize our kinship with all feeling beings. We identify with the powerless and the vulnerable, the victims, all those dominated, oppressed and exploited. And it is the non-human animals whose suffering is the most intense, widespread, expanding, systematic and socially sanctioned of all. ~ Henry Spira

Freedom, for him, lay at the heart of all human experience, and this set humans apart from all other kinds of object. Other things merely sit in place, waiting to be pushed or pulled around. Even non-human animals mainly follow the instincts and behaviors that characterise their species, Sartre believed. But as a human being, I have no perceived nature at all. I create that nature through what I choose to do. Of course I may be influenced by my biology, or by aspects of my culture and personal background, but none of this adds to a complete blueprint for producing me. I am always one step ahead of myself, making myself up as I go along... having found myself thrown into the world, I go on to create my own definition (or nature, or essence), in a way that never happens with other objects or life forms. You might think you have defined me by some label, but you are wrong, for I am always a work in progress. I create myself constantly through action, and this is so fundamental to my human condition that, for Sartre, it is the human condition, from the moment of first consciousness to the moment when death wipes it out. I am my own freedom: no more, no less. ~ Sarah Bakewell

Nothing is more violent and radical than what's being done to non-human animals in our society. If a researcher won't stop abusing animals and is stopped physically, whether with the use of force, or is killed, I certainly wouldn't lose sleep over that idea. ~ Jerry Vlasak

The first and most important impact of climate change on human civilisation will be an acute and permanent crisis of food supply. Eating regularly is a non-negotiable activity and countries that cannot feed their people are unlikely to be reasonable about it. ~ Gwynne Dyer

From the perspective of a general human being – a non-scientist, the most valuable element of the human mental life, is Emotion – a tiny portion of our conscious mental world. We humans as a species crave for emotional stimulation. And in many cases, as it happens, we are actually slaves to our emotions. ~ Abhijit Naskar

It is obvious that human (and non-human) diseases are evolving with an unusual rapidity simply because changes in our behaviour facilitate cross-fertilization of different strains of germs as never before, while an unending flow of new medicines (and pesticides) also present infectious organisms with rigorous, changing challenges to their survival. ~ William H. McNeill

Both ignorance and the old metaphysics tend to produce these undesirable nervous effects of reversed order and so non-survival evaluation. If we use the nervous ystem in a way which is against its survival structure, we must expect non-survival. Human history is short, but already we have astonishing records of extinction. ~ Alfred Korzybski

That this blind and aging man forged ahead with such gusto is a remarkable lesson, a tale for the ages. Euler's courage, determination, and utter unwillingness to be beaten serves, in the truest sense of the word, as an inspiration for mathematician and non-mathematician alike. The long history of mathematics provides no finer example of the triumph of the human spirit. ~ William Dunham

The great and only possible dignity of man lies in his power deliberately to choose certain moral values by which to live as steadfastly as if he, too, like a character in a play, were immured against the corrupting rush of time. Snatching the eternal out of the desperately fleeting is the great magic trick of human existence. As far as we know, as far as there exists any kind of empiric evidence, there is no way to beat the beat the game of being against non-being, in which non-being is the predestined victor on realistic levels. ~ Tennessee Williams

Can there be true equality in the classroom and the boardroom if there isn't in the bedroom? Back in 1995 the National Commission on Adolescent Sexual Health declared healthy sexual development a basic human right. Teen intimacy, it said, ought to be "consensual, non-exploitative, honest, pleasurable, and protected against unintended pregnancy and STDs." How is it, over two decades later, that we are so shamefully short of that goal?

Sara McClelland, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, writes about sexuality as a matter of "intimate justice," touching on fundamental issues of gender inequality, economic disparity, violence, bodily integrity, physical and mental health, self-efficacy, and power dynamics in our most personal relationships. She asks us to consider: Who has the right to engage in sexual behavior? Who has the right to enjoy it? Who is the primary beneficiary of the experience? Who feels deserving? How does each partner define "good enough?" Those are thorny questions when looking at female sexuality at any age, but particularly when considering girls' early, formative experience. Nonetheless, I was determined to ask them. ~ Peggy Orenstein

In October 1995 the President's Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments reported that secret radiation experiments on indigent patients and mentally retarded children were not only done, but that these people were deceived about the nature of their treatments. Dr. William Silverman asserted that performing non-therapeutic experiments on children without authorization from parents was part of a broader "ethos of the time" in which "everyone was a draftee" in a national war on disease. ~ Carol Rutz

The planet Earth in its present mode of florescence is being devastated. This devastation is being fostered and protected by legal, political and economic establishments that exalt the human community while offering no protection to the non-human modes of being. There is an urgent need for a Jurisprudence (system of governance) that recognizes that the well-being of the integral world community is primary, and that human well-being is derivative - an Earth Jurisprudence. ~ Thomas Berry

Advaita" in Sanskrit means "Non-Duality." This is a difficult concept for most people as we look about us and see multiple objects. But what we see are only transformations not permanent forms, whether we are speaking of a chair, a tree, or a human being. Each exists provisionally, but is certainly not lasting. One day the tree may become the chair and the human body will be eaten by worms. The "I" that observes all this may disappear and become another "I". ~ Justin Stone

H. G. Wells was not the only one to mention Churchill and Hitler in the same breath: "Churchill and Hitler are striving to change the nature of their respective countrymen by forcing and hammering violent methods on them. Man may be suppressed in this manner but he cannot be changed. Ahimsa [non-violence in the Hindu tradition], on the other hand, can change human nature and sooner than men like Churchill and Hitler." ~ Mahatma Gandhi

There are numerous daytime and night time photographs and videotapes of clearly non-human spacecraft from all over the world; these films and videotapes have been evaluated and deemed authentic by competent experts in optical physics and related fields. ~ Steven M. Greer

Unfortunately, what anti-human trafficking NGOs [non-governmental organizations] really do is instead quite damaging: they normalize existent labor opportunities for women, no matter how low the pay, dangerous the conditions, or abusive an environment they foster. And they shame women who reject such jobs. ~ Anne Elizabeth Moore

When the days become longer and there is more sunshine, the grass becomes fresh and, consequently, we feel very happy. On the other hand, in autumn, one leaf falls down and another leaf falls down. The beautiful plants become as if dead and we do not feel very happy. Why? I think it is because deep down our human nature likes construction, and does not like destruction. Naturally, every action which is destructive is against human nature. Constructiveness is the human way. Therefore, I think that in terms of basic human feeling, violence is not good. Non-violence is the only way. ~ Dalai Lama

There is no evil in human affairs that has not some good mingled with it.
[It., Non e male alcuno nelle cose umane che non abbia congiunto seco qualche bene.] ~ Francesco Guicciardini

All of us, writers and non-writers alike, have incredible well-springs of personal experience and history. And we also have imagination - which I think is a kind of human miracle. ~ Ayana Mathis

Action is life and non-action is death. ~ Abhijit Naskar

It's what non-car people don't get. They see all cars as just a ton and a half, two tons of wires, glass, metal, and rubber, and that's all they see. People like you or I know we have an unshakable belief that cars are living entities ... You can develop a relationship with a car and that's what non-car people don't get ... When something has foibles and won't handle properly, that gives it a particularly human quality because it makes mistakes, and that's how you can build a relationship with a car that other people won't get. ~ Jeremy Clarkson

Human beings cannot be willed and molded into non-existence. ~ Angela Davis

Un homme qui lit, ou qui pense, ou qui calcule, appartient a' l'espe' ce et non au sexe; dans ses meilleurs moments, il e chappe me me a' l'humain. A person who reads or thinks or calculates, belongs to a kind and not to a gender; in his or her best moments, he or she escapes being human. ~ Stephanie Crayencour

The Positive Paradigm is:

. . . a new, inclusive reality map, one people worldwide can easily comprehend and agree upon. It is equally compatible with scriptures and science, bridging the gap between them. It fulfills Einstein's intuited search for the Unified Field Theory, picturing how all parts of creation are related, interwoven and interdependent.

Working with the Positive Paradigm empowers the "substantially new manner of thinking," which, Einstein said, is necessary "if mankind is to survive."
For thousands of years, this genesis formula, the very heart of the creative process, was hidden as the secret treasure of initiates. Its knowledge was transmitted exclusively to qualified students in the inner circles of monastic schools. When Einstein intuited the theory of relativity and made it available to the general public, its long-foreseen abuse materialized. To Einstein's horror, it was misused to explode atomic bombs.

This context justifies making the positive application of Einstein's inspired vision equally public now. For in its traditional context, this three-part formula is an essential piece of the knowledge puzzle. It has the powerful potential to offset earlier abuse with opposite and equally unifying results. A timely shift to the Positive Paradigm could tip the scales of history in favor of human survival.
p. 11. ~ Patricia E. West

Everything changes except human behavior and its consequences. ~ Stephanie M. Sellers

It is noted that from 1967 to 1995 essays on negative emotions far outnumbered those on positive emotions in the psychological literature. The ratio was 21:1. Even those supreme perpetrators of pop nihilism, The New York Times and The Washington Post, have a better ratio than psychological literature. They average 12 negative stories to every one that might be construed to be non-negative. Many of their non-negative stories, however, cover success in sports and entertainment.

I demand that the purveyors of despair who pretend to be dispassionate observes of the human condition go ahead and disclose that the 10 most beautiful words in the English languages are chimes, dawn, golden, hush, lullaby, luminous, melody, mist, murmuring, and tranquil; that Java sparrows prefer the music of Back over that of Schoenberg; that math experts have determined there are 1/96 trillion ways to lace up your shoes; that the Inuit term for making love is translated as 'laughing together in bed;' and that according to Buckminster Fuller, "pollution is nothing but resources we're not harvesting. ~ Rob Brezsny

If non-linear leaps in intelligence and ability are possible, why haven't these effects been observed in our schools? I believe the answer lies in the profound inertia of human thought: when an entire society believes something is impossible, it suppresses, by its very way of life, the evidence that would contradict that belief. ~ John Mighton

Capitalism, as practiced, is a financially profitable, non-sustainable aberration in human development. ~ Paul Hawken

Erwin Strauss, in his brilliant monograph on obsession, similarly earlier showed how repulsed Swift was by the animality of the body, by its dirt and decay. Straus pronounced a more clinical judgment on Swift's disgust, seeing it as part of the typical obsessive's worldview: "For all obsessives sex is severed from unification and procreation....Through the...isolation of the genitals from the whole of the body, sexual functions are experienced as excretions and as decay." This degree of fragmentation is extreme, but we all see the world through obsessive eyes at least part of the time and to some degree; and as Freud said, not only neurotics take exception to the fact that "we are born between urine and feces." In t his horror of the incongruity of man Swift the poet gives more tormented voice to the dilemma that haunts us all, and it is worth summing it up one final time: Excreting is the curse that threatens madness because it shows man his abject finitude, his physicalness, the likely unreality of his hopes and dreams. But even more immediately, it represents man's utter bafflement at the sheer non-sense of creation: to fashion the sublime miracle of the human face, the mysterium tremendum of radiant female beauty, the veritable goddesses that beautiful women are; to bring this out of nothing, out of the void, and make it shine in noonday; to take such a miracle and put miracles again within it, deep in the mystery of eyes that peer out-the eye that gave even the dry Darwi ~ Ernest Becker

Paul's exciting and paradoxical proclamation is that "God's folly is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength" (1 Corinthians 1:25). He says that only Spirit can hold and absorb the seeming contradictions and allow us to see and to know from an utterly new and unitive vantage point, which is the deepening fruit of contemplation. Only Spirit-in-us can know non-dually or paradoxically and absorb contradictions - inside of and with God. Only God's Spirit-with-us can fully forgive, accept, and allow reality to be what it is. Neither logic nor law can fully achieve this, but participation with and in God can. (This does not make logic or law unnecessary; they are simply inadequate to the work of transformation.) ~ Richard Rohr

Perverted quality; Moral perversion; The innate corruption of human nature due to original sin; Both the elect and the non-elect came into the world in a state of total d. and alienation from God, and can, of themselves do nothing but sin. J.H. Blunt. ~ Arundhati Roy

Stupidity is a factor to be reckoned with in human affairs. The true leader always expects to encounter it, and prepares to endure it patiently so long as it is normal stupidity. He knows that his ideas will be distorted, his orders carelessly executed; and that there will be jealousy among his assistants. He takes these inevitable phenomena into account, and instead of attempting to find men without faults, who are non-existent, he tries to make use of the best men at his disposal - as they are, and not as they ought to be. ~ Andre Maurois

The transformation of the world is brought about by the transformation of oneself, because the self is the product and a part of the total process of human existence. To transform oneself, self-knowledge is essential; without knowing what you are, there is no basis for right thought, and without knowing yourself there cannot be transformation. One must know oneself as on is, not as on wishes to be, which is merely an ideal and there for fictitious, unreal; it is only that which is that can be transformed, not that which you wish to be. To know oneself as one is requires and extraordinary alertness of mind, because what is, is constantly undergoing transformation, change; and to follow it swiftly the mind must not be tethered to any particular dogma or belief, to any particular pattern of action. If you would follow anything, it is no good being tethered. To know yourself, there must be the awareness, the alertness of mind in which there is freedom from all beliefs, from all idealization, because beliefs and ideals only give you a color, perverting true perception. If you want to know what you are, you cannot imagine or have belief in something which you are not. If I am greedy, envious, violent, merely having an ideal of non-violence, of non-greed, is of little value. The understanding of what you are, whatever it be – ugly or beautiful, wicked or mischievous – the understanding of what you are, without distortion, is the beginning of virtue. Virtue is essential, for it gives ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

THE WORLD IS increasingly designed to depress us. Happiness isn't very good for the economy. If we were happy with what we had, why would we need more? How do you sell an anti-ageing moisturiser? You make someone worry about ageing. How do you get people to vote for a political party? You make them worry about immigration. How do you get them to buy insurance? By making them worry about everything. How do you get them to have plastic surgery? By highlighting their physical flaws. How do you get them to watch a TV show? By making them worry about missing out. How do you get them to buy a new smartphone? By making them feel like they are being left behind. To be calm becomes a kind of revolutionary act. To be happy with your own non-upgraded existence. To be comfortable with our messy, human selves, would not be good for business. ~ Matt Haig

It was exciting and intellectually gratifying to speculate on what might lie waiting in the black gulfs when one was behind the business end of a telescope, quite another to do so isolated on an unpleasant little speck of a world such as this, confronted by a ship of non-human manufacture that uncomfortably resembled a growth instead of a familiar device for manipulating and overcoming the neat laws of physics. ~ Alan Dean Foster

People are more willing to support the exercise of authority over themselves when they believe it to be an objective, neutral feature of the natural world. This was the idea behind the concept of the divine right of kings. By making the king appear to be an integral part of God's plan for the world rather than an ordinary human being dominating his fellows by brute force, the public could be more easily persuaded to bow to his authority. However, when the doctrine of divine right became discredited, a replacement was needed to ensure that the public did not view political authority as merely the exercise of naked power. That replacement is the concept of the rule of law. ~ John Hasnas

The most powerful state for a human to be in is the state of embracing completely the reality of what is - Now. It is to say "Yes" to life, which is now and always now. There is a vast power in that "Yes," that state of inner non-resistance to what is. ~ Eckhart Tolle

Shod Omnivorism; it pretty much sums up the current state of the world. I find the word 'shod' deeply descriptive; it conjures such an archaic barbaric feeling, of being shackled and tamed, captive and downtrodden. Omnivorism is the concept that every living and non-living thing on this planet is a potential meal, and God forbid that anyone should question another's right to eat whatever, whoever and however they desire. Shod and Omnivorism together truly emphasise the sad disequilibrium of the dominant prevailing human mindset. ~ Mango Wodzak

Gandhian nonviolence as interpreted in Naess:
1. The character of the means used in a group struggle determines the character of the results.

2. In a group struggle you can keep the goal-directed motivation and the ability to work effectively for the realization of the goal stronger than the destructive, violent tendencies, and the tendencies to passivity, despondency, or destruction, only by making a constructive program part of your campaign and by giving all phases of your struggle, as far as possible a positive character.

3. Short-term violence contradicts long-term universal reduction of violence.

4. You can give a struggle a constructive character only if you conceive of it and carry it out as a struggle in favour of living beings and certain values, thus eventually fighting antagonisms, not antagonists.

5. It increases your understanding of the conflict, of the participants, and of your own motivation, to live together with the participants, especially with those for whom you primarily fight. The most adequate form for living together is that of jointly doing constructive work.

6. If you live together with those for whom you primarily struggle and do constructive work with them, this will create a natural basis for trust and confidence in you.

7. All human (and non-human) beings have long-term interests in common.

8. Cooperation on common goals reduces the chance that the actions and at ~ Arne Næss

The extremists had declared jihad against anyone and anything that challenged their vision of a pure Islamic society, and these artifacts - treatises about logic, astrology, and medicine, paeans to music, poems idealizing romantic love - represented five hundred years of human joy. They celebrated the sensual and the secular, and they bore the explicit message that humanity, as well as God, was capable of creating beauty. They were monumentally subversive. ~ Joshua Hammer