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Rabbit Advocacy Animal Matters
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Favourite Quotes From Famous Individuals Look deep into the eyes of
any animal, and then for a moment, trade places, their life becomes as precious
as yours and you become as vulnerable as them. Now smile if you believe all
animals deserve our respect and our protection, for in a way, they are us, and
we are them. I have reached zero tolerance
for the cruelty against our animal brothers. If we are to nurture our culture,
let's begin with the animals who have been nothing but our beasts of burden for
so long. Human beings are the only
animals of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid. The wild, cruel beast is not
behind the bars of the cage. He is in front of it. "What I think about
vivisection is that if people admit that they have the right to take or endanger
the life of living beings for the benefit of many, there will be no limit to
their cruelty." "I despise and abhor the
pleas on behalf of that infamous practice, vivisection... I would rather submit
to the worst of deaths, so far as pain goes, than have a single dog or cat
tortured to death on the pretense of sparing me a twinge or two." Atrocities are not less
atrocities when they occur in laboratories and are called medical research. "There is no fundamental
difference between man and the higher animals in their mental faculties... The
lower animals, like man, manifestly feel pleasure and pain, happiness, and
misery." "All the arguments to prove
man's superiority can not shatter this hard fact: In suffering, the animals are
our equals." [Animals are] those unfortunate slaves and victims of the most brutal part of
mankind. First it was necessary to civilize man in relation to man. Now it is necessary
to civilize man in relation to nature and the animals. The
soul is the same in all living creatures, although the body of each is
different. Compassion is a necessary outcome of social life. But compassion also means a
considerable step in general intelligence and sensibility. It is the first step
towards the development of higher moral sentiments. It is, in turn, a powerful
factor of further evolution. 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. ~Romain Rolland, Nobel Prize 1915 Mark Twain http://www.twainquotes.com/quotesatoz.html
"Of all the creatures that were made, man is the most detestable.
Of the entire brood he is the only one--the solitary one--that possesses malice.
That is the basest of all instincts, passions, vices--the most hateful. He is
the only creature that has pain for sport, knowing it to be pain. Also--in all
the list he is the only creature that has a nasty mind."
"Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the
only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it. It is a trait that is
not known to the higher animals."
"I have been reading the morning paper. I do it every
morning--knowing well that I shall find in it the usual depravities and
basenesses and hypocrisies and cruelties that make up civilization, and cause me
to put in the rest of the day pleading for the damnation of the human race. I
cannot seem to get my prayers answered, yet I do not despair."
"Damn these human beings; if I had invented them I would go hide
my head in a bag."
In a book by Charles Darwin, Twain had written: "Can any
plausible excuse be furnished for the crime of creating the human race?"
"It is not worthwhile to try to keep history from repeating
itself, for man's character will always make the preventing of the repetitions
impossible." Letters from the Earth includes a selection titled Damned Human Race http://skeptically.org/logicalthreads/id14.html |