©2008-2012 Roedy Green, Canadian Mind ProductsQuotations are selected from this pool (and other quotation pools) in a pseudorandom way every hour and inserted at the top and bottom of some of the major pages on this website. Feel free to copy any of these quotes and paste them for whatever purpose you please.
For millions of years, on average, one species became extinct every century.…We are now heaving more than a thousand different species of animals and plants off the planet every year.
~ Douglas Adams (born: 1952-03-11 died: 2001-05-11 at age: 49), author of Last Chance to See
I think animal testing is a terrible idea; they get all nervous and give the wrong answers.
~ Anonymous
It’s a moral question about whether we have the right to exterminate species.
~ Sir David Attenborough (born: 1926-05-08 age: 86)
They used to call grey whales devilfish because would smash whaling boats to protect their young.
~ A Tour Boat Operator in BajaThis is so like the way the Americans deliberately erroneously refer to Afghans and Iraqis as terrorists when they fight back killing American soldiers to protect their young from the illegal American invasion.
The question is not, “Can they [animals] reason?” nor, “Can they talk?” but rather, “Can they suffer?”
~ Jeremy Bentham (born: 1748-02-05 died: 1832-06-06 at age: 84)
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.
~ Robert Browning (born: 1812-05-07 died: 1889-12-12 at age: 77)
Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.
~ Samuel Butler (born: 1835-12-04 died: 1902-06-18 at age: 66)
One of the ill effects of cruelty is that it makes the bystanders cruel.
~ Thomas Fowell Buxton (born: 1786-04-07 died: 1845-02-19 at age: 58)
The art of angling, the cruelest, the coldest and the stupidest of pretended sports.
~ Lord George Gordon Byron (born: 1788-01-22 died: 1824-04-19 at age: 36)
Until we have the courage to recognize cruelty for what it is — whether its victim is human or animal — we cannot expect things to be much better in this world… We cannot have peace among men whose hearts delight in killing any living creature. By every act that glorifies or even tolerates such moronic delight in killing we set back the progress of humanity.
~ Rachel Carson (born: 1907-05-27 died: 1964-04-14 at age: 56)
Takeover consists in diverting some fraction of the earth’s life-supporting capacity from supporting other kinds of life to supporting our kind. Our pre-Sapiens ancestors, with their simple stone tools and fire, took over for human use, organic materials that would otherwise have been consumed by insects, carnivores or bacteria. From about 10,000 years ago, our earliest horticulturalist ancestors began take over land upon which to grow crops for human consumption. That land would otherwise have supported trees, shrubs or wild grasses and all the animals dependent thereon — but fewer humans. As the expanding generations replaced each other, Homo sapiens took over more and more of the surface of this planet, essentially at the expense of its other inhabitants.
~ William Catton Jr. (born: 1926-01-15 age: 86), Overshoot 1980
From the point of view of the other species on earth, we humans are as welcome as Viking invaders or pancreas cancer.
Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he’s been given. But up to now he hasn’t been a creator, only a destroyer. Forests keep disappearing, rivers dry up, wild lifes become extinct, the climate’s ruined and the land grows poorer and uglier every day.
~ Anton Chekhov (born: 1860-01-29 died: 1904-07-15 at age: 44)
You are either an activist or an inactivist.
~ The Cove 2009 A documentary about Japan’s secret atrocities against dolphins.
If any kid realized what was involved in factory farming, they would never touch meat again. I was so moved by the intelligence, sense of fun, and personality of the animals I worked with on Babe that by the end of the film I was a vegetarian.
~ James Cromwell (born: 1940-01-27 age: 72)
Animals, whom we have made our slaves, we do not like to consider our equal.
~ Charles Darwin (born: 1809-02-12 died: 1882-04-19 at age: 73)
There is no fundamental difference between man and the higher mammals in their mental faculties… The difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind. We have seen that the senses and intuitions, the various emotions and faculties, such as love, memory, attention and curiosity, imitation, reason, etc., of which man boasts, may be found in an incipient, or even sometimes a well-developed condition, in the lower animals.
~ Charles Darwin (born: 1809-02-12 died: 1882-04-19 at age: 73)
I ask people why they have deer heads on their walls. They always say because it’s such a beautiful animal. There you go. I think my mother is attractive, but I have photographs of her.
~ Ellen DeGeneres (born: 1958-01-26 age: 54)
Most animals [killed] in Britain are stunned. Stunned is defined as producing unconsciousness of the head with carbon dioxide, gas, electrical shock… all of them aiming to allow the animal to bleed out while it is still alive. An animal that is dead before it has bled out will be unsuitable for marketing.
~ Bailhere’s Comprehensive Veterinary Dictionary
At the moment our human world is based on the suffering and destruction of millions of non-humans. To perceive this and to do something to change it in personal and public ways is to undergo a change of perception akin to a religious conversion. Nothing can ever be seen in quite the same way again because once you have admitted the terror and pain of other species you will, unless you resist conversion, be always aware of the endless permutations of suffering that support our society.
~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (born: 1859-05-22 died: 1930-07-07 at age: 71)
Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.
~ Thomas Alva Edison (born: 1847-02-11 died: 1931-10-18 at age: 84)
If a man aspires towards a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from injury to animals.
~ Albert Einstein (born: 1879-03-14 died: 1955-04-18 at age: 76)
Humanity is the cancer of nature.
~ Dave Foreman (born: 1947 age: 64) founder of Earth First
Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow-creatures is amusing in itself.
~ James Anthony Froude (born: 1818-04-23 died: 1894-10-20 at age: 76) 1886.This is not quite true. Orcas will sometimes play with a seal tossing it about like a football. Wolves will sometimes kill more than they can consume. Cats will sometimes play with a mouse letting it escape then catching it again.
To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being. The more helpless the creature, the more that it is entitled to protection by man from the cruelty of man.
~ Mahatma Gandhi (born: 1869-10-02 died: 1948-01-30 at age: 78)
Deer hunting would be fine sport, if only the deer had guns.
~ William S. Gilbert (born: 1836-11-18 died: 1911-05-29 at age: 74) of Gilbert and Sullivan
Killing animals for sport, for pleasure, for adventure and for hides and furs is a phenomena which is at once disgusting and distressing. There is no justification in indulging in such acts of brutality.
~ Tenzin Gyatso (born: 1935-07-06 age: 76) the fourteenth Dalai Lama
Suppose that tomorrow a group of beings from another planet were to land on Earth, beings who considered themselves as superior to you as you feel yourself to be to other animals. Would they have the right to treat you as you treat the animals you breed, keep and kill for food?
~ John Harris (born: 1946 age: 65)
I am not basically a conservationist. When the last great whale is slaughtered, as it surely will be, the whales’ suffering will be over. This is not the whales’ loss, but man’s. I am not concerned about the wiping out of a species — this is man’s folly — I have only one concern, the suffering which we deliberately inflict upon animals whilst they live.
~ Clive Hollands (born: 1929 age: 82)
We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form.
~ William Ralph Inge (born: 1860-06-06 died: 1954-02-26 at age: 93) Outspoken Essays
Animals… are there merely as a means to an end. That end is man.
~ Immanuel Kant (born: 1724-04-22 died: 1804-02-12 at age: 79)This is the attitude of the modern factory farmer or medical research scientist. Nothing matters but the convenience of man. Genesis encouraged this view.
Men! The only animal in the world to fear.
~ David Herbert Lawrence (born: 1885-09-11 died: 1930-03-02 at age: 44)
Whales Weep Not
They say the sea is cold, but the sea contains
the hottest blood of all, and the wildest, the most urgent.All the whales in the wider deeps, hot are they, as they urge
on and on, and dive beneath the icebergs.
The right whales, the sperm-whales, the hammer-heads, the killers
there they blow, there they blow, hot wild white breath out of the sea!
And they rock, and they rock, through the sensual ageless ages
on the depths of the seven seas,
and through the salt they reel with drunk delight
and in the tropics tremble they with love
and roll with massive, strong desire, like gods.
Then the great bull lies up against his bride
in the blue deep bed of the sea,
as mountain pressing on mountain, in the zest of life:
and out of the inward roaring of the inner red ocean of whale-blood
the long tip reaches strong, intense, like the maelstrom-tip, and comes to rest
in the clasp and the soft, wild clutch of a she-whale’s fathomless body.And over the bridge of the whale’s strong phallus, linking the wonder of whales
the burning archangels under the sea keep passing, back and forth,
keep passing, archangels of bliss
from him to her, from her to him, great Cherubim
that wait on whales in mid-ocean, suspended in the waves of the sea
great heaven of whales in the waters, old hierarchies.And enormous mother whales lie dreaming suckling their whale-tender young
and dreaming with strange whale eyes wide open in the waters of the beginning and the end.
And bull-whales gather their women and whale-calves in a ring
when danger threatens, on the surface of the ceaseless flood
and range themselves like great fierce Seraphim facing the threat
encircling their huddled monsters of love.
And all this happens in the sea, in the salt
where God is also love, but without words:
and Aphrodite is the wife of whales
most happy, happy she!and Venus among the fishes skips and is a she-dolphin
~ David Herbert Lawrence (born: 1885-09-11 died: 1930-03-02 at age: 44)
she is the gay, delighted porpoise sporting with love and the sea
she is the female tunny-fish, round and happy among the males
and dense with happy blood, dark rainbow bliss in the sea.
An individual animal doesn’t care if its species is facing extinction — it cares if it is feeling pain.
~ Ronnie Lee (born: 1951 age: 60)
When I was twelve, I went hunting with my father and we shot a bird. He was laying there and something struck me. Why do we call this fun to kill this creature who was as happy as I was when I woke up this morning?
~ Marv Levy
If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reasons.
C.S. Lewis (born: 1898-11-29 died: 1963-11-22 at age: 64)
I care not much for a man’s religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.
~ Abraham Lincoln (born: 1809-02-12 died: 1865-04-15 at age: 56)
Nature provides an infant with a foreskin for protection and pleasure. The tiny foreskin of a baby boy becomes a significant mobile sheath of highly erogenous skin on an adult man. Nowhere else on his body is the skin so mobile and sensate. Infant circumcision removes this, without consent from the patient, and in its place leaves a scar.
~ James Loewen (born: 1954-03-26 age: 58) National Organization of Circumcision Information Resource
The idea that we would operate and amputate healthy tissue from a baby, from an unconsenting minor, to supposedly prevent some hypothetical disease, goes against the Hippocratic oath.
~ James Loewen (born: 1954-03-26 age: 58) National Organization of Circumcision Information Resource
Results from animal tests are not transferable between species, and therefore cannot guarantee product safety for humans… In reality these tests do not provide protection for consumers from unsafe products, but rather they are used to protect corporations from legal liability.
~ Herbert Gundersheimer, M.D.
The beef industry has contributed to more American deaths than all the wars of this century, all natural disasters, and all automobile accidents combined. If beef is your idea of ‘real food for real people’, you’d better live real close to a real good hospital.
~ Neal D. Barnard, M.D. (born: 1946 age: 65)
Out of 135 criminals, including robbers and rapists, 118 admitted that when they were children they burned, hanged and stabbed domestic animals.
~ Ogonyok Magazine 1979.Consider George W. Bush and his childhood tortures of frogs.
Ask the experimenters why they experiment on animals, and the answer is: “Because the animals are like us.” Ask the experimenters why it is morally OK to experiment on animals, and the answer is: “Because the animals are not like us.” Animal experimentation rests on a logical contradiction.
~ Professor Charles R. Magel (born: 1920 age: 91)
Cruelty has cursed the human family for countless ages. It is almost impossible for one to be cruel to animals and kind to humans. If children are permitted to be cruel to their pets and other animals, they easily learn to get the same pleasure from the misery of fellow-humans. Such tendencies can easily lead to crime.
~ Frederic A. McGrand (born: 1895-07-05 died: 1988-09-03 at age: 93)
The reasons for legal intervention in favour of children apply not less strongly to the case of those unfortunate slaves and victims of the most brutal part of mankind — the lower animals.
~ John Stuart Mill (born: 1806-05-20 died: 1873-05-08 at age: 66)
When it comes to having a central nervous system and the ability to feel pain, hunger and thirst, a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy.
~ Ingrid Newkirk (born: 1949-06-11 age: 62)
Man is the only real enemy we have. Remove Man from the scene and the root cause of hunger and overwork is abolished for ever. Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals. He sets them to work, he gives back to them the bare minimum that will prevent them from starving and the rest he keeps for himself.
~ George Orwell (born: 1903-06-25 died: 1950-01-21 at age: 46) Animal Farm
Because of the urban sprawl crisis in the United States, wild animals are forced to live in closer proximity with humans. With few alternatives available, they have no choice but to enter our homes, parks and even downtown areas in search of food and shelter. When they do, homeowners, communities, municipalities and state agencies often hire nuisance wildlife control operators or U.S. Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services to use cruel, archaic methods, such as injurious traps and poisons, to resolve perceived conflicts with these animals. Ducks and geese are secretly shot, gassed and even bludgeoned to death with baseball bats. Beavers are caught and drowned in body-gripping traps or are sealed up alive in their own homes. Animals of all kinds are simply left to die from injuries or starvation.
~ PETA PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals)We humans don’t even give token acknowledgement to the fact that we pushed these animals off their lands. We are the thieves and trespassers, not they.
In a perfect world, animals would be free to live their lives to the fullest: raising their young, enjoying their native environments and following their natural instincts. However, domesticated dogs and cats cannot survive free in our concrete jungles, so we must take as good care of them as possible. People with the time, money, love and patience to make a lifetime commitment to an animal can make an enormous difference by adopting from shelters or rescuing animals from a perilous life on the street. But it is also important to stop manufacturing pets, thereby perpetuating a class of animals forced to rely on humans to survive.
~ PETA PETA Companion Animals: Pets or Prisoners?
Land ’O Lakes mistreats cows. Cows were electro-shocked, kicked and left to die slowly and painfully for days without veterinary care.
~ PETA PETA
Many household products and cosmetics companies still pump their products into animals’ stomachs, rub them onto their skin, squirt them into their eyes, or force animals to inhale them as aerosol sprays. Charities such as the March of Dimes use donations from private citizens to fund experiments on animals and the FDA (Federal Drug Administration) requires all drugs to be tested on animals. However, animals differ from humans significantly, making animal drug tests unreliable and dangerous. New research methods, such as computer models, cell cultures and human studies are more accurate, less expensive and much more humane.
~ PETA PETA
The problem with experiments has always been that human beings make the decisions on whether or not the animals have benefited from the treatment.
~ James Randi (born: 1928-08-07 age: 83)
Cockfighting was illegal in Oklahoma until 1963, when a judge ruled that chickens are not animals and therefore unprotected by anticruelty laws.
~ U.S. News & World Report 1999-12-06
Hunting is not a sport. In a sport, both sides should know they’re in the game.
~ Paul Rodriguez (born: 1955-01-19 age: 57)
10% of Dalmatians born are deaf. Imagine selectively breeding humans to be deaf. We would not put up with it.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
A diet of pure grain is no more suitable for a cow or a chicken than it is for a human. Meat producers tout it as if it were preferable to their natural diets.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
A single cat’s descendants would number 950,000 in ten years if they did not die from euthanasia or homelessness. If you don’t spay your cat, you are necessarily condemning her descendants to an early death.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Activists have had an impossible time ending the trade is blood diamonds and furs from animals killed in deliberately cruel traps because the selfish bitches who consume the products get off on the suffering.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans have emitted so much greenhouse gas that it is causing record temperatures. Americans deal with it with trips to the beach, iced drinks and air conditioning. The wild animals have access to no such relief.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Animals, even ones more intelligent than humans, such as cetacea and elephants have no rights at all in human law. It is much like the apartheid system where black people or Palestinians have no rights and everyone sees this as natural because religious tradition bestows special status on those currently with rights. The smug delusion of superiority that sustains apartheid is one of the least attractive features of humans.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Biologist Victoria Braithwaite in her book Do Fish Feel Pain? presents evidence fish are more intelligent and their behaviour more complex than we’d given them credit for. Anyone who has watched fish has seen them react just like other animals when hurt. The default assumption should be they too feel pain until proven otherwise.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Canadian sealers enjoy hacking baby seals to death with a hakapik, a heavy wooden club with a hammer head and metal hook on the end, because they want to punish the seals for stealing their fish. They forget that long before the seal hunt, cod were so abundant you could “walk across their backs”. Seals selectively eat the weak and diseased fish thus improving the stocks and preventing the spread of epidemics. In 2008 public outcry banned the hakapik and insisted seals bleed for a minute before skinning.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Cats have a strange mental power to command humans to send fleets of ships out to fetch them fish.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Christians postulated that horses and slaves had no souls and presumably thus could not even truly feel pain despite how it looked. This meant it was ok to beat them or work them to death. How convenient that this soul was invisible and undetectable. Its existence could be asserted or taken away at whim without evidence. Modern day Christians mistreat whales whose brains are considerably larger than theirs, justified with similar medieval superstition.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Do you like mosquitos? No? Then kindly stop wiping out all the frogs that eat them.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Early anthropologists spent their time pointing out how superior European culture was to everyone else’s. Early animal behaviourists are intent on proving man is the paragon of animals. When they discovered that Neanderthals had bigger brains than us, they immediately reversed themselves and decided smaller brains meant greater intelligence. If a dolphin and a man perform identical actions, behaviourists will interpret the dolphins’ acts in the most demeaning possible ways and interpret man’s as intelligent transcendence.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Earthworms like to congregate in balls in coffee grounds.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)Does this mean that coffee is a more healthful food than generally presumed, or that earthworms too like to get buzzed?
Egg producers advertise their eggs come from veggie fed chickens, as if a diet of pure grain were natural and healthful for a chicken. Chickens left to their own devices eat all manner of shoots, seeds, insects and worms they find while scratching in the dirt.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Even though we know that all mammals have equal capacity to suffer, for some reason some suffering is more equal than others. The suffering of the young, the beautiful or the human counts more.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Few women could be persuaded to touch a dead pig. Yet if you cut it up in pieces, called it pork or bacon, not only would they touch it, they would eat it.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Free range eggs taste better and look better. You give up nothing but cruelty.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Humans are such a diverse species. Some torture animals for pleasure. Others spend thousands of dollars for surgery to patch them up again.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Humans imagine their intelligence makes them infinitely superior to everything else in the cosmos. This can’t be true. Intelligence can’t be that big a deal because we share 99% of our DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid) with chimpanzees and because our intelligence evolved almost overnight. It must be just a handful of relatively simple tricks.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Humans tend to feel creeped out when they discover that ants enslave aphids and other homoptera, feeding off their secretions. Yet they rarely are grossed out by humans doing the same thing, and worse to domestic mammals.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Humans use violence against animals all the time. The law rarely intervenes. But if an animal uses violence against a human, it is immediately executed without trial, no matter what the provocation. Further, any human who used violence to defend an animal against another human will be prosecuted as if the violence were unprovoked. He cannot use a variant of the self defence excuse. The defence excuse is valid only when protecting an animal of the human species. Why the asymmetry? Humans believe they are superior to all other species and they are the only species deserving of legal projection. In a few cases, the law will intervene to protect salmon. But this is not because humans believe the salmon have any inherent right to life; killing salmon is considered equivalent to destroying some other human’s food.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
I don’t care how long they have been doing it, the Spanish bull fights are barbaric and cowardly. It is time they stopped. The French fight fairly the bulls without swords, risking their own necks, but not harming the bulls.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
I think the selling of eggs except free range eggs should be illegal. Those caught buying or selling should be treated with the same disdain we had for Michael Vick.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
I was wondering why animal testing of shampoos required applying chemicals in such concentrations and durations the rabbits went blind. Surely it would sufficient to push them to the point of showing irritation. Then it hit me. The cosmetic companies don’t care if their shampoos irritate. Plenty of them do. They are just worried about lawsuits from someone claiming the shampoo made them go blind. Still, what they are doing makes no sense, since chemicals that cause blindness are of no legal relevance because they don’t make it into the products. There is no need to prove that caustic chemicals are indeed seriously harmful, just that they are unsuitable.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
If a man treated a puppy the way farmers treat chickens, mobs would burn down his house.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
If a retarded child hit his thumb with a hammer, or Einstein hit his thumb with a hammer, the pain is the same. You know someone is in pain by the way they scream and writhe. The same is true for the pain an animal experiences. It a convenient lie that just because a creature is not intelligent, it cannot feel pain. That is just an excuse for mistreatment. Our nervous systems and chemistry of pain are identical. Think I’m pulling your leg? Read Do Fish Feel Pain to see what science has to say on the question.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
If ever we are visited by aliens, it will be a delegation from the galactic S.P.C.A. coming to shut us down for atrocities to fellow species, especially elephants, dolphins and whales.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
If I were a cow, I would far sooner be permitted to graze outside in a pasture for all but the last hours of my life than have some sanctimonious Christian offer a prayer for me after he had butchered me after keeping me confined in a filthy feed lot my entire life.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
If someone were taught torturing chickens in their back yard doing the same things factory farmers to do them routinely, the police would throw the book at them and the neighbours would drive them out of town.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Imagine going to a cocktail party with 200 guests, each zooming around at 65 km/hr (40.39 mph) and maintaining a conversation with each of the guests simultaneously, all talking at once. Dolphins do it all the time. One trick they use to help sort it all out is putting the name of the recipient on the front of each phrase, much the way a computer does when talking on a LAN (Local Area Network). The closest a human would come is sitting on a bus texting with many friends at once.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Imagine if some advanced species decided to interfere with human reproduction, selecting the most grossly fat males as the only suitable mates then later forbidding copulation altogether, managing all reproduction with artificial insemination. Might we humans harbour a little resentment? It would be hypocritical of us to complain since this is what we have done to pigs and cattle.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Imagine the outrage at a reality TV show where people shot puppies and kittens with arrows and guns and inserted hooks in their mouths and dragged them behind vehicles. These shows are common, except that the animals selected for maltreatment are deer, moose, ducks and fish.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
In 1821, Colonel Richard Martin, MP (Member of Parliament) for Galway in Ireland, introduced the Treatment of Horses bill into the House of Commons. It was hooted down amid shouts that the next thing would be rights for asses, dogs and cats. He persisted and his bill was passed a year later. The law made it illegal to “beat, abuse, or ill-treat any horse, mare, gelding, mule, ass, ox, cow, heifer, steer, sheep or other cattle” with fines up to five pounds and two months imprisonment — more teeth that today’s laws have, though not well enforced.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
In a documentary, I was watching an opossum stalking a snail. The black snail glistened and writhed. For a fraction of second, I could see the snail as delicious and desirable, the way the opossum would.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
In Australia, each year coconuts kill 25 people and sharks 10. Yet you don’t see hunters out exterminating coconuts on the pretext of protecting people.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
In Banff, rangers use sheepdogs to run elk off their golf course. Of course, from the elk point of view, the humans invaded their pasture and built a golf course.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
In French bullfighting, the bull is neither harmed nor killed. Surely this form of fighting requires greater bravery than the Spanish style where the bull is crippled by the picadors to keep its head low. It is time to propagandise Spanish bull fighting as cowardly.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
In Shakespear’s time, genteel people watched bull baiting. They did not consider it cruel. They had been doing it for centuries. Similarly, in modern day Canada, we have rodeos. It never occurs to the audience the cowboys are tormenting the animals no matter how they bellow, buck and struggle or how many animals are killed each year.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
In the days of slavery, slave-produced cotton was cheaper and out-competed cotton produced by paid labourers. Today, ordinary eggs produced by confining chickens with their feet wired to the bottom of tiny cages out-compete free range eggs produced by chickens than can run around outside. Eggs ought to be labeled with a photo of how they were produced, then, if that does not stop the trade in cruel eggs, all but free range eggs should be made illegal for the same reason we abolished slavery.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
It is demeaning to excuse animal cruelty in the Inuit and other native peoples. It is like excusing them on the grounds they are children, that they should not be held to the same high standards of their betters. Excusing them on the grounds the cruelty is ancestral is like excusing Christians for burning witches or dragging homosexuals behind cars just because they did it in the past.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Man has pushed elephants off almost their entire original range so that now only a handful of elephants remain. Yet man has the gall to term elephants “crop raiders” and detusks or shoots them, as if the elephants were the ones stealing.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Most of mankind’s problem stem from his monumental conceit and self-centredness. He believes in religions that preposterously flatter him that the entire universe was created solely for his benefit and he is the center of it. He believes no other species matters at all. He steals lands from them, and enslaves them, and even tortures them without even allowing the interests of those other species to be heard. In the process, he forgets that he too is an animal just as dependent on the other animals, plants, water, air and soil as any other animal.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Nearly all man’s woes stem from his lack of compassion for other species. Huh? Man’s problems are nearly all about destroying the environment that sustains him. If he had any consideration at all for other species, he would not do that.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
North Americans are squeamish about meat-eating. They have special words to disguise the fact they are eating cows, calves, sheep, deer, pigs, stomachs, brains, intestines, muscles, testicles, penises… They like their steaks bloody, but use the euphemism juicy.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Of course animals have extra sensory perception, but it is only extra-sensory relative to humans. To dolphins, ultrasound is sensory, to elephants, infrasound is sensory and to dog, the ability to detect emotions in others through enhanced sense of smell is no magic.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
People I don’t like often call for increased cruelty to animals on the grounds they are not sentient. The Oxford dictionary defines sentient as “able to perceive or feel things”. A rabbit has ears to hear, eyes to see, a nose to smell. It clearly can feel pain, fear and sexual excitement. Clearly it is sentient. How can anyone in their right mind claim rabbits, whales, dolphins, seals, cattle, fish… are not sentient? It must be that these people don’t know what the word means. They seem to use the word to mean, “I care about it’s welfare”.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
People who buy rhinoceros horn, dried seahorses or bear gall bladders have no excuse. They know they are driving the animals to extinction. They know there are now far better treatments for erectile dysfunction.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
People who would never dream of torturing an animal will casually discard plastic rings like the one that deformed this snapping turtle.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
People who would never dream of torturing a creature will casually discard plastic rings like the one that severed this fish.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Poultry farmers are extortionists. They demand yet more money not to torture chickens.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Republicanism is the political arm of the animal cruelty movement. Republicanism teaches that all that matters is profit. The suffering of others, human or animal does not matter. It exalts selfishness even when small personal indulgences bring major suffering for others.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Republicans plead poverty when it comes to fair trade coffee or free range eggs, then spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on gas-guzzling cars and sprawling energy-inefficient homes so they can impress their friends with how wealthy they are.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Shark fin soup is tasteless. Its only value is as a status symbol costing a bowl. Chinese fishermen haul endangered sharks from the ocean and hack their fins off and toss them back into the ocean where the sharks die slowly.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Shark wrestling is the only form of fishing that has a right to call itself a sport.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Sicilians to this day massively slaughter endangered blue fin tuna, just before they can spawn. If the Japanese can give up traditional whaling, surely we must demand the Sicilians give up this environmental crime. If they refuse, then the rest of the world should boycott all Sicilian goods and services.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Slave owners considered their slaves as livestock. So presumably they would have selectively bred them just as they did horses, cows and dogs. They likely introduced their own genes into the mix from recreational sex with the slaves. What traits were they trying to enhance? Yet I never hear about this or what effect it had in differentiating American blacks from Africans. What effect does this have on black people living in the USA today? It is probably considered too sensitive a topic.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
So-called sportsmen have known for years that lead is poisonous, but they still use it for buckshot. Now many lakes are fatal for ducks who land there because the sediments are carpeted in lead.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
So-called sportsmen have known for years that lead is poisonous, but they continue to use it for fishing weights.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The canine nose is a masterpiece of evolution. For dogs, it has replaced sight as the primary sense organ. Breeding dogs with pushed-in faces that deform the nose is like deliberately blinding them.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The first animal rights legislation was passed in Ireland in 1635. It prohibited pulling wool off sheep and attaching ploughs to horses’ tails.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The heroes of the British sci if TV series Torchwood, torture, cage and kill alien visitors to earth. How else could they behave? This is how humans usually treat other species.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The Makah claim a right to kill whales because their ancestors did. By that reasoning, modern day descendants of the Aztecs have the right to revive child sacrifice; Americans have the right to revive slavery; and Indonesians have the right to revive head-hunting. The notion that sacrificing a whale would somehow help the Makah’s social ills including drug addiction, poverty and alcoholism is as nutty as thinking yanking the heart out of a child and throwing it into a volcano would work too. Whale sacrifice is an ill-considered distraction from doing something truly useful.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The Spanish arquebus, the forerunner of the rifle, was designed primarily to kill horses during battles.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The SPCA (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) was founded in 1824 in Britain. The ASPCA (American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) was founded in 1866.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The two most popular pets, the dog and the cat, are both predators. That is no accident. They were not originally pets, but rat killers and hunters.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
There few places as beautiful as a mountain lake brimming with rainbow trout. There are few places as depressing as aquaculture pens for these same noble fish.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
There was a time in recent memory when physicians believed babies could not feel pain. They performed open heart surgery and circumcisions on the them without any anaesthesia.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)I think it is time we presumed, until proven otherwise, that any creature that cries or writhes to avoid a painful stimulus is indeed feeling pain.
This is a parable. There was once a village that had been continuously occupied for thousands of years. Then some new people moved in. At first they did their best to fit in, but then they started stealing food, and then pushing existing people off their land claiming it belonged to them. Their religion forced them to keep their females continuously pregnant starting at puberty ending only at menopause. They rapidly overwhelmed the village by sheer numbers. They started killing other villagers claiming there were stealing food, since the new comers claimed title to all the land. (Their holy book gave them title.) I hope you were clever enough to guess that the village was earth before people and the new people were humans, though I would not fault you if you thought I was talking about the Jewish takeover of Palestine.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
To be consistent, if you disapprove of buying and selling humans or human babies, you should also oppose the buying and selling creatures of other species, especially fellow intelligent species like whales, dolphins and elephants.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
To this day, the Spanish torment and kill bulls for amusement. If we can demand the end to cock fights and dog fights surely it is time to end bull fights world wide. If they refuse, then the rest of the world should boycott all Spanish goods and services.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
We are horrified at Dr. Mengele because he performed experiments on humans that we perform on animals. I suspect future generations will not see that much difference. Both were done without informed consent.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
We have so far identified 70 different cries that elephants use to communicate. Alex the grey parrot leaned to use, not just parrot, 150 words. Washoe the chimpanzee learned 350 words of ASL (American Sign Language). Uneducated humans use about 500 words. Educated ones make do with about 800. The range of human contemplation is not that much greater than other animals.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
What do intelligent species do that non-intelligent ones do not? Use tools, communicate with language and torture.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
What would you think of a man who stole the homes of his relatives and evicted them? What would you think of a man who drove his relatives off the lands they used to feed themselves, leaving them to starve to death? What would you think of a species that threw other species after species into permanent extinction by stealing their habitat? What you would think of a species so conceited that it believed the very creator of the universe gave them title to the entire planet to do with as they pleased without any concern for their cousins on the tree of life?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)Man does this even to species with larger brains than he has, such as elephants, whales and dolphins.
When humans talk of inter-species communication they usually mean the art of bullying animals to perform tricks. True communication should also include the ability read an animal’s messages about its desires the same as you would inquire about the needs of a human friend.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
When I was high school, the biology teacher, Mr. Jackson cut the bottom shell off a live turtle and attached its heart to a lever that charted the twitchings on a graph. I told everyone he was a sadist. Mr. Mackenzie, the principal, called me down to his office and gently chastised me for slandering a teacher. Mr. Jackson reassured me The turtle feels no pain. I countered How you know? He replied It’s spinal nerves are cut. I said Well, it sure looks as if it is in pain. It is struggling frantically to right itself. He responded That is just a reflex. He offered Using the turtle will save many lives. This turtle will last all day. Had I used frogs, I would have had to kill one for each class I accused Your experiment has no point. Everyone already knows that hearts beat He said You are planning a career in biology. You will have to get used to this I said If that’s what it means to be a biologist I want no part of it. Since I am writing this years later, I can compose a better retort: If you are so sure this will not hurt, how about I poke a scalpel into the back of your neck and cut your spinal nerves. Then you can reassure me, based on evidence, that the procedure is painless. From my personal experience, nerves hurt like the blazes when you cut them. Turtle nerves and human nerves are almost identical.That was the last day of my biology career and my first day of animal rights advocacy.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
When I was in high school, my teachers arranged a number of field trips to the local University Of BC. On one of the trips, we visited a zoologist who had a filthy aquarium full of African frogs. One of them was dead, rotting and floating on the surface. It was clear from the researcher’s responses to my questions that he was completely indifferent to the welfare of the frogs and that he was proud of this indifference. I was baffled. I felt intense affection for small fish, amphibians and reptiles. How could he be so curious about his frogs and yet not care about them?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
When I was quite young I visited a fish hatchery. There were some salmon swimming in a tank with a flow of water forcing them to keep swimming. The attendant explained these fish spend their entire lives in this tank. They might have the same spot in line for years at a time. This struck me as a ghastly metaphor for the human rat race. I could not believe humans could impose such a nightmare on such a noble fish.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
When we were kids, each fall, my Dad would go hunting for deer and moose. When he returned we would shout in a chorus, “Did you get anything?” When he answered No, we would cheer and he would give us an irritated look. We did not like him killing animals. We not like the bitter taste of endless moose and venison dinners. We did not like the stench of the rotting skins and the hanging aging/rotting meat. We looked on this as a sort of Jekyll/Hyde transformation of our normally gentle father.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Whenever man decides to manage populations of other species, he usually screws things up with unintended consequences. In general, we should not do this. We know that leaving animals alone is guaranteed to work.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Why is it Americans consider killing creatures and watching them writhe in death agony the most exciting and wholesome possible activity for a father and son to share?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
You probably want to avoid any beef or chicken labeled grain fed. It means the animals were penned tightly, knee deep in liquid manure and force fed grain, a not a natural food for either cattle nor chickens. They become obese. The meat has a high fat content, and hence will make you obese too.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
You would not speak of owning your children, even if you are responsible for their care and feeding and have many legal rights similar to the ownership of chattels. We need to find an appropriate word to use for the relationship of children and other animals in your stewardship. Owning is something you do to a stereo system. How about I steward my St. Bernard? For creatures with brains larger than humans’, we need something a little more humble, perhaps I serve or I see to the needs of Rosie the dolphin.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
“Do dolphins have souls?” is an even sillier question than “Do dolphins have RAM (Random Access Memory)?” Nobody has ever demonstrated that anyone or anything has a soul. It is as imaginary as a unicorn. Possession of a soul is used as an excuse, a licence for bad behaviour, for humans to mistreat other species.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
He’s a psychopath. Cruelty to animals is part of that.
~ David Rossi played by Joe Mantegna (born: 1947-11-13 age: 64) on Criminal Minds
Dogs are getting bigger, according to a leading dog manufacturer.
~ Leo Rosten (born: 1908-04-11 died: 1997-02-19 at age: 88)
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.
~ Carl Sagan (born: 1934-11-09 died: 1996-12-20 at age: 62)
The extinction of an animal is an insult to God.
~ Jewish saying
The assumption that animals are without rights and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance, is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer (born: 1788-02-22 died: 1860-09-21 at age: 72)
Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.
~ Albert Schweitzer (born: 1875-01-14 died: 1965-09-04 at age: 90)
Very little of the great cruelty shown by men can really be attributed to cruel instinct. Most of it comes from thoughtlessness or inherited habit. The roots of cruelty, therefore, are not so much strong as widespread. But the time must come when inhumanity protected by custom and thoughtlessness will succumb before humanity championed by thought. Let us work that this time may come.
~ Albert Schweitzer (born: 1875-01-14 died: 1965-09-04 at age: 90)
We must fight against the spirit of unconscious cruelty with which we treat the animals. Animals suffer as much as we do. True humanity does not allow us to impose such sufferings on them. It is our duty to make the whole world recognise it. Until we extend our circle of compassion to all living things, humanity will not find peace.
~ Albert Schweitzer (born: 1875-01-14 died: 1965-09-04 at age: 90) The Philosophy of Civilization
The earth does not belong to us.
We belong to the earth.
~ Chief Seattle (born: 1786 died: 1866-06-07 at age: 79) 1834
My doctrine is this, that if we see cruelty or wrong that we have the power to stop and do nothing, we make ourselves sharers in the guilt.
~ Anna Sewell (born: 1820-03-30 died: 1878-04-25 at age: 58)
Animals are my friends… and I don’t eat my friends.
~ George Bernard Shaw (born: 1856-07-26 died: 1950-11-02 at age: 94)
Atrocities are not less atrocities when they occur in laboratories and are called medical research.
~ George Bernard Shaw (born: 1856-07-26 died: 1950-11-02 at age: 94)
Cruelty must be whitewashed by a moral excuse and pretense of reluctance.
~ George Bernard Shaw (born: 1856-07-26 died: 1950-11-02 at age: 94)
When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when the tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.
~ George Bernard Shaw (born: 1856-07-26 died: 1950-11-02 at age: 94)
As often as Herman had witnessed the slaughter of animals and fish, he always had the same thought: in their behaviour 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.
~ Isaac Bashevis Singer (born: 1904-11-21 died: 1991-07-24 at age: 86)
There will be no justice as long as man will stand with a knife or with a gun and destroy those who are weaker than he is.
~ Isaac Bashevis Singer (born: 1904-11-21 died: 1991-07-24 at age: 86)
All the arguments to prove man’s superiority can not shatter this hard fact: In suffering, the animals are our equals.
~ Pete Singer (born: 1946-07-06 age: 65)
Fortunately the case for upholding the equality of human beings does not depend on equality of intelligence, moral capacity, physical strength, or any other matters of fact of this kind. Equality is a moral ideal, not a simple assertion of fact. There is no logically compelling reason for assuming that a factual difference in ability between two people justifies any difference in the amount of consideration we give to satisfying their needs and interests. The principle of equality of human beings is not a description of an alleged actual equality: it is a prescription of how we should treat human beings.
~ Pete Singer (born: 1946-07-06 age: 65)So the fact that antelope cannot do calculus is no excuse to mistreat them or steal their habitat.
In an earlier stage of our development, most human groups held to a tribal ethic. Members of the tribe were protected, but people of other tribes could be robbed or killed as one pleased. Gradually the circle of protection expanded, but as recently as 150 years ago we did not include blacks. So African human beings could be captured, shipped to America and sold. In Australia white settlers regarded Aborigines as a pest and hunted them down, much as kangaroos are hunted down today. Just as we have progressed beyond the blatantly racist ethic of the era of slavery and colonialism, so we must now progress beyond the speciesist ethic of the era of factory farming, of the use of animals as mere research tools, of whaling, seal hunting, kangaroo slaughter and the destruction of wilderness. We must take the final step in expanding the circle of ethics.
~ Pete Singer (born: 1946-07-06 age: 65)
Paul scornfully rejected the thought that God might care about the welfare of oxen and the incident of the Gadarene swine, in which Jesus is described as sending devils into a herd of pigs and making them drown themselves in the sea, is explained by Augustine as intended to teach us that we have no duties toward animals. This interpretation was accepted by Thomas Aquinas, who stated that the only possible objection to cruelty to animals was that it might lead to cruelty to humans — according to Aquinas there was nothing wrong in itself with making animals suffer. This became the official view of the Roman Catholic Church to such good — or bad — effect that as late as the middle of the nineteenth century, Pope Pius IX refused permission for the founding of a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in Rome, on the ground that to grant permission would imply that human beings have duties to the lower creatures.
~ Pete Singer (born: 1946-07-06 age: 65)
If you have men who will exclude any of God’s creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men.
~ St Francis of Assisi (born: 1181 died: 1226-10-03 at age: 45)
The basis of all animal rights should be the Golden Rule: we should treat them as we would wish them to treat us, were any other species in our dominant position.
~ Christine Stevens founder of the Animal Welfare Institute
Nothing more strongly arouses our disgust than cannibalism, yet we make the same impression on Buddhists and vegetarians, for we feed on babies, though not our own.
~ Robert Louis Stevenson (born: 1850-11-13 died: 1894-12-03 at age: 44)
We consume the carcasses of creatures of like appetites, passions and organs with our own and fill the slaughterhouses daily with screams of fear and pain.
~ Robert Louis Stevenson (born: 1850-11-13 died: 1894-12-03 at age: 44)
The fact of the matter is that today, stuff-selling mega-corporations have a huge influence on our daily lives. And because of the competitive nature of our global economy, these corporations are generally only concerned with one thing — the bottom line. That is, maximising profit, regardless of the social or environmental costs.
~ Dr. David Suzuki (born: 1936-03-24 age: 76)
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.
~ Leo Tolstoy (born: 1828-09-09 died: 1910-11-07 at age: 82)
According to the group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, fish have feelings too. Whenever my sons go fishing they always tell me, “Dad it doesn’t hurt a fish to get hooked.” Well I watch and I see and I believe it’s painful for the fish.
~ Donald Trump (born: 1946-06-14 age: 65)
It is just like man’s vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions.
~ Mark Twain (born: 1835-11-30 died: 1910-04-21 at age: 74)
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.
~ Mark Twain (born: 1835-11-30 died: 1910-04-21 at age: 74) The Lowest Animal
I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men.
~ Leonardo da Vinci (born: 1452-04-15 died: 1519-05-02 at age: 67)
People must have renounced, it seems to me, all natural intelligence to dare to advance that animals are but animated machines… It appears to me, besides, that [such people] can never have observed with attention the character of animals, not to have distinguished among them the different voices of need, of suffering, of joy, of pain, of love, of anger and of all their affections. It would be very strange that they should express so well what they could not feel.
~ Voltaire (born: 1694-11-21 died: 1778-05-30 at age: 83) [François Marie d’Arouet Voltaire] Traité sur la tolerance
The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men.
~ Alice Walker (born: 1944-02-09 age: 68)
As for myself, I do not believe in loggers, I believe in trees. I do not believe in fishermen, I believe in fish. I do not believe in miners, I believe in the rocks beneath my feet. I do not believe in pie in the sky spirituality, I believe in rainbows, rivers, mountains and moss. I do not believe in environmentalists, I believe in the environment. I am a proud traitor to my species in alliance with my mother the Earth in opposition to those who would destroy her, those parasites who believe the Earth is here to serve human interests.
~ Captain Paul Watson (born: 1950-12-02 age: 61)
Atlantic puffins starve to death so that Danish chickens can feast on their fish.
~ Captain Paul Watson (born: 1950-12-02 age: 61)
Back in 1980, whale watching surpassed whaling as an industry. Now it’s worth about four times as much. Whale watching provides far, far more jobs to people than whaling ever did. Whale watching has become an ally in the fight to end whaling.
~ Captain Paul Watson (born: 1950-12-02 age: 61)
I can assure you no whales are going to be killed today.
~ Captain Paul Watson (born: 1950-12-02 age: 61)
North American cats eat more fish than all the world’s seals put together, yet we lay the blame on the seals for the declining fish stocks.
~ Captain Paul Watson (born: 1950-12-02 age: 61)
Pigs eat more tuna that all the planet’s sharks combined.
~ Captain Paul Watson (born: 1950-12-02 age: 61)
They [Greenpeace] forgot their original purpose and turned into a big, rich bureaucracy, more interested in fund-raising than in saving lives, so I got fed up and quit… they’re a bunch of wimps.
~ Captain Paul Watson (born: 1950-12-02 age: 61)
They harpooned a female in the head. She screamed and it’s a sound like a woman screaming and then this huge male slapped his tail on the water and hurled himself at the Soviet ship. They harpooned him and he fell back and swam right at us and reared up out of the water. We thought, “This is it, he’s going to slam down on us, it’s all over.” But he didn’t. He pulled back at the last moment and spared our lives and as he slid back into the water we saw his eye, which was the size of a dinner plate and in that whale’s eye I saw recognition, compassion, empathy, an understanding. Something passed between us and it changed my life for ever.
~ Captain Paul Watson (born: 1950-12-02 age: 61)
This isn’t a hunt that’s going to kill just four or five gray whales. The repercussions of this will have an effect on tens of thousands of whales that will be killed by the Japanese and Norwegians.
~ Captain Paul Watson (born: 1950-12-02 age: 61)
Unlike aboriginal hunters, commercial seal hunters leave the carcasses on the ice to rot.
~ Captain Paul Watson (born: 1950-12-02 age: 61)
We don’t give a damn what you or anybody else on this planet thinks. We didn’t sink those ships for you. We did it for the whales.
~ Captain Paul Watson (born: 1950-12-02 age: 61)
We need to radically and intelligently reduce human population to fewer than one billion. We need to eliminate nationalism and tribalism and become Earthlings. And as Earthlings, we need to recognise that all the other species that live on this planet are also fellow citizens and also Earthlings. This is a planet of incredible diversity of life-forms; it is not a planet of one species as many of us believe.
~ Captain Paul Watson (born: 1950-12-02 age: 61)
We’re just a conceited naked ape, but in our minds we’re some “divine legend” and we see ourselves as some sort of god, seeing we can decide what will live and what will die, what will be saved and what will be destroyed, but honestly we’re just a bunch of primates out of control.
~ Captain Paul Watson (born: 1950-12-02 age: 61)
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