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Tag Archives: animal rights quotes
All of us with compassion
“For as long as i can breath i will fight for the animals…
The day i stop breathing, on my final breath i will feel sadness, that i can fight no more.
Yet elated that i am freed from this living hell that all of us with compassion have to witness on a daily basis, created by fellow humans that i am ashamed to be connected with.~ X”
Tom Regan, Pioneer Animal Rights Philosopher Died February 17 But His Work & Influence Endure
By Karen Davis, PhD, President of United Poultry Concerns*
“My tribute to philosopher Tom Regan, who wrote The Case For Animal Rights,
and*
*who died on February 17, 2017 after a battle with Parkinson’s Disease, is
a*
*slightly expanded version of the Comment I posted yesterday morning to
Merritt*
*Clifton’s beautifully composed obituary for Tom in Animals 24-7 which you
can*
*read here: Tom Regan, 78, made the case for animal rights
<http://www.animals24-7.org/2017/02/18/tom-regan-78-made-the-case-for-animal-rights>.*
Thank you Merritt Clifton for your informative tribute to animal rights
philosopher Tom Regan, whom I met in the early 1980s right around the time
that
his book *The Case For Animal Rights* was published in 1983. Since that
book was
more academic than Peter Singer’s *Animal Liberation*, published in 1975,
was, it
probably was more dipped into by activists than read cover to cover. But
Regan
transcended Singer by arguing that nonhuman animals have not only
“interests”
but RIGHTS and INHERENT VALUE. Sentient beings, in his famous phrase, are
Subjects-of-a-Life in the sense that “their experiential life fares well or
ill
for them, logically independently of their utility for others and logically
independently of their being the object of anyone else’s interests.”
Accordingly, he wrote that nonhuman animals “have a distinctive kind of
value
– inherent value – and are not to be viewed or treated as mere
receptacles,” a
point he stressed at length in *The Case For Animal Rights* and throughout
his
career.
In later years, Regan criticized Singer’s acquiescence in scientific
experiments
on nonhuman animals if the experiments were claimed by the experimenters to
have
a potential to save more HUMAN lives or to mitigate more HUMAN diseases.
Regan
challenged the media’s reflexive reference to Singer as the “father of
animal
rights” which, he said in a discussion about making monkeys suffer for human
benefit, is not so. He wrote: “The Peter Singer interviewed on the BBC2
program
does not believe that nonhuman animals have basic moral rights. As early as
1978, three years after the publication of Animal Liberation, he explicitly
disavowed this belief.” (Tom Regan Replies to Peter Singer
<http://animalfreedom.org/english/column/peter_singer.html>)
Tom Regan in his work following *The Case For Animal Rights* evinced a
lyrical
gift, writing expressively and movingly about animals and about his own
early
life in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and his evolution from being an avid
boyhood
fisherman and meat eater to becoming a passionate vegan advocate for
animals and
animal rights.
A True Pioneer
Tom Regan is a true pioneer of the Animal Rights Movement. He laid
philosophical
groundwork even for those who may not now know him as well as they should
and, I
hope, will. Regan had an emotional and artistic sensibility which he
combined
with his academic polemics to produce powerful speaking and writing for
animals
and animal rights.
I attended his outdoor presentations in the 1980s and later, where he said
of
the Establishment versus himself: “They say we’re EXTREMISTS for caring
about
animals! I AM an EXTREMIST. I am EXTREMELY against animal abuse, and I am
against it All the Time!”
This is a paraphrase of a speech I heard him give one year. It was
passionate
and fiery and interesting too when you compare that oratory with his
earliest
foray into animal rights in a clip from The Animals Film
<http://www.theanimalsfilm.com> where he appears
reading from a paper with his head down, but delivering words that echo in
all
of us who are working for animals and animal rights to this day and always
will.
I am eternally grateful to Professor Tom Regan for his establishment, in
philosophy and the arts, of the case for animal rights. And I am honored by
his
kind words of appreciation for my own animal rights work through United
Poultry
Concerns in his 2013 Interview with the Eugene Veg Education Network, which
you
can – and must! – read here:
Eugene Veg Education Network Interview with Tom Regan
<http://www.eugeneveg.org/pdf/Interviews/Interview-Tom_Regan.pdf>
Quotes
http://www.all-creatures.org/quotes/robertson_jim.html
Jim Robertson
Animal Activist, Wildlife Photographer, Author of Exposing the Big Game: Targets of a Dying Sport
“Homo sapiens has never been a light-touch or low-impact type of creature. Once you realize that, it’s easier to believe they’re overpopulated and have been actually changing the planet’s climate. Whether or not our species has peopled the Earth to the point of saturation, the denialists have undeniably reached their carrying capacity.”
“Whether or not mankind survives the assault they’re putting the planet through is a non-issue for me. Personally, I hope they don’t. They do not deserve a second chance to rule this vibrant, watery orb any more than they deserved the first chance to steal Nature, abuse and forever change her.”
“I am not a hate-filled person by nature, but I have what I consider a realistic view of Homo sapiens as a technologically over-evolved—yet morally under-evolved—ape that supersedes any blind allegiance to the species I might otherwise ascribe to.”
“I’m not so enamored by the modest achievements and advancements we hear so much about that I don’t clearly see that mankind’s ultimate claim to fame is the “undoing” of the most incredible and diverse epoch in the history of life on earth.”
“My misanthropy is not aimed at individuals per se, but at an entire misguided species of animal with an arrogance so all-consuming that it views itself as separate—and above—the rest of the animal kingdom.”
“It’s not like humans can’t afford a little resentment once in a while, there are entire religions built specifically on the worship of mankind and its father figure—the maker made in the image of man. But sometimes someone needs to step back and see this species in perspective…”
“Ever since hominids first climbed down out of the trees and started clubbing their fellow animals, humanoids have been on a mission to claim the planet as their own. No other species could ever live up to man’s over-inflated self-image; therefore they became meat. Or if not meat, a servant or slave in one way or another. If their flesh isn’t considered tasty, they’re put to use as beasts of burden, held captive for amusement or as literal guinea pigs to test drugs and torturous procedures for the perpetual prolongation of human life. Those who don’t prove themselves useful are deemed “pests” and slated for eradication.”
“Because, for whatever rationale, the human species sees itself as the top dog—all others: the underlings. My misanthropy is not really about a hate of humanity. I just tend to root for the underdog.”
“I could go on and on about how hunting is an outdated, cruel and unusual sport. The simple fact is, the animals are my friends, and I don’t kill and eat my friends; not for sport, for flesh and certainly not for trophies. No matter how much it might make me feel proud, temporarily satiated, stuffed or thrilled, the kill would not be worth it once the temporary insanity wore off.”
“You can’t help being born human any more than a wolf, sea lion, salmon or slug has any say over who or what they were born. But there are those who seem to go out of their way to fuel my misanthropy. You see, humans don’t just kill other animals to fill their bellies; they destroy them in droves out of spite, to eliminate the competition…or just for fun.”
“Life on Earth can take a lot of abuse and still come back for more, but it’s never had to withstand more than a few hundred thousand predacious hominids at a time. I don’t find much solace in the prediction by statisticians that the skyrocketing human population “will start to level off when it reaches 10 billion.” TEN BILLION over-consumptive human carnivores devouring everything in their collective path sounds like a monoculture of jabber-mouth two-leggers to me.”
“When I hear hate-speech against wolves from hunters who’d rather have them eradicated again than have to work a little harder to “get their elk;” or come across a starving sea lion on the beach and then read that emaciated sea lion pups are washing up in California by the hundreds–all due to their food being robbed by overly-industrious-yet-completely-terrestrial commercial fishermen who have no business taking anything from the sea; or learn that dolphins are being repeatedly shot to death by people along the Gulf coast I tend to get a bit cynical of the notion that man was created in the image of any kind of benevolent god.”
Rachel Carson Quote
Image
Empathy and Anger
The following are quotes regarding animal rights advocates, from the late John A.Livingston’s 1994 book, Rogue Primate “…their motives are simple enough: empathy for living beings of sentience and sensibility, wrath at their maltreatment. There is nothing in the least puzzling about that; the activities of animal rights advocates are fueled in equal measure by two of the most powerful of human emotions–compassion and anger…
“The liberation of animals would be a conscious and unilateral act on the part of humans. It would not require the perception of ‘rights’ inhering in animals; it would arise from the evaluation of human behavior, wherever and however directed.”
In other words, do humans have the right to treat other animals like shit whenever, wherever and however they feel entitled?
Livingston goes on to talk about Peter Singer, author of Animal Liberation, who “…systematically disposes of traditional ‘deviousness’ in such egalitarian philosophic positions as the ‘intrinsic’ dignity and worth of the human individual, which, as every observer of our activity well knows, do not stand up even in intrahuman affairs. Conventional philosophy’s further use in maintaining the human/non-human moral separation he finds ‘outrageous,’ calling our attention to ‘the ease with which not only ordinary people, but also those most skilled in moral reasoning, can fall victim to a prevailing ideology’.”
Such is the case with the romance between today’s Humane Society of the United States and the paleo foodie movement.
“…to discriminate against beings solely on account of their species is a form of prejudice, immoral and indefensible in the same way that discrimination on the basis of race is immoral and indefensible.” — Peter Singer
Exposing the Big Game 