I agree with Varner and Scruton that the more one thinks of one's life as a story that has chapters still to be written, and the more one hopes for achievements yet to come, the more one has to lose by being killed. For this reason, when there is an irreconcilable conflict between the basic survival needs of animals and of normal humans, it is not speciesist to give priority to the lives of those with a biographical sense of their life and a stronger orientation towards the future. Peter Singer
Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened.
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Anatole France
Such short little lives our pets have to spend with us, and they spend most of it waiting for us to come home each day. It is amazing how much love and laughter they bring into our lives and even how much closer we become...
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John Grogan
If having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans.
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James Herriot
Animals are reliable, many full of love, true in their affections, predictable in their actions, grateful and loyal. Difficult standards for people to live up to.
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Alfred A. Montapert
Holding this soft, small living creature in my lap this way, though, and seeing how it slept with complete trust in me, I felt a warm rush in my chest. I put my hand on the cat's chest and felt his heart beating. The pulse...
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Haruki Murakami
More Quotes By Peter Singer
Were we incapable of empathy — of putting ourselves in the position of others and seeing that their suffering is like our own — then ethical reasoning would lead nowhere. If emotion without reason is blind, then reason without emotion is impotent.
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...
What one generation finds ridiculous, the next accepts; and the third shudders when it looks back on what the first did.
Philosophy ought to question the basic assumptions of the age. Thinking through, critically and carefully, what most of us take for granted is, I believe, the chief task of philosophy, and the task that makes philosophy a worthwhile activity.
To protest about bullfighting in Spain, the eating of dogs in South Korea, or the slaughter of baby seals in Canada while continuing to eat eggs from hens who have spent their lives crammed into cages, or veal from calves who have been deprived of...
