It wasn't so long ago when all the so-called scientists said that humans were intelligent and that animals weren't, humans were the solitary unchallenged masters of the globe and probably the universe and the only question was whether we were handlin...
How dirty she was, how thin, what a wild look she had! I have never seen a wilder-looking creature. Her eyes were bright. They were like the eyes of a wild animal.
Our response to the factory farm is ultimately a test of how we respond to the powerless, to the most distant, to the voiceless - it is a test of how we act when no one is forcing us to act one way or another. Consistency is not required, but engagem...
We perhaps know more than we care to admit, keeping it down in the dark places of our memory-disavowed. When we eat factory-farmed meat we live, literally, on tortured flesh. Increasingly, that tortured flesh is becoming our own.
What is suffering? I'm not sure what it is, but I know that suffering is the name we give to the origin of all the sighs, screams, and groans — small and large, crude and multifaceted — that concern us. The word defines our gaze even more than wh...
A 'dreamer' is one possesses the gift of dreaming by day. Sure, many dream at night, but don’t also small babies and animals dream at night? To dream by day and dream aloud: Is this not the reward for all the troubles we humans must face?
The mainstream media act just like in the classic studies of herd animals; at the exact instant more than half of the herd makes a move to bolt, they all move.
Despite the Great Chain of Being's traditional ranking of humans between animals and angels, there is no evolutionary justification for the common assumption that evolution is somehow 'aimed' at humans, or that humans are 'evolution's last word'.
Beauty is in all beings that love and are loved, animals and children, and if older women have it, it is because they feel completely free in this world and in their lives as they feel close to God....and they are spiritually in tune with the univers...
But how can they just decide that we're animals? They don't even know us," I said. "We know us," said Mother. "They're wrong. And don't ever allow them to convince you otherwise. Do you understand?
Man, do not pride yourself on your superiority to the animals, for they are without sin, while you, with all your greatness, you defile the earth wherever you appear and leave an ignoble trail behind you -- and that is true, alas, for almost every on...
The men in the nearby village fear us, thinking we are witches. Women who live without men—especially old women who grow herbs, heal the sick, and befriend wild animals—are always suspect.
Being apart was wrong. Simply lying side by side did more for a relationship than words. A warm bed, a nest of animal intimacy. Words could be misunderstood, whereas loving companionship bred trust.
When I was 7 and went to the zoo with my second-grade class, I saw chimpanzee eyes for the first time - the eyes of an unhappy animal, all alone, locked in a bare, concrete-floored, iron-barred cage in one of the nastier, old-fashioned zoos. I rememb...
It's important to remember that the animals are not grieving with us. They're very accepting. They're not lying there thinking 'How could you do this to me? Why aren't you keeping me going?' Pets don't do the human things of guilt and anger and recri...
Evolution explains our biological evolution, but human beings are very unique creatures. As the Dobzhansky said, all animals are unique; humans are the uniquest. And that uniqueness of being human, language, art, culture, our dependency on culture fo...
Pay attention to your dreams; when you go on a trip, in your dreams you will still be home. Then after you've come home you'll dream of where you were. It's a kind of jet lag of the consciousness.
I know what it does to you, I know. Maybe that's why we hold on as hard as we do. We just can't believe that such a miracle can happen to us twice. But it can, someday you'll find it again.
To be ethical is to endeavor to find one's proper place in the larger scheme of things rather than to seek to assert human superiority over the natural world.
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.
What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form, in moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, ...
