>From: "Peter McWilliams" <peter@mcwilliams.com>
>Subject: Prepare for an ntellectual "Ouch!"
>Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2000 23:37:11 -0800
>X-Mozilla-Status: 8001
>X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000
>
>A vegetarian is a person who won't eat anything that can have children.
>~David Brenner
>
>How can you eat anything with eyes?  ~Will Kellogg
>
>Truely man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds theirs.  We live
>by the death of others:  we are burial places!  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
>
>If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian.  ~Paul
>McCartney
>
>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 Barnard, M.D.
>
>I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its
>gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals.  ~Henry David Thoreau,
>1817-1862
>
>I venture to maintain that there are multitudes to whom the necessity of
>discharging the duties of a butcher would be so inexpressibly painful and
>revolting, that if they could obtain a flesh diet on no other condition,
>they would relinquish it forever.  ~W.E.H. Lecky, 1838-1903
>
>Animals are my friends...and I don't eat my friends.  ~George Bernard Shaw,
>1856-1950
>
>You put a baby in a crib with an apple and a rabbit.  If it eats the rabbit
>and plays with the apple, I'll buy you a new car.  ~Harvey Diamond
>
>You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is
>concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.  ~Ralph
>Waldo Emerson
>
>People often say that humans have always eaten animals, as if this is a
>justification for continuing the practice.  According to this logic, we
>should not try to prevent people from murdering other people, since this has
>also been done since the earliest of times.  ~Isaac Bashevis Singer
>
>Poor animals!  How jealously they guard their pathetic bodies...that which
>to us is merely an evening's meal, but to them is life itself.  ~T. Casey
>Brennan
>
>While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we
>expect any ideal conditions on this earth?  ~George Bernard Shaw
>
>Dear Lord, I've been asked, nay commanded, to thank Thee for the Christmas
>turkey before us... a turkey which was no doubt a lively, intelligent
>bird... a social being... capable of actual affection... nuzzling its young
>with almost human-like compassion.  Anyway, it's dead and we're gonna eat
>it.  Please give our respects to its family.  ~Berke Breathed, Bloom Country
>Babylon
>
>Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he
>intends to eat until he eats them.  ~Samuel Butler
>
>Recognize meat for what it really is:  the antibiotic- and pesticide-laden
>corpse of a tortured animal.  ~Ingrid Newkirk, National Director of People
>for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
>
>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
>
>I think if you want to eat more meat you should kill it yourself and eat it
>raw so that you are not blinded by the hypocrisy of having it processed for
>you.  ~Margi Clark
>
>'Thou shalt not kill' does not apply to murder of one's own kind only, but
>to all living beings; and this Commandment was inscribed in the human breast
>long before it was proclaimed from Sinai.  ~Leo Tolstoy
>
>As soon as I realized that I didn't need meat to survive or to be in good
>health, I began to see how forlorn it all is.  If only we had a different
>mentality about the drama of the cowboy and the range and all the rest of
>it.  It's a very romantic notion, an entrenched part of American culture,
>but I've seen, for example, pigs waiting to be slaughtered, and their
>hysteria and panic was something I shall never forget.  ~Cloris Leachman
>
>We manage to swallow flesh only because we do not think of the cruel and
>sinful thing that we do.  Cruelty...is a fundamental sin, and admits of no
>arguments or nice distinctions.  If only we do not allow our heart to grow
>callous, it protests against cruelty, is always clearly heard; and yet we go
>on perpetrating cruelties easily, merrily, all of us - in fact, anyone who
>does not join in is dubbed a crank.  ~Rabindranath Tagore, Nobel Prize 
1913
>
>Can you really ask what reason Pythagoras had for abstaining from flesh?
>For my part I rather wonder both by what accident and in what state of soul
>or mind the first man did so, touched his mouth to gore and brought his lips
>to the flesh of a dead creature, he who set forth tables of dead, stale
>bodies and ventured to call food and nourishment the parts that had a little
>before bellowed and cried, moved and lived.  How could his eyes endure the
>slaughter when throats were slit and hides flayed and limbs torn from limb?
>How could his nose endure the stench?  How was it that the pollution did not
>turn away his taste, which made contact with the sores of others and sucked
>juices and serums from mortal wounds?  ~Plutarch
>
>One farmer says to me, "You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it
>furnishes nothing to make the bones with;" and so he religiously devotes a
>part of his day to supplying himself with the raw material of bones; walking
>all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones,
>jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle.  ~Henry
>David Thoreau
>
>It is only by softening and disguising dead flesh by culinary preparation,
>that it is rendered susceptible of mastication or digestion; and that the
>sight of its bloody juices and raw horror does not excite intolerable
>loathing and disgust.  ~Percy Bysshe Shelley
>
>To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human
>being.  I should be unwilling to take the life of a lamb for the sake of the
>human body.  ~Mahatma Gandhi
>
>My situation is a solemn one.  Life is offered to me on condition of eating
>beefsteaks.  But death is better than cannibalism.  My will contains
>directions for my funeral, which will be followed not by mourning coaches,
>but by oxen, sheep, flocks of poultry, and a small traveling aquarium of
>live fish, all wearing white scarfs in honor of the man who perished rather
>than eat his fellow creatures.  ~George Bernard Shaw
>
>Vegetarianism is harmless enough, though it's apt to give a person wind and
>self-righteousness.  ~Robert Hutchinson
>
>Heart attacks...God's revenge for eating his little animal friends.  ~As
>seen on a bumper sticker
>
>Nothing spoils lunch any quicker than a rogue meatball rampaging through
>your spaghetti.  ~Jim Davis
>
>Why does Sea World have a seafood restaurant?  I'm halfway through my
>fishburger and I realize, Oh my God.  I could be eating a slow learner.
>~Lynda Montgomery
>
>Think of me tonite
>For that which you savor
>Did it give you something real,
>or could you taste the pain of my death in its flavor?
>~Wayne K. Tolson, "Food Forethought"
>
>
>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.  ~Schopenhauer
>
>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 A. Edison
>
>The question is not, "Can they reason?" nor, "Can they talk?" But rather,
>"Can they suffer?"  ~Jeremy Bentham, 19th century philosopher
>
>The human spirit is not dead.  It lives on in secret....  It has come to
>believe that compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain
>its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not
>limit itself to mankind.  ~Albert Schweitzer
>
>I care not much for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better
>for it.  ~Abraham Lincoln
>
>No one in the world needs a mink coat but a mink.  ~Unknown
>
>Cruelty is one fashion statement we can all do without.  ~Rue McClanahan
>
>Drinking when we are not thirsty and making love at all seasons, madam:
>that is all there is to distinguish us from other animals.  ~Pierre-Augustin
>de Beaumarchais
>
>The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest.  ~Henry David Thoreau
>
>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
>
>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
>
>The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority
>to other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral
>inferiority to any creature that cannot.  ~Mark Twain, What Is Man?
>
>Ever occur to you why some of us can be this much concerned with animals
>suffering?  Because government is not.  Why not?  Animals don't vote.  ~Paul
>Harvey
>
>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
>
>Hunting is not a sport.  In a sport, both sides should know they're in the
>game.  ~Paul Rodriguez
>
>When a man wantonly destroys one of the works of man we call him a vandal.
>When he destroys one of the works of god we call him a sportsman.  ~Joseph
>Wood Krutch
>
>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
>
>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
>
>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
>
>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.  ~George
>Orwell, Animal Farm
>
>Life is life - whether in a cat, or dog or man.  There is no difference
>there between a cat or a man.  The idea of difference is a human conception
>for man's own advantage.  ~Sri Aurobindo
>
>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
>
>It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because
>it is dumb to his dull perceptions.  ~Mark Twain
>
>Every year tens of thousands of animals suffer and die in laboratory tests
>of cosmetics and household products...despite the fact that the test results
>do not help prevent or treat accidental or purposeful misuse of the
>products.  Please join me in using your voice for those whose cries are
>forever sealed behind the laboratory doors.  ~Woody Harrelson
>
>Michael W. Fox, vice-president of the Humane Society, said that, "to call an
>animal with whom you share your life a 'pet,' is reminiscent of men's
>magazines where you (a figure of speech, don't take it personally) have the
>Pet of the Month."  It is supposed that the continued use of the word "pet"
>to designate dogs or cats threatens to reduce their level of respect to the
>current status of twentieth century North American women.  Now that's
>radical.  ~The McGill Red Herring
>
>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
>
>Because the heart beats under a covering of hair, of fur, feathers, or
>wings, it is, for that reason, to be of no account?  ~Jean Paul Richter
>
>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, Australian philosopher
>
>Animals give me more pleasure through the viewfinder of a camera than they
>ever did in the crosshairs of a gunsight.  And after I've finished
>"shooting," my unharmed victims are still around for others to enjoy.  
I
>have developed a deep respect for animals.  I consider them fellow living
>creatures with certain rights that should not be violated any more than
>those of humans.  ~Jimmy Stewart
>
>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 (1694-1778), Trate sur la tolerance
>
>Heaven is by favor; if it were by merit your dog would go in and you would
>stay out.  Of all the creatures ever made he (man) is the most detestable.
>Of the entire brood, he is the only one...that possesses malice.  He is the
>only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain.  ~Mark
>Twain
>
>Vivisection is a social evil because if it advances human knowledge, it does
>so at the expense of human character.  ~George Bernard Shaw
>
>I am not interested to know whether vivisection produces results that are
>profitable to the human race or doesn't....  The pain which it inflicts upon
>unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity toward it, and it is to me
>sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further.  ~Mark Twain
>
>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 capitalist for the same reasons.
>~C.S. Lewis
>
>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
>
>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.
>The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man.  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
>
>The indifference, callousness and contempt that so many people exhibit
>toward animals is evil first because it results in great suffering in
>animals, and second because it results in an incalculably great
>impoverishment of the human spirit.  All education should be directed toward
>the refinement of the individual's sensibilities in relation not only to
>one's fellow humans everywhere, but to all things whatsoever.  In the
>societies of the Western world compassionate intelligence is encouraged in
>girls - in boys it is tabu. The tabu on tenderness in which boys are
>conditioned, the emphasis on "manliness," "machoism," plays havoc with the
>male's capacity for compassionate intelligence.  Tenderness is considered to
>be feminine, and that is sufficient to remove it from the repertoire of
>masculine behavior.  Indeed, things have reached such a pass in the Western
>world that many men seem to have lost all understanding of its meaning.  The
>masculine world would substitute for it the idea of "justice."  The
>difficulty with that is that there is not much compassion in their justice,
>and justice without compassion is not justice at all.  ~Ashley Montague
>
>The animal shall not be measured by man.  In a world older and more complete
>than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with extension of the
>senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear.
>They are not brethren; they are not underlings; they are other nations,
>caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the
>splendor and travail of the earth.  ~Henry Beston
>
>People need to be desensitized to the suffering of others gradually.  A
>society that teaches that the suffering of animals doesn't matter is well on
>its way to raising future sadists.  Virtually every serial killer in America
>will tell you tales of a childhood spent tormenting frogs, cats, and dogs.
>This is no coincidence.  The scale from swatting flies to knowingly eating
>the results of farmers who treat animals inhumanely to cold-blooded murder
>is a continuum with a slippery slope.  How much blood is on your hands?
>~Melissa Silvestre
>
>I abhor vivisection with my whole soul.  All the scientific discoveries
>stained with innocent blood I count as of no consequence.  ~Mahatma Gandhi
>
>I had bought two male chimps from a primate colony in Holland.  They lived
>next to each other in separate cages for several months before I used one as
>a [heart] donor.  When we put him to sleep in his cage in preparation for
>the operation, he chattered and cried incessantly.  We attached no
>significance to this, but it must have made a great impression on his
>companion, for when we removed the body to the operating room, the other
>chimp wept bitterly and was inconsolable for days.  The incident made a deep
>impression on me.  I vowed never again to experiment with such sensitive
>creatures.  ~Christian Barnard, surgeon
>
>I abhor vivisection.  It should at least be curbed.  Better, it should be
>abolished.  I know of no achievement through vivisection, no scientific
>discovery, that could not have been obtained without such barbarism and
>cruelty.  The whole thing is evil.  ~Charles Mayo, founder of the Mayo
>Clinic
>
>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
>
>This tendency [to cruelty] should be watched in them [children], and if they
>incline to any such cruelty, they should be taught the contrary usage.  For
>the custom of tormenting and killing other animals will, by degrees, harden
>their hearts even towards men....  And they, who delight in the suffering
>and destruction of inferior creatures, will not be apt to be very
>compassionate or benign to those of their own kind.  Children should from
>the beginning be brought up in an abhorrence of killing or tormenting living
>beings....  And indeed, I think people from their cradles should be tender
>to all sensible creatures....  All the entertainment and talk of History is
>of nothing but fighting and killing; and the honour and renown that is
>bestowed on conquerors, who, for the most part, are but the great butchers
>of mankind, further mislead youth.  ~John Locke, 1632-1704
>
>   To view a list of web sites about animal rights, click here.
>
>