🦀What About Crustaceans? 🦞🦐

The question is not, Can they reason?

nor Can they talk? but rather,

Can they suffer?

Jeremy Bentham

Answer me, you who believe that animals are 

only machines. Has nature arranged for this

animal to have all the machinery of feelings

only in order for it not to have any at all?

Voltaire

No one will protect what they don't care about,

and no one will care about what

they have never experienced.

David Attenborough

True empathy is not self-focused but other-

oriented. Instead of making humanity

the measure of all things, we need to

evaluate other species by what they are.

Frans de Waal

Our task must be to free ourselves... by widening

our circle of compassion to embrace all living

creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.

Albert Einstein

Right to Rescue

Never, never be afraid to do what's right,

especially if the well-being of a person

or animal is at stake. Society's punishments

are small compared to the wounds we inflict

on our soul when we look the other way.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Jo Frederiks

Atrocities are not less atrocities when they occur

in laboratories and are called medical research.

George Bernard Shaw

I abhor vivisection with my whole soul. All

the scientific discoveries stained with innocent

blood I count as of no consequence.

Mahatma Gandhi

Run to the rescue with love and peace will follow.

River Phoenix

Vivisection is a social evil because if it

advances human knowledge, it does so

at the expense of human character.

George Bernard Shaw

Whether we exploit animals to eat, wear, to

entertain us, or to learn, the truth of animal

rights requires empty cages, not larger cages.

Tom Regan

Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.

Adam Smith

One has a moral responsibility

to disobey unjust laws.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

An unjust law is itself a species of violence.

Arrest for its breach is more so.

Mahatma Gandhi

The day may come when the rest of the animal

creation acquire those rights which never

could have been withholden from them

but by the hand of tyranny.

Jeremy Bentham

The problem is that humans have

victimized animals to such a degree

that they are not even considered victims.

They are not considered at all.

Gary Yourofsky

What I think about vivisection is that if people

admit that they have the right to take the life

of living beings for the benefit of many,

there will be no limit to their cruelty.

Leo Tolstoy

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 human

crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion

is the only guarantee of morality.

Arthur Schopenhauer

If possessing a higher degree of intelligence

does not entitle one human to use another

for his or her own ends, how can it entitle

humans to exploit non-humans?

Peter Singer

I have seen firsthand how injustice

gets overlooked when the victims are

powerless or vulnerable, when they have

no one to speak up for them and no means of

representing themselves to a higher authority.

Animals are in precisely that position.

Unless we speak out on their behalf,

abuse and cruelty goes unchallenged.

Desmond Tutu

A basic fact about nonviolent resistence is

that it is based on the conviction that

the universe is on the side of justice.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

There can be no doubt as to which side is right

and which side is wrong, for compassionate

defense of life is a force of good and sadistic

mass destruction of life is a force for evil.

Paul Watson

The arc of the moral universe is long,

but it bends towards justice.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

To know even one life has breathed easier

because you have lived. This is

to have succeeded.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

We are all victims of the violence that animals

suffer... their liberation is also our liberation.

George Bernard Shaw

Why should the law refuse its protection to any

sensitive being? The time will come when

humanity will extend its mantle

over everyone who breathes.

Jeremy Bentham

There is no fundamental difference between man

and animals in their ability to feel pleasure

and pain, happiness and misery.

Charles Darwin

Who We Really Are

I have always felt that the way we treat animals

is a pretty good indicator of the compassion

we are capable of for the human race.

Ali MacGraw

Jo Frederiks

10 percent of any population is cruel,

no matter what, and 10 percent is merciful,

no matter what, and the remaining

80 percent can be moved in any direction.

Susan Sontag

When all are guilty, no one is;

and the very magnitude of the crime

becomes the best excuse for doing nothing.

Hannah Arendt

Tsunami of Indifference

Evil thrives on apathy

and cannot exist without it.

Hannah Arendt

Any of us has the capacity for atrocity - 

just as each of us has the capacity for heroism.

David Mamet

Jo Frederiks

Your beliefs become your thoughts,

your thoughts become your words,

you words become your actions,

your actions become your habits,

your habits become your values,

your values become your destiny.

Mahatma Gandhi

A long habit of not thinking a thing is wrong,

gives it a superficial appearance of being right.

Thomas Paine

Only with awareness of carnism

can we reclaim our freedom of choice;

without awareness, there is no free choice.

Melanie Joy

Individuals

The systematic torture of sentient beings,

whatever the pretext and in whatever form,

cannot achieve anything more than it

already has: to show us what is the lowest

point of debasement man can reach.

Joaquin Phoenix

Often, vegan advocates assume that a person's

defensiveness is the result of selfishness or

apathy, when in fact it is much more likely

the result of systematic and intensive

social conditioning.

Melanie Joy

There are no conditions to which a person cannot

grow accustomed, especially if he sees that

everyone around him lives in the same way.

Leo Tolstoy

Execution of the Soul

Monsters exist, but they are too few in number

to be truly dangerous. More dangerous

are the common men, the functionaries

ready to believe and to act

without asking questions.

Primo Levi

Whoever does wrong, wrongs himself;

whoever does injustice, does it to himself,

making himself evil.

Marcus Aurelius

The individual has always had to struggle

to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.

If you try it, you will be lonely often, and

sometimes frightened. But no price is too high

to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.

Rudyard Kipling

Both optimists and pessimists contributes

to society. The optimist invents the airplane,

the pessimist the parachute.

George Bernard Shaw

Our task must be to free ourselves... by widening

our circle of compassion to embrace all living

creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.

Albert Einstein

Life is no brief candle to me.

It is a sort of splendid torch

which I have got a hold of for the moment and

I want to make it burn as brightly as possible

before handing it on to future generations.

George Bernard Shaw

A good heart will refuse the happiness

built on the misfortune of others.

Saadie

Freedom from Indoctrination

The whole universe is sum up in the human

being. Devil is not a monster waiting to

trap us. He is a voice inside. Look for your

devil in yourself, not in the others. Don't

forget that the one who knows his devil,

knows his God.

Shams Tabrizi