Saturday, November 29, 2025

Mean Girls

Most people abuse power.
They use power to dominate others.
They use power to destroy others.
Ultimately, when you do this, you lose it.

Frederick Lenz



The limits of tyrants are prescribed by
the endurance of those whom they oppress.

Frederick Douglass


People seem good while they are oppressed,
but they only wish to become oppressors in
their turn: life is nothing but a competition
to be the criminal rather than the victim.

Bertrand Russell


The greatest evil perpetrated is the evil
committed by nobodies, that is, by
human beings who refuse to be persons.

Hannah Arendt


Power is never the property of an individual;
it belongs to a group and remains in existence
only so long as the group keeps together.

Hannah Arendt


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



Friday, November 28, 2025

🦊 Cruelty-Free Shopping 🐇

If one person is unkind to an animal
it is considered to be cruelty,
but if a lot of people are unkind to animals
(especially in the name of profit)
the cruelty is condoned and will be defended
by otherwise intelligent people.

Ruth Harrison


Behind every fur, there is a story.
It is a bloody, barbaric story.

Mary Tyler Moore



There is no kind way to rip the skin of animal's
backs. Anyone who wears any fur shares
the blame for the torture and gruesome deaths
of millions of animals each year.

Natalie Imbruglia

Jo Frederiks

We know we cannot be kind to animals
until we stop exploiting them -
exploiting animals in the name of science,
exploiting animals in the name of sport,
exploiting animals in the name of fashion,
and yes, exploiting animals in the name of food.

César Chávez


Wearing cosmetics that were tested on
animals makes you ugly on the inside.

Ricky Gervais



Every time you spend money you're casting
a vote for the kind of world you want.

Anna Lappé


To be vegan is to disagree with cruelty.
Isaac Bashevis Singer


Being vegan for me is about trying to live a life
where I'm not contributing to
the cruelty in the world.

Jessica Chastain



It's medieval to me that the fashion industry
still kills millions of animals a year.

Stella McCartney


A good heart will refuse the happiness
built on the misfortune of others.

Saadie



Animals run no risk of going to hell.
They are already there.

Victor Hugo

Kill To Dress

People speak sometimes about the "bestial"
cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust
and offensive to beasts, no animal could
ever be so cruel as man, so artfully, so
artistically cruel.

Fyodor Dostoevsky


Man has made the Earth a hell for animals.
Arthur Schopenhauer


Make ethical choices in what you buy, do and
watch. In a consumer-driven society our
individual choices, used collectively for
the good of animals, can change
the world faster than laws.

Marc Bekoff


Veganism is not a diet.
It is a rejection of violence.

Marlana Mazmanian McCliman


The world is not a factory and animals
are not products for our use.

Arthur Schopenhauer


Each one of us makes a difference every day
by the choices we make. When billions start
making ethical decisions, we can put
the world on the right track.

Jane Goodall

Thursday, November 27, 2025

Consider the Turkey 🦃

Don't talk of love and peace when
you have a dead animal on your plate.

Socrates


People who say they love animals sit down
to enjoy the flesh of creatures who have been
utterly deprived of everything that could make
their lives worth living and who endured
the awful suffering and the terror
of the abattoirs.

Jane Goodall


Mend the part of the world
that is within your reach.

Clarissa Pinkola Estés



I hope life treats you as well as you treat animals.

Ricky Gervais



Flesh eating is unprovoked murder.
Benjamin Franklin


Thanksgiving dinner's sad and thankless
Christmas dinner's dark and blue
When you stop and try to see it
From the turkey's point of view
Sunday dinner isn't sunny
Easter feasts are just bad luck
When you see it from the view point
of a chicken or a duck
Oh how I once loved tuna salad
Pork and lobsters, lamb chops too
Till I stopped and looked at dinner
From the dinner's point of view

Shel Silverstein


Every culture has something to be ashamed of,
but every culture also has the right to change,
to challenge negative traditions,
and to create new ones.

Azar Nafisi


Where there is love there is life.
Mahatma Gandhi

Happy Thanksgiving

Understand that... you own nothing.
Everything that surround you is temporary,
only the love in your heart will last.

Buddha


He who is not contended with what he has,
would not be contended with what
he would like to have.

Socrates


Happiness is the spiritual experience of living
every minute with love, grace and gratitude.

Denis Waitley


Comparison is the thief of joy.
Theodore Roosevelt


If you celebrate Thanksgiving, stop paying
someone to hurt animals for your Thanksgiving
centerpiece. Choose a vegan roast so that
everyone can have something
to be thankful for this season.

Joaquin Phoenix


A good heart will refuse the happiness
built on misfortune of others.

Saadie


Create all the happiness you are able to create;
remove all the misery you are able to remove.
Every day will allow you, will invite you to
add something to the pleasure of others,
or to diminish something of their pains.

Jeremy Bentham


Where there is love there is life.
Mahatma Gandhi

Wednesday, November 26, 2025

Consciousness & A.I. 🤖

Emotion is the chief source of consciousness.
There is no change from darkness to light or
from inertia to movement without emotion.

Carl Jung


Man is an animal with primary instincts
of survival. Consequently his ingenuity
has developed first and his soul afterwards.
The progress of science is far ahead
of man's ethical behavior.

Charlie Chaplin


Gods always behave like the people
who created them.

Zora Neale Hurston


The femme fatale expresses woman's ancient
and eternal control of the sexual realm.
The specter of the femme fatale stalks
all of men's relationships with women.

Camille Paglia




Computers will overtake humans with AI
within the next 100 years. When that happens,
we need to make sure the computers
have goals aligned with ours.

Stephen Hawking


Humanity's true moral test, its fundamental
test... consists of its attitude towards those
who are at its mercy: animals.

Milan Kundera


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



Compassion is the signature
of higher consciousness.

Amit Ray


If a group of beings were to land on Earth -
beings who considered themselves as superior
to you as you feel yourself to be to other animals
would you concede them the rights over you
that you assume over other animals?

George Bernard Shaw


When dealing with people, remember you are
not dealing with creatures of logic,
but creatures of emotion.

Dale Carnegie


The Creature includes animals within its moral
codes, but is thwarted and deeply frustrated
when seeking to be included within the moral
codes of humanity. It learns that regardless
of its own inclusive moral standards, the human
circle is drawn in such a way that both it
and the other animals are excluded from it.

Carol J. Adams



The basis of all animal rights should be
the Golden Rule: we should treat them
as we would wish them to treat us, were
any other species in our dominant position.

Christine Stevens


The question is not, "Can they reason?"
nor "Can they talk?" but, "Can they suffer?"

Jeremy Bentham


The destiny of civilized humanity depends more
than ever on the moral forces it is capable
of generating.

Albert Einstein


Man worships an invisible God and destroys
a visible Nature. Unaware that this Nature
he's destroying is this God he's worshiping.

Hubert Reeves

Tuesday, November 25, 2025

War on Women

Before you think good or evil, who are you?
Huineng


Ultimately evil is done not so much by evil people,
but by good people who do not know themselves
and who do not probe deeply.

Reinhold Niebuhr


The reasonable man adapts himself to the world;
the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt
the world to himself. Therefore all progress
depends on the unreasonable man.

George Bernard Shaw


I sometimes try to imagine what would have
happened if we'd known the bonobo first
and the chimpanzee only later - or not at all.
The discussion about human evolution might not
revolve as much around violence, warfare and
male dominance, but rather around sexuality,
empathy, caring and cooperation.

Frans de Waal


The arc of the moral universe is long,
but it bends towards justice.

Martin Luther King, Jr.


It is impossible to think of the welfare of
the world unless the condition of women
is improved. It is not possible for a bird
to fly on only one wing.

Swami Vivekananda


The number of people with any criteria for
distinguishing between good and evil
is very small.

T.S. Eliot



One's life has value so long as one attributes
value to the life of others, by means of love,
friendship, indignation and compassion.

Simone de Beauvoir


I think there is a connection between the way
we treat animals and the way we treat people
who are at the bottom of the hierarchy.

Angela Davis


The worst thing that we can do as women
is not stand up for each other, and this is
something we can practice every day,
no matter where we are and what we do
women sticking up for other women,
choosing to protect and celebrate each other
instead of competing or critizing each other.

Amal Clooney


The question is not whether we will be extremists,
but what kind of extremists we will be. For hate
or for love? For the preservation of injustice
or for the extension of justice?

Martin Luther King, Jr.


When I despair, I remember that all through
history the way of truth and love has always
won. There have been tyrants and murderers
and for a time they seem invincible, but in
the end they always fall... think of it, always.

Mahatma Gandhi

Monday, November 24, 2025

Awaken to Your Destiny

You are not a drop in the ocean;
You are the entire ocean in a drop.

Rumi


The universe experiences itself through you
for a brief moment called life.

Eckhart Tolle


Pursuing self-esteem can be motivating,
but other sources of motivation, such as
goals that are good for the self and others,
can provide the same motivation
without the costs.

Jennifer Crocker & Lora Park

Jo Frederiks

I sometimes try to imagine what would have
happened if we'd known the bonobo first
and the chimpanzee only later - or not at all.
The discussion about human evolution might not
revolve as much around violence, warfare and
male dominance, but rather around sexuality,
empathy, caring and cooperation.

Frans de Waal


I believe that we are all creative beings and
that you were placed here on this earth
to create something of value to the world.
Something that will help others break free,
something that lights you up with passion and
something that is larger than just you.

Mastin Kipp


Service to others is the rent you pay
for your room here on earth.

Muhammad Ali


The meaning of life is to find your gift.
The purpose of life is to give it away.

Pablo Picasso


Success, like happiness, cannot be pursued;
it must ensue, and it only does so as the side
effect of one's personal dedication to a cause
greater than oneself.

Viktor Frankl


If you want to live a happy life,
tie it to a goal, not to people or objects.

Albert Einstein


Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and
go to the grave with the song still in them.

Henry David Thoreau


The best way to find yourself is to
lose yourself in the service of others.

Mahatma Gandhi


Life's most important and urgent question is:
what are you doing for others?

Martin Luther King, Jr.


Culture eats strategy for breakfast.
Peter Drucker


The thing about real life is that important events
don't announce themselves... Usually something
that is going to change your whole life is
a memory before you can stop and
be impressed about it.

Edith Schaeffer


The really important kind of freedom involves
attention, and awareness, and discipline, and
effort, and being able truly to care about other
people and to sacrifice for them, over and over,
in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.

David Foster Wallace


Two roads diverged in a wood and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
and that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost


Everything that's happened in your life
up until now has been preparing you
to live your purpose. These have been lessons
and now it's your time to step into your purpose
and make your mark. You are stronger than
your circumstances and what other people say.
There is something within you that is only
yours to give. Give us all you've got.

Mastin Kipp

Saturday, November 22, 2025

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


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


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


Tomorrow the sun will rise to a world
without you in it. You've been given
no reason to live yet you'll fight for another
day in a world that broke your spirit,
that took your freedom and that
showed you the depth of cruelty
capable by humankind.

Emma Hurst


Only with awareness of carnism
can we reclaim our freedom of choice;
without awareness, there is no free choice.

Melanie Joy


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
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


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


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


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