Illuminating Anti- and Proslavery quotes from yesteryear to today
Not that long ago in the southern U.S.A. an African-American was legally allowed to be owned by a white American—it was legal. Get my drift? Just because something is legal does not make it right. It is legal to be cruel to other animals—that just shows that the laws need changing, not following.
~ Marcia “Butterflies” Katz (April 19, 2011)
I am an animal lover. All the meat I eat comes from an animal that has lost his life so I can consume him. Am I a hypocrite for feeling this way and also eating meat? Probably. I realize we are at the top of the food chain, but isn’t there a moral obligation to lessen the pain for the animals we kill? After all, we are supposed to be of a higher consciousness, right?
~ Diana Adams (January 22, 2010)
Forty-two years after Dr. King was murdered, we are still a nation of inequality. People of color, women, gays, lesbians, and others are still treated as second-class citizens. Yes, things have changed but we have still not achieved equality among all humans. And nonhuman animals continue to be chattel property without any inherent value.
~ Gary L. Francione (January 18, 2010)
Is it, then, hopelessly unrealistic to imagine a day when fur coats will follow whalebone corsets into fashion oblivion, when slaughterhouses will exist only in history books, and when all the scientific laboratories of the world will have a sign over their entrances proclaiming No Animals Allowed? Those who are pessimistic about the moral possibilities of humanity will answer yes. And perhaps they are right. But those who believe in the human capacity to embrace both justice and compassion, not among isolated individuals but throughout the extended human family, will answer no. Not in my lifetime, perhaps, but someday surely, I believe, the principled journey to abolition, at the level of society, will be complete. … in a variety of ways this long journey already has begun.
~ Tom Regan (November 19, 2003)
