Quotes & Sayings About Animal Liberation

Animal rights are not a gift we give to animals. They are a birthright we have taken from them. — Ryan Phillips

The big difference between animal liberation activists and other so-called 'terrorists' is the targets; no innocent victims are ever targeted in animal lib campaigns. If you are not abusing and exploiting animals, there is no need to fear for one's safety. — Jerry Vlasak

By ceasing to rear and kill animals for food, we can make so much extra food available for humans that, properly distributed, it would eliminate starvation and malnutrition from this planet. Animal Liberation is Human Liberation too. — Peter Singer

Kafka saw his tuberculosis as a liberation; interestingly, he called it "the animal. — Franz Kafka

I will be the last person to condemn ALF [the Animal Liberation Front]. — Ingrid Newkirk

I think Dario Ringach is a poster boy for the concept that the use of force or the threat of force is an effective means to stop people who abuse animals," "No strictly peaceful movement has succeeded in liberation," "I think the animal rights movement has been restrained in its use of force, mostly because people in the struggle are often people of privilege who aren't willing to risk losing that privilege. — Jerry Vlasak

I'm in favor of animal liberation. Why? Because I'm an animal. — Edward Abbey

The animal liberation movement is saying that where animals and humans have similar interests - we might take the interest in avoiding physical pain as an example, for it is an interest that humans clearly share with other animals - those interests are to be counted equally, with no automatic discount just because one of the beings is not human. — Peter Singer

We have to speak up on behalf of those who cannot speak for themselves. — Peter Singer

Animal liberation is also human liberation. Animal liberationists care about the quality of life for all. We recognize our kinship with all feeling beings. We identify with the powerless and the vulnerable, the victims, all those dominated, oppressed and exploited. And it is the non-human animals whose suffering is the most intense, widespread, expanding, systematic and socially sanctioned of all. — Henry Spira

It's disheartening that animal people criticize societies that enlist the help of actors or organize creative acts like 'I'd rather go naked than wear fur,' to increase public awareness to our cause. These are great/courageous ideas which time has come! Liberation of animals is REVOLUTION - not elegant performance/ intellectual competition. We should do most anything to advance the animal rights cause. All the bickering may make the one step forward ... TWO STEPS BACKWARD??? — Adela Popescu

I'm convinced that welfare reforms deserve our support, both because they are better (or at least much less bad) for the animals involved (the Golden Rule), and because they push the envelope, moving us closer to the compassionate world that all animal rights activists are working toward ... On the other hand, working toward welfare reforms has the immediate benefit of helping improve animals' lives today and acts as a crucial stepping stone toward animal liberation. — Bruce Friedrich

I would not question the sincerity of vegetarians who take little interest in Animal Liberation because they give priority to other causes; but when nonvegetarians say that "human problems come first" I cannot help wondering what exactly it is that they are doing for human beings that compels them to continue to support the wasteful, ruthless exploitation of farm animals. — Peter Singer

Is it possible that future generations will regard our present agribuisness and eating practices in much the same way we now view Nero's entertainments or Mengele's experiments? My own initial reaction is that such a comparison is hysterical, extreme - and yet the reason it seems extreme to me appears to be that I believe animals are less morally important than human behings; and when it comes to defending such a belief, even to myself, I have to acknowledge that (a) I have an obvious selfish interest in this belief, since I like to eat certain kinds of animals and want to be able to keep doing it, and (b) I haven't succeeded in working out any sort of personal ethical system in which the belief is truly defensible instead of just selfishly convenient. — David Foster Wallace

It won't ruin our movement if someone gets killed in an animal rights action. It's going to happen sooner or later. The Animal Liberation Front, the Earth Liberation Front - sooner or later there's going to be someone getting hurt. And we have to accept that fact. It's going to happen. It's not going to hurt our movement. Our movement will go on. And it's important that we not let the bully pulpit of the FBI and the other oppression agencies stop us from what we're doing. They are the violent ones. They are the terrorists ... we have to keep doing what we're doing. — Jerry Vlasak

I am personally not advocating violence. I am simply saying that it is a morally acceptable tactic and it may be useful in the struggle for animal liberation. I don't know. — Jerry Vlasak

As far as the underground liberation movement, it won't have any impact at all because they don't really care about those laws. Their activities - sabotaging, liberating animals - are already illegal so just adding one more law won't make much difference. — Jerry Vlasak

Some of us seem to be born with a drive to try to make the world kinder. In my twenties, living in New York City, I worked in a soup kitchen every Sunday for many years, just trying to do my part. Then I read Animal Liberation and learned about factory farming and the killing of animals for oven cleaner and realized nobody needed my help as badly as the animals did. — Karen Dawn

Perhaps one of the most important things you can do for human beings is wean them off an animal-based diet. It hardens the arteries and runs up our health-care costs. The last thing a poor person can afford is a heart attack or cancer or a stroke. And that's all linked to a meat-based diet. I think animal liberation is human liberation. — Ingrid Newkirk

If we really believe that animals have the same right to be free from pain
and suffering at our hands, then, of course we're going to be, as a
movement, blowing things up and smashing windows ... I think it's a great way
to bring about animal liberation ... I think it would be great if all of the
fast-food outlets, slaughterhouses, these laboratories, and the banks that
fund them exploded tomorrow. I think it's perfectly appropriate for people
to take bricks and toss them through the windows ... Hallelujah to the
people who are willing to do it. — Bruce Friedrich

Christian theology provides some of the best arguments for respecting animal life and for taking seriously animals as partners with us within God's creation. It may be ironical that this tradition, once thought of as the bastion of human moral exclusivity, should now be seen as the seed-bed for a creative understanding of animal liberation. — Andrew Linzey

From a nonpatriarchal metaethical standpoint, however, Singer's and Regan's theoretical similarities are as significant as their differences. In particular, both Singer's utilitarian theory and Regan's rights approach are developed within a framework of patriarchal norms, which includes the subordinatin of emotion to reason, the privileging of abstract principles of conduct, the perception of ethical discussion as a battle between adversaries, and the presumption that ethics shoudl function as a means of social control. — Brian Luke

We are all victims of the violence that animals suffer ... their liberation is also our liberation. — George Bernard Shaw

Shukladhyan (pure contemplation of the Self, the Soul) is the direct cause for moksha (liberation). Dharmadhyan (auspicious contemplation; to hurt no one, give happiness to others) is the indirect cause for moksh (liberation). Artadhyan (inner mournful contemplation that hurts the self) is a cause for a birth in animal life form (non-human). Raudradhyan (wrathful contemplation that hurts the self and others) is a cause for a life in hell. — Dada Bhagwan

If that means going onto their farms, releasing their animals and burning the place to the ground, that's morally justifiable, in our opinion ... There were always innocent people who got hurt somewhere along the way but it was important that those who oppressed one group of people be stopped, and we don't see the animal liberation struggle being substantially different from these other struggles ... A sustained campaign against a particular industry or a particular organization has the potential to be quite effective. — Jerry Vlasak

At the bitter end of an era of liberation - women's lib, kids' lib, animal lib, and everything-but-ethics lib - America has apparently been liberated from its moral foundations. But for too many, the good life has become a living hell. — Billy Graham

The animals themselves are incapable of demanding their own liberation, or of protesting against their condition with votes, demonstrations, or bombs. Human beings have the power to continue to oppress other species forever, or until we make this planet unsuitable for living beings. Will our tyranny continue, proving that we really are the selfish tyrants that the most cynical of poets and philosophers have always said we are? Or will we rise to the challenge and prove our capacity for genuine altruism by ending our ruthless exploitation of the species in our power, not because we are forced to do so by rebels or terrorists, but because we recognize that our position is morally indefensible? The way in which we answer this question depends on the way in which each one of us, individually, answers it. — Peter Singer

Despite my deep unease about animal advocates working for things we don't want and asking for changes we don't believe in, I am not an "abolitionist." First, the abolition of animal slavery will no more end speciesism by itself than the abolition of American slavery ended racism. To change the world, I think we should aim higher. Second, I'm increasingly convinced that no matter who uses the term, it hides a slur. When used to refer to others, it connotes zealotry and obstructionism, and when taken as self-definition, it is seen as an attack by anyone who does not apply it to herself. Yes, it's a highly defensible moral philosophy, right up there with Peter Singer's application of Utilitarianism to animal liberation, and Tom Regan's Theory of Rights, but like those other intellectual concepts, it's useful only so far as it engenders right action. — Sarahjane Blum

These folk are hewers of trees and hunters of beasts; therefore we are their unfriends, and if they will not depart we shall afflict them in all ways that we can. — J.R.R. Tolkien

All of us, whether vivisector or vegan, have been subject to mechanisms undercutting sympathy for animals. How long and to what extent we submit to these mechanisms is not a matter of rationality: to cut off our feelings and support animal exploitation is rational, given societal expectations and sanctions; but to assert our feelings and oppose animal exploitation is also rational, given the pain involved in losing our natural bonds with animals. So our task is not to pass judgment on others' rationality, but to speak honestly of the loneliness and isolation of anthropocentric society, and of the damage done to every person expected to hurt animals. — Brian Luke

Lastly, anyone who believes in the possibility of total animal liberation while billions of humans continue to inhabit and decimate the planet is delusional. Only when most humans have died off will there be a chance to returning to a society that values all beings for who they are. — Jerry Vlasak