Humanimal

By Vergil Z. Ozeca

A collection of 1001 thoughts, remarks and quotations of great thinkers, Nobel prize winners, celebrities,anonymous and ordinary people,
about the ideal and actual relationship
between human race and other animals,
from veganism to hunt,
from vivisection to farming.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vergil Z. Ozeca
• Release date: Dec 21, 2009
• ISBN: 9781452310053

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Copyright © 2009

Vergil Z. Ozeca

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in review, without permission in writing from the author/editor/publisher

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Text::

Various authors

Editng,

Translation

and Production management by:

Vergil Z. Ozeca

ISBN: 978-1-4452-4592-8

This book is also available in print edition

Dedicated to those who suffer

HUMANIMAL

Advice for the reader

Read this book with someone, preferably a friend, to reflect and discuss together: dialogue and exchange of ideas enrich us and allow us to improve.

Do not read too much at once; every sentence would deserve a careful consideration.

Read every sentence in the book: many ideas are complementary and can help you to discover new meanings.

Try to take into consideration both the quotes and their authors or sources. In many cases it will help you understand their meaning and you will often be surprised. If you wish (and if you don’t already know) try also to find out a little bit more about them.

Mark the quotes you like the most, so that you can easily find them again, but don’t forget to give a look at the other ones too, from time to time: you may see them under a new light.

Obviously, you are not supposed to agree with everything you read in this book; however, please try to understand the point of view and the feelings of the authors, and the meaning of their words.

The purpose of this book is to create awareness: so take and keep whatever you like the most of it, but, please, try to be sure your thoughts, your choices and your behavior are based on how things really are, and not just on what you’re told, that they are the result of your own choices, and not of habit and laziness, that they are fruit of the best gifts you have, your mind and your heart… don’t waste them!

The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Indian political and spiritual leader

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. It's clear that our Creator doesn't condone cruelty to animals in any way. Thou shalt not kill could have been written Thou shalt not kill thy fellow man. Instead, it was all inclusive, highlighting the sanctity of life no matter what the species.

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, Russian writer

All living things fear being beaten with clubs. All living things fear being put to death. Putting oneself in the place of the other,

let no one kill nor cause another to kill.

Dhammapada, Buddhist scripture

A hundred years from now, it will not matter the sort of house I lived in, what my bank account was, or the car I drove… but the world may be different because I was important in the life of animals and the creatures of this earth.

Anonymous

A man of my spiritual intensity does not eat corpses.

George Bernard Shaw, playwright, Nobel prize

In studying the traits and dispositions of the so-called lower animals, and contrasting them with man's, I find the result humiliating to me.

Mark Twain, American author and humorist

In happiness and suffering, in joy and grief, we should regard all creatures as we regard our own self, and should therefore refrain from inflicting upon others such injury as would appear undesirable to us if inflicted upon ourselves.

Yogashastra, Jain Scripture

Animal studies can neither prove or guarantee the safety of any drug.

J. Jennings, Vice President, Science and Technology of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association.

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident...

Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher

Are you not ashamed to mingle domestic crops with blood and gore? You call serpents and panthers and lions savage, but you yourselves, by your own foul slaughters, leave them no room to outdo you in cruelty; for their slaughter is their living, yours is a mere appetizer.

Plutarch, Greek biographer and moralist

Because of their highly sensitive nervous systems and outstanding physical endurance, cats are the preferred animals for particularly painful and long-lasting neurological experiments... devised by plainly unbalanced minds!

Hans Ruesch, Swiss racing driver,novelist, medical historian

Boundless compassion for all living things is the surest and most certain guarantee of pure moral conduct. Whoever is filled with it will assuredly injure no one...

Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher

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, Greek biographer and moralist

Compassion for the suffering of others is not weakness. Acting from compassion when those around you do not takes more courage and strength of character than going along with everyone else's cruelty.

Norm Phelps, director of The Fund for Animals,founding member SERV, author

Do we, as humans, having an ability to reason and to communicate abstract ideas verbally and in writing, and to form ethical and moral judgments using the accumulated knowledge of the ages, have the right to take the lives of other sentient organisms, particularly when we are not forced to do so by hunger or dietary need, but rather do so for the somewhat frivolous reason that we like the taste of meat? In essence, shouldn't we know better?

Peter Cheeke

Doctors who speak out in favour of vivisection do not deserve any recognition in society, all the more so since their brutality is apparent not only during such experiments, but also in their practical medical lives. They are mostly men who stop at nothing in order to satisfy their ruthless and unfeeling lust for honours and gain.

Hugo Knecht, ear, nose, throat specialist

During the last 80 years, scientists experimenting on trillions of animals, came up with 900 ways of causing cancer in a mouse…but no cure to humans!

J. F. Brailsford, British M.D., M.R.C.S., Hon. Radiologist

Every animal has ideas, since he has senses. He even combines his ideas up to a certain point, and man differs, in this respect, only in the more or less. Some philosophic writers have even advanced that there is more difference between this man and that man, than between this man and that (non-human) animal. It is not, therefore, intelligence so much as his quality of being a free agent which makes the difference.

Jean Jacques Rousseau, French philosopher, writer, and composer

Excessive animal protein is at the core of many chronic diseases.

T. Colin Campbell, professor of Nutritional Biochemistry

Fur used to turn heads, now it turns stomachs.

Rue McClanahan, American actress

Giving cancer to laboratory animals has not and will not help us to understand the disease or to treat those persons suffering from it.

Albert Sabin, American medical researcher best known for having developed an oral polio vaccine

Human liberation will begin when we understand that our evolution and fulfilment are contingent on the recognition of animal rights and on a compassionate and responsible stewardship of nature.

Michael W Fox, vetrinarian, author, head of Humane Society

I became very critical of zoos and circuses and keeping animals in captivity. I wish it was against the law.

Christopher Walken, American actor

I despise and abhor the pleas on behalf of that infamous practice, vivisection... I would rather submit to the worst of deaths, so far as pain goes, than have a single dog or cat tortured to death on the pretense of sparing me a twinge or two.

Robert Browning, American poet

I expect to pass through this world but once; any good thing therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now; let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.

Anonymous

I gave up meat when I was twelve. One day I was cutting up a chicken for my mom, and I hit a tumor with the knife. There was [pus] and blood all over the place. That was enough for me.

Josh Harnett, American actor

I must interpret the life about me as I interpret the life that is my own. My life is full of meaning to me. The life around me must be full of significance to itself. If I am to expect others to respect my life, then I must respect the other life I see, however strange it may be to mine... We need a boundless ethics which will include the animals also.

Dr. Albert Schweitzer, German theologian, musician, philosopher, and physician, Nobel Peace Prize

I never really liked meat. I was a child that had to be forced to eat my meat. Whatever you ate before that you loved like turkey slices they've got a substitute now that's not hard to find.

Masta Killa, American rapper

I would not want to get to know a pig very well if I intended to eat him.

Pat Leigh

If an animal does something we call it instinct; if we do the same thing for the same reason we call it intelligence.

William Jacob Will Cuppy, American humorist and literary critic

If you declare that you are naturally designed for such a diet, then first kill for yourself what you want to eat. Do it, however, only through your own resources, unaided by cleaver or cudgel or any kind of axe. Rather, just as wolves and bears and lions themselves slay what they eat, so you are to fell an ox with your fangs or a boar with your jaws, or tear a lamb or hare in bits. Fall upon it and eat it still living, as animals do. But if you wait for what you eat to be dead, if you have qualms about enjoying the flesh while life is still present, why do you continue, contrary to nature, to eat what possesses life?

Plutarch, Greek biographer and moralist

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you; that is the principal difference between a dog and a man.

Mark Twain, American author and humorist

In matters of conscience, the law of majority has no place.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Indian political and spiritual leader

In our approach to life, be it pragmatic or otherwise, the ultimate truth that confronts us squarely and unmistakably is the desire for peace, security and happiness. Different forms of life in different aspects of existence make up the teeming denizens of this earth of ours. And, no matter whether they belong to the higher group as human beings or to the lower group, the animals, all beings primarily seek peace, comfort and security. Life is as dear to a mute creature as it is to a man. Just as one wants happiness and fears pain, just as one wants to live and not to die, so do other creatures.

Tenzin Gyatso (born Lhamo Döndrub), the 14th Dalai Lama, Nobel Peace Prize

In some roles I have to wear fur, and I always make sure it's fake, like in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. Faux fur is great because it shows people that faux can look fabulous.

Kristen Johnston, American actress

In the relations of humans with the animals, with the flowers, with all the objects of creation, there is a whole great ethic scarcely seen as yet.

Victor Hugo, French poet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist

It is a surprisingly close progression from hunting animals to hunting and torturing people... catching and lynching blacks or smoking out Jews during the Holocaust.

Aviva Cantor, American journalist, lecturer and author

It was like hunting fish with an underwater gun, a sport which he had once been foolish enough to try. At one moment there is the fish - graceful, mysterious, desirable and free - and the next moment there is nothing but struggling and blood and confusion.

Dame Iris Murdoch, English author and philosopher

It's a matter of taking the side of the weak against the strong, something the best people have always done.

Harriet Beecher Stowe, American abolitionist and author

Let the law of kindness show no limits. Show a loving consideration for all God's creatures.

Quakers

Mankind continues to become gradually less cruel because a few people in every generation keep saying This isn't right. It hurts me to see it.

Joan Gilbert

May those who oppose capital punishment for humans extend that protection to animals as well. May those who oppose germ and other biological warfare work to end the unconscious biological warfare unwittingly waged on those who eat animal products. Those who are pro-life would logically become vegetarian. Those who are pro-choice would not want to impose their wills upon the body of a cow, sheep or pig.

Craig Burton, US novelist

Most people have forgotten how to live with living creatures, with living systems and that, in turn, is the reason why man, whenever he comes into contact with nature, threatens to kill the natural system in which and from which he lives.

Konrad Lorenz, Austrian zoologist, animal psychologist, ornithologist, and Nobel Prize winner

Non-injury to all living beings is the only religion.

(first truth of Jainism)

Yogashastra (Jain Scripture)

Non-violence and kindness to living beings is kindness to oneself. For thereby one's own self is saved from various kinds of sins and resultant sufferings and is able to secure his own welfare.

Mahavira, Indian sage

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, American inventor, scientist and businessman

Once I was fishing and caught the hook in the