The Net Of Life And Time

The soul is the same in all living creatures, although the body of each is different.
( Hippocrates )

We can talk about how we think racism, homophobia, rape, and child molestation are morally wrong all day long and most people will agree, but the moment a person says that animal use is morally wrong most people play the moral relativism card.
I don’t buy it.
( John Tallent )

We entertain ourselves with stories of monsters and evil creatures because we desperately want to believe there might be something more cruel and terrifying than humanity.

Know that the same spark of life that is within you, is within all of our animal friends, the desire to live is the same within all of us.
( Rai Aren )

I feel sorry for the cats and dogs that have no homes.
And I feel sorry for the homes that have no cats and dogs.

How Could The RSPCA Kill The Lovely Cat We Saved?
I found a cat on my property which was obviously not feral but a lost pet.
She was the prettiest I had ever seen, with snow-white fur and beautiful blue eyes.
But she was starving and her ribs were showing.
I went door-to-door, trying in vain to find her owners.
The local vets were too busy to see if she had been chipped and they wouldn’t put up a picture in the surgery.
A pet’s charity shop did, but with no success.
We asked Cats Protection to take the cat – which we had called Nellie – and try to find her owners.
My wife and I had tears in our eyes.
We had become very fond of her.
After a couple of weeks a call to Cats Protection revealed that they had reunited her with the owners, and that Nellie was pregnant.
I asked if I could contact the owners because we would happily have one of the kittens.
They said they couldn’t help.
A week later I called again to see how Nellie was getting on.
Imagine my horror when I was told she was dead.
She had been taken to the RSPCA and put down because she had a dead kitten inside her and the cost of a caesarean would have been ‘too prohibitive’.
Tears welled in my eyes.
I was livid at the callousness of these so-called animal-lovers.
Nothing I do can make me forget the wanton destruction of such a beautiful, young creature who never hurt a soul and gave only pleasure in her very short life.
( Roland Gray, Chesterfield, UK, 02.11.2014 )

Farm animals are the innocent victims of human greed, cruelty and ignorance.

A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast.
But the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.
( Proverbs 12.10 )

Animals are not ours to experiment on.

The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.
( John Muir )

You give up nothing when you stop eating meat.
You just stop taking what was never yours to take.
You stop taking the life of others.

Three Tories Block The Bill For Banning Wild Animals In Circuses.
The UK lags behind Bolivia and Bosnia in banning the use of wild animals, such as lions, tigers, zebras and camels, in travelling circuses.
A new law to ban the use of wild animals in circuses is being repeatedly blocked by three Tory backbenchers, despite the personal support of David Cameron, the government, Labour and over 90% of the British public.
Dozens of lions, tigers, zebras and camels are still used in travelling circuses and in 2012 the government pledged to outlaw what David Cameron called the “outdated practice”.
But despite publishing the draft law in 2013, it has since failed to pass it.
The Bill has been repeatedly blocked by circus-supporter Andrew Rosindell, along with Christopher Chope and Philip Davies, all Conservative MPs.
( Damian Carrington, 05.12.2014 )  ..  theguardian.com

If you don’t own a dog, at least one, there is not necessarily anything wrong with you, but there may be something wrong with your life.
( Roger A. Caras )

We have other food, animals don’t have another life.

We do not need to eat animals, wear animals, or use animals for entertainment purposes, and our only defence of these uses is our pleasure, amusement, and convenience.
( Gary L. Francione )

Why don’t you go to a slaughterhouse and tell the poor souls why their life has no value and your life does.

People who really appreciated animals always asked their names.
( Lilian Jackson Braun )

Meat eater:  I only eat a little bit of meat.
Animal:        Thank you. I am only a little bit dead.

Micro Pigs Shot And Killed.
More than 100 miniature pigs thought to have been kept as pets before escaping into the wild have been shot in a cull.
The ‘micro pigs’ – popularised by celebrity owners including Victoria Beckham – were killed amid fears that they posed a risk to children and livestock.
The pigs were among an estimated 300 roaming in an area of common land in Gower, South Wales, UK.
Local farmers said they could become a danger if there were an outbreak of disease.
Swansea Council said it had tried to find the original owners but no one was prepared to take responsibility, so the pigs were culled by a licensed professional.
( Mail on Sunday, 14.09.2014 )

The majority of animals live in fear from the moment they are born.

They’re animals, all right.
But why are you so goddam sure that makes us human beings?
( Stephen King )

Sneak home and pray you will never know, the hell where we force gentle animals to go.

How is it that animals understand things I do not know, but it is certain that they do understand.
Perhaps there is a language which is not made of words and everything in the world understands it.
Perhaps there is a soul hidden in everything and it can always speak, without even making a sound, to another soul.
( Frances Hodgson Burnett )

Animals are more than ever a test of our character, of mankind’s capacity for empathy and for decent, honourable conduct and faithful stewardship.
We are called to treat them with kindness, not because they have rights or power or some claim to equality, but in a sense because they don’t.
Because they all stand unequal and powerless before us.
( Matthew Scully )

We should all try looking through the eyes of victims and not just our own.
It’s called empathy.

Were the walls of our meat industry to become transparent, literally or even figuratively, we would not long continue to raise, kill, and eat animals the way we do.
( Michael Pollan )

Let us remember that animals are not mere resources for human consumption.
They are splendid beings in their own right, who have evolved alongside us as co-inheritors of all the beauty and abundance of life on this planet.
( Marc Bekoff )

Vegan is not just a diet.
It’s a life of peace and non-violence.

Do you know why most survivors of the Holocaust are vegan?
It’s because they know what it’s like to be treated like an animal.
( Chuck Palahniuk )

We can no more justify using non-humans as human resources than we can justify human slavery.
Animal use and slavery have at least one important point in common –– both institutions treat sentient beings exclusively as resources of others.
That cannot be justified with respect to humans.
It cannot be justified with respect to non-humans, however ‘humanely’ we treat them.
( Gary L. Francione )

We patronise them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate for having taken form so far below ourselves.
And therein do we err.
For the animal shall not be measured by man.
In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear.
They are not brethren, they are not underlings, they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.
( Henry Beston )

It’s Murder And It’s Obscene.
Do hunters eat their kill?
Yes.
But do hunters hunt for food?
No.
They hunt for the thrill of the kill.
They receive a rush.
A super-shot of adrenaline.
It’s bloodlust and dominance.
It’s arrogance and selfishness.
It’s hatred and brutality.
It’s dishonour and viciousness.
It’s murder and it’s obscene.
( Gary Yourofsky )

People often say that humans have always eaten animals, as if this is a justification for continuing the practise.
According to this logic, we should not try to prevent people from murdering other people, since this has also been done since the earliest of times.
( Isaac Bashevis Singer )

We manage to swallow flesh only because we do not think of the cruel and sinful thing that we do.
Cruelty is a fundamental sin, and admits of no arguments or nice distinctions.
If only we do not allow our heart to grow callous, it protests against cruelty, is always clearly heard.
And yet we go on perpetrating cruelties easily, merrily, all of us.
In fact, anyone who does not join in is dubbed a crank.
( Rabindranath Tagore )

Being vegan is not just a matter of being ‘kind’ to animals.
First and foremost, it is a matter of being just and observing our moral obligation to not treat other sentient beings as things.
( Gary L. Francione )

I did not become a vegetarian for my health.
I did it for the health of the chickens.
( Isaac Bashevis Singer )

Atrocities Like These Are Happening To Thousands Every Day.
Imagine being hit on the head, dazed but fully conscious.
One of your legs is chained, you are hoisted upside down onto a disassembly line.
Gigantic clippers snip off the lower parts of your arms and legs.
Completely helpless, you feel workers cutting into your thighs, belly and sides, as they strip your skin from your legs to your neck.
Atrocities like these are happening to thousands of cattle every day in America, according to sworn affidavits from meat industry workers.
“Workers open the hide on the legs, the stomach, the neck.
They cut off the feet while the cow is still breathing.
It makes noise.
It’s looking around.
Their eyes look like they are popping out.
I feel bad that I have to do my job on them.
I’ve seen thousands and thousands of cows go through the slaughter process alive.”

I made the choice to be vegan because I will not eat (or wear, or use) anything that could have an emotional response to its death or captivity.
I can well imagine what that must feel like for our non-human friends.
The fear, the terror, the pain.
And I will not cause such suffering to a fellow living being.
( Rai Aren )

Some humans feel the need to destroy anything that frightens them.
This is why cowards who call themselves ‘hunters’ use weapons to murder animals.
These cowards are weak, fearful, afraid, and a poor excuse for true humans.

Cruelty, whether it is directed against human beings or against animals, is not the exclusive province of any one culture or community of people.
( César Chávez )

Believing that humans are special or better or above our animal cousins, is ignorant, arrogant, stupid, and a disease that many suffer from.

The most violent weapon on earth is the table fork.
( Mahatma Gandhi )

If there is a good dairy farmer, then there is a good guy that forces dogs to fight.
They are the same.
They both kill animals and both do it for money.

In every living thing there is the desire for love.
( D H Lawrence )

To require others to treat animals justly, as their rights require, is not to ask for anything more nor less in their case than in the case of any human to whom just treatment is due.
( Tom Regan )

How can anyone see a beautiful animal, rob it of life, and rob nature and the world of that life?

I am the voice of the voiceless.
Through me the dumb shall speak till the deaf world’s ear be made to hear the cry of the wordless weak.
From street, from cage and from kennel.
From jungle and stall.
The wail of my tortured kin proclaims the sin of the mighty against the frail.
( Ella Wheeler Wilcox )

No, I don’t eat meat.
Yes, fish are animals.
No, my shoes are not leather.
Yes, I get all the vitamins I need.
No, I don’t need meat to survive.
Yes, I receive plenty of calcium.
No, my teeth were not made to rip flesh.
Yes, I still have a life.

If we want to control badgers, the most humane way of doing it is to gas them.
( Princess Anne )

The cruel, despicable “veal” industry was created as a by-product of the dairy industry to take advantage of an abundant supply of unwanted newborn male calves.

We can all choose to live a life that causes the least amount of harm possible to the animals we share this planet with.
It’s very sad that most people choose the opposite and are quite happy for animals to suffer and die just so they can have bacon or a burger.
Perhaps one day some of these people will think about the victims and not just themselves.
( Rose Winfold )

Our milk comes from happy cows who are happily raped and whose kids are happily made into happy veal.

To examine whether something is ‘humane’ first determine whether you would want it done to you.
( Andrea Kladar )

How about we keep an animal in captivity, and repeatedly forcibly impregnate her (rape) year after year to take her milk.
Then when she’s no good for that we can slit her throat.
Of course this means that she will keep having babies all the time, but we can slit their throats too.
This way we will have milk in our tea and on our cereal.
Sound good?

Living my life as I do now, as a total vegan, gives me great joy in knowing that no animal has to die for me to live.
( Howard Lyman )

Most people can’t bear the sight of an animal suffering.
So the industry has to keep it hidden in order for people to keep eating animals.

It’s not a requirement to eat animals, we just choose to do it, so it becomes a moral choice and one that is having a huge impact on the planet, using up resources and destroying the biosphere.
( James Cameron )

Farmers and the meat industry traffic in death.
Death is their aim, their purpose.
Money is their reward.
And it’s not only legal, it’s supported by most of the population.

All children should be taken by their schools to visit a factory pig or chicken farm, and to an abattoir, where they should be able to witness every stage of slaughter and butchery.
If we cannot bear to see what we eat, it is not the seeing that’s wrong, it’s the eating.
( George Monbiot )

If you wouldn’t want something we do to animals done to you, why do you think it’s okay to do it to them?

I was vegan for a while up until recently.
Then I started eating people.
Only free-range, of course, which is humane.
I gave them a little space, didn’t terrorise them (too much), then slit their throats.
( Chris Hannah )

Let us be thankful for our life without depriving animals of theirs.

I stopped eating meat when I was working on the movie Selena.
During the shoot, I had to hold a chicken for five hours.
If you hold it and feel its little heart beating for hours, you just can’t think about eating it.
( Constance Marie )

Killing an animal for fun will not make you a man.
But it will make you less of a human being.

Look into their eyes together with us and strengthen your dedication to fighting for them with all your heart.
Look into their eyes and know you are doing the right thing by exposing the truth to others.
( Joanne O’Keefe, Toronto Pig Save activist )