voices on animal rights

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



All beings seek for happiness; so let your compassion extend itself to all. --Mahavamsa



When a man has pity on all living creatures then only is he noble. --Buddha


It's just that I have this funny objection to torturing small animals no matter how scrumptious their body parts might be. ... Our food industries are equal opportunity abusers: cows, chickens, pigs, and a special mention to those little calves who for their short, miserable lives are locked into crates too small to allow movement just so we can eat veal. ~ Ron Reagan



Compassion for animals is intimately connected with goodness of character; and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man. --Arthur Schopenhauer



Imagine living in a cage in the dark, unable to move, day after day. The suffering of today's American farm animals is almost beyond belief. They don't have a choice, but you do, and their lives depend on it. ~ Casey Affleck



As long as people will shed the blood of innocent creatures there can be no peace, no liberty, no harmony between people. Slaughter and justice cannot dwell together. --Isaac Bashevis Singer



If any kid realized what was involved in factory farming, they would never touch meat again. I was so moved by the intelligence, sense of fun, and personality of the animals I worked with on Babe that by the end of the film I was a vegetarian. ~ James Cromwell



Until he extends the circle of compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace. --Albert Schweitzer



Until we have the courage to recognize cruelty for what it is--whether its victim is human or animal--we cannot expect things to be much better in this world... We cannot have peace among men whose hearts delight in killing any living creature. By every act that glorifies or even tolerates such moronic delight in killing we set back the progress of humanity. --Rachel Carson



We are the living graves of murdered beasts, slaughtered to satisfy our appetites. How can we hope in this world to attain the peace we say we are so anxious for? --George Bernard Shaw (Living Graves, published 1951)



Cruelty has cursed the human family for countless ages. It is almost impossible for one to be cruel to animals and kind to humans. If children are permitted to be cruel to their pets and other animals, they easily learn to get the same pleasure from the misery of fellow-humans. Such tendencies can easily lead to crime. --Fred A.McGrand



Vivisection is the blackest of all the black crimes that a man is at present committing against God and his fair creation. It ill becomes us to invoke in our daily prayers the blessings of God, the Compassionate, if we in turn will not practise elementary compassion towards our fellow creatures. --Mohandas Gandhi



Ask the experimenters why they experiment on animals, and the answer is: "Because the animals are like us." Ask the experimenters why it is morally OK to experiment on animals, and the answer is: "Because the animals are not like us." Animal experimentation rests on a logical contradiction. --Professor Charles R.Magel



Results from animal tests are not transferable between species, and therefore cannot guarantee product safety for humans...In reality these tests do not provide protection for consumers from unsafe products, but rather they are used to protect corporations from legal liability. --Herbert Gundersheimer, M.D., member, PCRM




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. --Dr. Hugo Knecht



Atrocities are not less atrocities when they occur in laboratories and are called medical research. --George Bernard Shaw



I abhor vivisection with my whole soul. All the scientific discoveries stained with innocent blood I count as of no consequence. --Mahatma Gandhi



During my medical education at the University of Basel I found vivisection horrible, barbarous, and above all unnecessary. --Carl G. Jung




If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reasons. --C. S. Lewis




The eating of meat extinguishes the seed of great compassion. --Mahaparinirvana




Nothing more strongly arouses our disgust than cannibalism, yet we make the same impression on Buddhists and vegetarians, for we feed on babies, though not our own. --Robert Louis Stevenson



Animals are my friends...and I don't eat my friends. --George Bernard Shaw



Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet. --Albert Einstein




People often say that humans have always eaten animals, as if this is a justification for continuing the practice. 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




If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegetarian. We feel better about ourselves and better about the animals, knowing we're not contributing to their pain. --Paul and Linda McCartney




Suppose that tomorrow a group of beings from another planet were to land on Earth, beings who considered themselves as superior to you as you feel yourself to be to other animals. Would they have the right to treat you as you treat the animals you breed, keep and kill for food? --John Harris




A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral. --Leo Tolstoy




For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love. --Pythagoras




But for the sake of some little mouthful of flesh we deprive a soul of the sun and light, and of that proportion of life and time it had been born into the world to enjoy. --Plutarch




I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men. --Leonardo Da Vinci
While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth? --George Bernard Shaw



To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being. I should be unwilling to take the life of a lamb for the sake of the human body. --Mohandas Gandhi




We stopped eating meat many years ago. During the course of a Sunday lunch we happened to look out of the kitchen window at our young lambs playing happily in the fields. Glancing down at our plates, we suddenly realized that we were eating the leg of an animal who had until recently been playing in a field herself. We looked at each other and said, "Wait a minute, we love these sheep--they're such gentle creatures. So why are we eating them?" It was the last time we ever did. --Linda and Paul McCartney




I do not like eating meat because I have seen lambs and pigs killed. I saw and felt their pain. They felt the approaching death. I could not bear it. I cried like a child. I ran up a hill and could not breathe. I felt that I was choking. I felt the death of the lamb. --Vaslav Nijinsky




Now I can look at you in peace; I don't eat you anymore. --Franz Kafka



The beef industry has contributed to more American deaths than all the wars of this century, all natural disasters, and all automobile accidents combined. If beef is your idea of `real food for real people,' you'd better live real close to a real good hospital. --Neal D. Barnard, M.D.



When we kill the animals to eat them, they end up killing us because their flesh, which contains cholesterol and saturated fat, was never intended for human beings. --William C. Roberts, M.D., editor of The American Journal of Cardiology




I brainwashed youngsters into doing wrong. I want to say sorry to children everywhere for selling out to concerns who make millions by murdering animals. --Geoffrey Guiliano, the main Ronald McDonald actor in the 1980's who quit and publicly apologised




Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow creatures is amusing in itself. --Froude



When a man wants to murder a tiger, it's called sport; when the tiger wants to murder him it's called ferocity. --George Bernard Shaw



The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest. --Henry David Thoreau



If you have men who will exclude any of god's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men. --St. Francis of Assisi



The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated --Gandhi, the Moral Basis of Vegetarianism



The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? But rather, Can they suffer? --Jeremy Bentham




All the arguments to prove man's superiority can not shatter this hard fact: In suffering, the animals are our equals. --Peter Singer Liberation



There is no fundamental difference between man and the higher animals in their mental faculties... The lower animals, like man, manifestly feel pleasure and pain, happiness, and misery. --Charles Darwin



When it comes to having a central nervous system, and the ability to feel pain, hunger, and thirst, a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. --Ingrid Newkirk




The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for whites or women for men. --Alice Walker




I am in favour of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being. --Abraham Lincoln



As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields. -Leo Tolstoy, author



If a man aspires towards a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from injury to animals. -Albert Einstein




At the moment our human world is based on the suffering and destruction of millions of non-humans. To perceive this and to do something to change it in personal and public ways is to undergo a change of perception akin to a religious conversion. Nothing can ever be seen in quite the same way again because once you have admitted the terror and pain of other species you will, unless you resist conversion, be always aware of the endless permutations of suffering that support our society." -Arthur Conan Doyle

divine apathy

all i've ever wanted is to believe...
i doubt even the ground beneath my feet...
the air i breathe...
is false...
nothing is certain....and this ...
is my only truth


divine apathy is a disease...
for which there is no cure...

organized religion bred this sickness

blind faith was never for me...
accepting one source as absolute truth is something i just cannot justify academically...
spiritually...
ethically...
nor as a thinking being in general...

i can accept and even imagine...
that there are many truths in this world...

but finding that in my mind...
my heart...
my soul...
has nearly spent me

reconciling the fact that i have felt the presence of what i came to know as "god"
but not believing entirely in what that means exactly...
puts me in a strange no man's land spiritually speaking...

according to the faith of my childhood

everything i do is evil...wicked...selfish...and vain
i am a witch...
a harlot...
a possessed woman...a vile abomination

i love the things i should hate...
i am disobedient and ungrateful...
willfull...

full if sin and iniquity

yet i am a creation ...better yet a child...
of god

i my heart ...the things i have felt were true...acording to this faith are false...
not only false...
but horribly futile...if i am to avoid destruction and eternal damnation in a lake of burning pitch

i have studied this all in great detail...
even looked to other faiths and their texts for answers...

i just cannot reconcile any of it with what i...inside...
feel is true of any diety that made me and this beautiful...terrible...world in which i live...and wonder...

disconnected and alone in my doubt

ever searching for answers...
buried beneath the sands of time...
and the meddling hands of men...

the only faith i have left..
is in the triumph of the human spirit...

knowing not from whence it came

albert schweitzer...

"reverence for life"...

his philosopy on ethics has been published for many years
but just strikes a chord in me

it is simple and powerful
and rings true inside me

"the fundamental fact of human awareness is this"..."i am a life that wants to live in the midst of other life that wants to live"..."a thinking man feels compelled to approach all life with the same reverence he has for his own"..."thus all life becomes part of his experience"..."from such a point of view...good means to maintain life, to further life, to bring developing life to it's highest value."...evil means to destroy life, to hurt life, to keep life from developing"..."this then is the rational, universal, and basic principle of ethics"

another time...

another time that was very happy for me was ...
just this weekend

james and i went to donna and jimmys for a cookout...

just us and them...

we made grilled shrimp-pasta salad-and grilled chicken-etc
we mixed some drinks and they had a few beers
(yuck-lol)
(i stuck with the crown and mt dew)

...we lit lanterns in the trees over the picnic table and ate out there with the all 80's weekend playing...

we laughed and talked and just had a great time...

we were out there til like 3 am i think...

it was great

i felt like i was in another time...another place...

i made a resolution to do things like that more often...


...we shall see....

i forgot ...

i forgot so many things i should add to the time of my life post

but i do need to give "harry potter time"
honorable mention

when yolanda lived with me and our kids would get ready for bed...we would all lay around in the living room while i read the harry potter series aloud

we called it harry potter time and it was like the highlight of the day for me

i often wish i had never hooked up with chris(my ex-husband)...bc that is what ultimately ruined the deal with yolanda being my roommate

i won't say 2 stressed-out single moms living together didn't have it's moments of issue

but things were fine for the most part and would've gone happily and smoothly i'm sure if he hadn't come into the picture

i will always regret that

the time of my life...

attempting an exercise at remembering what really makes me happy
i was calling to mind some of the most clearly fulfilling moments of my life....

and while i know this list is far from complete(and very out of order)

...it is a beginning to finding me...


1. shopping with leigh for bridesmaid dress materials and eating thai afterward
just passing the afternoon away with one of my dearest friends without the intrusion
of others

2. driving to jacksonville with leigh to help kristy move then going to the beach afterward
eating giant slices of pizza and then riding back in the big truck talking to my friend and just being happy

3. leigh and gavins wedding ...the entire trip to newport news...the whole event was like being home

4. staying up until dawn many nights with angela
talking about life and meaning...whether in her home or mine...whether driving to the beach at 2 am on bad tires with no cell phone...or sitting in the waffle house with strangers...or alone...she helped me know another human being on a level i have never reached with another person in my life

5. painting a mural on angelas bathroom wall

6. going to look at "haunted" or decomposing buildings with angela in the middle of the night

7. dressing up to go absolutely nowhere all by myself ...setting a place for one with fine cut glass and china dishes...making a gourmet meal for one and watching the sun rise while listening to my favorite music then curling up with my favorite novel alone until i lost all concept and worry concerning time

8.dancing to my dads old blondie-classic rock-and motown 8 tracks or records
dressed up in my moms clothes and makeup
singing into a makeshift microphone
singing my heart out unashamedly

9. hanging out in raliegh at night with johnathan...always a wonderland of experience and interesting characters

10. making passionate hurried love in an abandoned building during a spring thunderstorm behind my high school with my first love

11.dancing with james and meeting him for the first time...that whole night the world stopped and i...fell in love with an ideal...i believed in romantic love again for the first time since i was a brken -hearted child

12. hanging with yolanda -chris-ashley-rachel-les back in high school
doing really nothing but learning who we were

13. sleeping on my moms soft sheets...on her sofa while she hummed and cleaned to 80's radio...then helping her cook ...dinner and evening game shows...eating from a tv tray...then an invite to late aft kickball...til dark...then a bath...garfield or streawberry shortcake pajamas...then bliss

14. barbie proms...dinner dates...masques...playing with my sisters til we were dragged drowsily to bed

15. making a nest with james...(2 pushed together sofas...lots of pillows...and sheets...no clothes)....eating junk and drinking slushy coke while we watched space ghost or while i dozed and he played final fantasy

16. learning about my granny through stories she told

17. learning about my parents through stories told by others

18. the time i took a week off work and james helped me paint, clean, and remodel the house...we would work on it all night and play blue october...drank lots of mt dew and talked to one another more than we have since...it was the only time i have ever felt like a real couple in nearly 5 years

19.dating bryan and hanging out with him...i loved cooking for him and then he would surprise me with sparkling welchs grape juice...lol...he was too young to buy wine...i had a new gift or flowers nearly every day for 3 months...he was a great guy...and a great friend...a beautiful heart and the funniest friend...lol...i miss him

20.derek and jerrie at kathy's ...making fun of the strippers....and the bad food while eating it simultaneously...being able to work with my friends at food lion then hang out with them after work til dawn...

21. reading pooh books to robert when he was little...he loved the hundred acre wood..(i even did the voices)..(he asked me could he lay on my pooh tummy or sit behind my "wegs"....making him mini sausage biscuits and orange rolls for sat morning cartoons(back then the only tv allowed in my home was sat morning cartoons...angela had to bring the tv bc i didn't even want to own one)

22.hanging at kristy and leighs doing whatever...

23. hanging out in kristy's room (or hole...as granny called it..lol)...waering pajamas for the whole weekend...

24. karaoke bar bliss

25. reading...and the ever so often release of worthwhile movies


26.(to be continued...)

lying...

i've had alot of time to think over the past 3 days
while lying
in my bed barely able to move

i have been thinking about the purpose
the quality
the meaning of my life and everything in it

i suppose for the most part i "get" it
but

well

the only conclusion i can surely come to is that it is severely lacking

...in human contact and united purpose
...in action and in deed
...in daily ritual and leisure
...in pragmatism and romance
...in religion and spirituality
...in physical work and pleasure

all that really matters to me is passing me by every day
while i lie

a long thought....

i hear haunting celtic music drifting to me from the room next to mine
through a wall decorated in the vivid colors of childhood imagination

i recognise the sound as enya

the melody and the quality of sunlight filtered through the blinds here...the warmth and brightness of the day with the still distant threat of rain...the quality of this spring day in general...brings my baby sister to mind...

i miss her and think of her often

watching her grow up has been like watching the last spirit of youth board a vessel to the grey havens...never to return...it makes evrything about adulthood so....

final

the childish edge is gone from her laughter
her eyes are deeper
wizened
...no longer the impish blue grey i looked to ...to take me away from the heavy cares and woes of my forced adult life

she always occupied a place in my life ..my mind...my heart
that wa ethereal...untouchable...
and therefore ever untainted by the brutal world of reality

i hoped a life for her
where her imaginings...her spirit... would sustain her for always
would be printed ...illustrated...for the pleasure of those of us who lost the ability to live in her world long before our time

all of the hateful disappointment and cynicysm that ruined my mothers fairie spirit and my dreamers soul
i wanted my sister to thwart its every attempt ...to confine and tame it...turn it into something harmless

in all my hopes for her i was foolish

...i knew better than to believe in fairy tales...even as a child...
the realist in me knows that the benefit of life...of experience...no matter how grim or hurtful...will only serve to enhance people of her spiritual caliber

but it still kills the romantic in me who always childishly and vicariously lived in her unfaltering optimism...her belief in the goodness of the human soul

i suppose i just wanted her to live a life me and our other sister had been disallowed by circumstance or (as is my case)...poor decision...

i am the neurotic cynic

...though much less so in childhood i was always tragic...always untogether

rene was always so sick in childhood....and was dealt a bad hand concerning motherly love and affection...

i feel she remains of two minds

the silent dreamer on the soft inside...but on the outside has chosen to be the traditional mother and the prudent ..practical one....so that she could obtain and sustain the kind of family life we never had as children...

her very nature demands a sacrifice of the self and all self-interest...incidentally ...she had to forego her identity ...her dreams...and any healing of the psyche ...so that she could be what our mother was not

she and i both...were broken so early...it's scarcely comprehendable

i selfishly chose for many years to push family and motherhood to the back so that i could be me unhindered....i was so afraid i would lose myself like every other miserable woman i knew...

it was a robust but vain battle

what did i gain but a son who suffers because of me?
what did i gain but lost years and time with people i can no longer be with?

i am so bitter and selfish

...though i like to think i do better these days
...i missed so much that matters....

all the struggle and grief only to find that once i became a mother...
i did not lose myself after all...i was merely transformed...never to be the girl i once was ..,.but a new creation...deeper and more intensely human than ever...i knew love like never before...

once you become a wife....mother....or take on any of the many adult roles of women...you become a new creature....for good or ill....you can never go back...

but in dreams...
in memories...
in the hearts of those who knew you in childhood......

only here do you remain the same

timeless...
undiminished