Quotes from Gary L. Francione

When it comes to animals, we suffer from moral schizophrenia.

The notion that animals are not self-aware is based on nothing more than a stipulation that the only way to be self-aware is to have the self-awareness of a normal adult human. That is certainly one way to be self-aware. It's not the only way.

Sentience is a means to the end of continued existence. Sentient beings, by virtue of their being sentient, have an interest in remaining alive; that is, they prefer, want, or desire to remain alive.

Baz? hayvanlar? sevip onlara ailemizin birer üyesi gibi muamele ederken, onlara hissetme yetilerinden, duygusal kapasitelerinden, kendilerinin fark?nda olan birer ki?i olduklar?ndan asla ?üphe duymazken, onlardan hiç de farkl? olmayan ba?ka hayvanlar?n ölü bedenlerine çatal b?çaklar?m?z? saplamam?za neden olan ahlaki ?izofrenimize son vermemiz gerekir!

To say that a sentient being is not harmed by death denies that the being has the very interest that sentience serves to perpetuate. It would be analogous to saying that a being with eyes does not have an interest in continuing to see or is not harmed by being made blind. The Jains of India expressed it well long ago: "All beings are fond of life, like pleasure, hate pain, shun destruction, like life, long to live. To all life is dear.

We must abolish, and not regulate, animal exploitation. The abolition of animal exploitation requires a paradigm shift. It requires a recognition that violence against the vulnerable is inherently wrong. It calls for a revolution of the heart.

In fact, in most cases, the bulls killed in the arena are butchered and the meat is distributed to the poor. The difference between the two situations is that in one situation, the slaughter is not choreographed; in the other, it is. And that is the only difference.

Indeed, the proposition that humans have mental characteristics wholly absent in animals confounds the theory of evolution, which, although disputed by some religious extremists, is generally accepted by most educated people throughout the world. Charles Darwin made quite clear that there are no uniquely human characteristics when he wrote that "the difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, is certainly one of degree and not one of kind.

The senses and intuition, the various emotions and faculties, such as love, memory, attention, curiosity, imitation, reason, of which man posts, may be found in an incipient or even sometimes in a well developed condition, in the lower animals." -Darwin

In short, humans possess no characteristic unique to themselves that can justify differential treatment solely on the basis of species.

Whatever characteristic we identify as possessed only by humans will not be possessed by all humans. Some humans will have the exact same deficiency that we attribute to animals, and although we may not allow such humans to drive cars or attend universities, most of us would shut out the prospect of enslaving such humans, using them as unconsenting subjects in biomedical research, or otherwise using them exclusively as a means to an ends.

The ability to communicate may be relevant to whether we make you the host of a talk show, or give you a job teaching in a university, but it is not relevant to whether we should kill you and remove your organs for transplant into another human, or whether we should enslave you so that you may labor for those without your particular disability.

If we accord equal inherent value to all humans, irrespective of their characteristics, and we deny that same value to animals, then our failure to apply the principle of equal consideration is arbitrary and unjustified.

We cannot simultaneously regard animals as resources and as beings with moral significant interests. IN an effort to provide humane treatment for animals, we tried to prohibit the infliction of unnecessary suffering through animal welfare laws that assumed from the outset that animals were resources from human use.

We would finally have to confront our moral schizophrenia about animals, which leads us to love some animals, treat them as members of our family, and never once doubt their sentience, emotional capacity, self-awareness, or personhood, but at the same time we stick dinner forks into other animals who are indistinguishable in any relevant sense from our animal companions.

In many ways, prevailing ways of thinking about animals should make us skeptical of our claim that it is our rationality that distinguishes "us" from "them.

The argument used to support slavery and the argument used to supposrt animal exploitation are structurally similar: we exclude beings with interest from the moral community because there are some supposed differences between "them" and "us" that has nothing to do with the inclusion of these beings in the moral community.

If people defend the imposition of pain and suffering on animals based on what is "natural" or "traditional", it usually means that they cannot otherwise justify their conduct.

Old habits die hard, but that does not mean they are morally justified. It is precisely in situations where both moral issues and strong personal preference is coming to play that we should be most careful to think clearly. As the case of meat-eating shows, however, sometimes our brute preferences determine a moral thinking rather than the other way around. Many people have said to me "Yes I know it's morally wrong to eat meat, but I just love hamburgers.

Our conduct merely demonstrates that despite what we say about the moral significance of animal interests, we are willing to ignore those interests whenever we benefit from doing so - even when the benefit is nothing more than our pleasure or convenience.

If we take morality seriously, then we must confront what it dictates: if it is wrong for Simon to torture dogs for pleasure, then it is morally wrong for us to eat meat.

We do not need to eat animals, wear animals, or use animals for entertainment purposes, and our only defense of these uses is our pleasure, amusement, and convenience.

Veganism is not a "sacrifice." It is a joy.

You cannot live a nonviolent life as long as you are consuming violence. Please consider going vegan.