Quotes About Beings

The whales consider themselves different individuals, so we have to treat them that way. Think of tribes. Tribes of other beings. Other beings with other minds living other lives on the same planet. Different, certainly. But fundamentally not really very different. They mean something to one another, and so their lives mean something to them. Perhaps that should mean something to us.

The vast distances that separate the stars are providential. Beings and worlds are quarantined from one another. The quarantine is lifted only for those with sufficient self-knowledge and judgment to have safely traveled from star to star.

Certainly on this planet it is not apparent that there are beings more intelligent than humans, although a case can be made for dolphins and whales, and in fact if humans succeed in destroying themselves with nuclear weapons, a case can be made that ALL other animals are smarter than humans.

But if they called everything divine which they do not understand, why, there would be no end of divine beings.

Other things being equal, it is better to be smart than to be stupid. Intelligent beings can solve problems better, live longer, and leave more offspring. Until the invention of nuclear weapons, intelligence powerfully aided survival.

The cognitive abilities of chimpanzees force us, I think, to raise searching questions about the boundaries of the community of beings to which special ethical considerations are due.

Every intelligent being, whether it breathes or not, coughs nervously at some time in its life.

The demon coughed nervously. Demons do not breathe; however, every intelligent being, whether it breathes or not, coughs nervously at some time in its life. And this was one of them as far as the demon was concerned.

Human beings make life so interesting. Do you know that in a universe so full of wonders they have managed to invent boredom? Quite astonishing!

We are not purely material beings," he continued. "Dr. Bell would say that we are not material beings at all, although I would not go that far. But we are surrounded by waves of energy. You've seen them in operation, even if you have not seen the waves themselves.

On Sunday, namely the day dedicated to music and song, the learned beings belonging to this group produced every kind of 'melody' on various 'sound-producing instruments,' as well as with their voices, and then explained to all the other learned beings how the knowledge they wished to transmit was indicated in these works of theirs.

Personally I liked best of all the three-centered beings dwelling on the planet 'Saturn ' Their outer form is quite unlike ours, resembling that of the bird-being, 'raven. '"It is interesting to remark, by the way, that for some reason or other these raven-beings are found not only on *

Owing to the combinations of sequences of sounds, there arose simultaneously in the presence of beings different sorts of impulses evoking various contradictory sensations, which in their turn gave rise to unusual experiencings and reflex movements not proper to them.

And it was just in these unaccustomed impulses, evoked in the beings by their instrumental and vocal melodies, that the learned members of that group indicated what they wished to transmit.

Animals, like us, are living souls. They are not things. They are not objects. Neither are they human. Yet they mourn. They love. They dance. They suffer. They know the peaks and chasms of being.

To say that a being who is sentient has no interest in continuing to live is like saying that a being with eyes has no interest in continuing to see. Death—however "humane"—is a harm for humans and nonhumans alike.

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.

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.

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.

And then he would tell me a story about a city that had come from another world, a city that was, in ways he either could not explain or which I could not understand, sentient. The beings in this city had once been like us.

Como decían los místicos cristianos, no se trata de seres humanos que tienen una experiencia espiritual, sino de seres espirituales que tienen una experiencia humana.

To form correct views of individuals we must regard them as forming parts of a great whole — we must measure them by their relation to the mass of beings by whom they are surrounded, and, in contemplating the incidents in their lives or condition which tradition has handed down to us, we must rather consider the general bearing of the whole narrative, than the respective probability of its details.

To form correct views of individuals we must regard them as forming parts of a great whole-we must measure them by their relation tot the mass of beings by whom they are surrounded; and, in contemplating the incidents in their lives or condition which tradition has handed down to us, we must rather consider the general bearing of the whole narrative, than the respective probability of its details.

Any sentient being knows that pharmaceutical companies are predatory and not to be trusted.