Quotes by Gary L. Francione - Page 2

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.
Gary L. Francione / Professor
Eye
Harm
Interest
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None of that is necessary. It's not as if we're in a situation where it is us or them.There's something peculiar about talking about the moral status of animals, when we are killing and eating them for no reason whatsoever.
Gary L. Francione / Professor
Animal
Peculiar
Talking
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You don't have to love animals to recognize that it is immoral and unjust to exploit them. But if you do love animals, but you continue to participate in their exploitation, you need to rethink your idea of what love means.
Gary L. Francione / Professor
Animal
Ideas
Mean
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The distinction between meat and other animal products is total nonsense. Vegetarianism is a morally incoherent position. If you regard animals as members of the moral community, you really don’t have a choice but to go vegan.
Gary L. Francione / Professor
Animal
Choices
Vegetarianism
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Being vegan is not a matter of "lifestyle." It is a matter of fundamental moral obligation. Is being vegan a matter of "choice"? Only insofar as we are able to choose to ignore our moral obligations not to exploit the vulnerable.
Gary L. Francione / Professor
Choices
Fundamentals
Matter
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Domesticated animals such as dogs and cats are vulnerable and entirely dependent on us for all of their needs. They live very unnatural lives because they are not part of the human world and they are not part of the animal world.
Gary L. Francione / Professor
Animal
Cat
Dog
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If you are not vegan, please consider going vegan. It’s a matter of nonviolence. Being vegan is your statement that you reject violence to other sentient beings, to yourself, and to the environment, on which all sentient beings depend.
Gary L. Francione / Professor
Matter
Vegan
Violence
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The idea that we have the right to inflict suffering and death on other sentient beings for the trivial reasons of palate pleasure and fashion is, without doubt, one of the most arrogant and morally repugnant notions in the history of human thought.
Gary L. Francione / Professor
Death
Doubt
Fashion
Ideas
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We are vegans not simply because being vegan will reduce suffering. We are vegan because every sentient being values her or his life even if no one else does. We are vegan because justice minimally requires that we not take life for trivial purposes.
Gary L. Francione / Professor
Doe
Justice
Suffering
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Veganism is an act of nonviolent defiance. It is our statement that we reject the notion that animals are things and that we regard sentient nonhumans as moral persons with the fundamental moral right not to be treated as the property or resources of humans.
Gary L. Francione / Professor
Animal
Fundamentals
Moral
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Speciesism is morally objectionable because, like racism, sexism, and heterosexism, it links personhood with an irrelevant criterion. Those who reject speciesism are committed to rejecting racism, sexism, heterosexism, and other forms of discrimination as well.
Gary L. Francione / Professor
Discrimination
Links
Racism
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Humans treat animals as things that exist as means to human ends. That's morally wrong. Sexism promotes the idea that women are things that exist as means to the ends of men. That's morally wrong. We need to stop treating all persons - whether human or nonhuman - as things.
Gary L. Francione / Professor
Men
Animal
Mean
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Just as we reject racism, sexism, ageism, and heterosexism, we reject speciesism. The species of a sentient being is no more reason to deny the protection of this basic right than race, sex, age, or sexual orientation is a reason to deny membership in the human moral community to other humans.
Gary L. Francione / Professor
Age
Ageism
Community
Deny
Humans
Membership
Moral
Orientation
Protection
Race
Racism
Reason
Sex
Sexism
Species
Basic
Sexual
Reject
Sentient
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The theory of animal rights simply is not consistent with the theory of animal welfare... Animal rights means dramatic social changes for humans and non-humans alike; if our bourgeois values prevent us from accepting those changes, then we have no right to call ourselves advocates of animal rights.
Gary L. Francione / Professor
Animal
Mean
Rights
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Michael Vick may enjoy watching dogs fight. Someone else may find that repulsive but see nothing wrong with eating an animal who has had a life as full of pain and suffering as the lives of the fighting dogs. It's strange that we regard the latter as morally different from, and superior to, the former.
Gary L. Francione / Professor
Animal
Dog
Eating
Fighting
Former
Latter
Pain
Regard
Strange
Dogs
Michael
Repulsive
Superior
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People say that being a vegan creates a social problem in that others may react negatively. But isnt that the case if you take a principled position on any issue, whether its racism, sexism, heterosexism, violence as a general matter—or speciesism? The key is to educate others about *why* you take the position.
Gary L. Francione / Professor
Issues
Keys
Racism
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Not only are the philosophies of animal rights and animal welfare separated by irreconcilable differences... the enactment of animal welfare measures actually impedes the achievement of animal rights... Welfare reforms, by their very nature, can only serve to retard the pace at which animal rights goals are achieved.
Gary L. Francione / Professor
Animal
Philosophy
Rights
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I certainly believe that we have a moral obligation to care for the dogs, cats, and other nonhumans whose existence we have caused or facilitated as part of the institution of 'pet' ownership. But I maintain that we ought to abolish the institution and stop causing or facilitating the existence of more 'companion' animals.
Gary L. Francione / Professor
Believe
Cat
Dog
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There is increasing social concern about our use of nonhumans for experiments, food, clothing and entertainment. This concern about animals reflects both our own moral development as a civilization and our recognition that the differences between humans and animals are, for the most part, differences of degree and not of kind.
Gary L. Francione / Professor
Animal
Civilization
Concern
Differences
Entertainment
Experiments
Humans
Moral Development
Recognition
Clothing
Degree
Increasing
Reflects
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99% of our uses of animals, including our numerically most significant use of them for food, do not involve any sort of necessity or any real conflict between human and nonhuman interests. If animals matter morally at all, then, even without accepting a theory of animal rights, those uses of animals cannot be morally justified.
Gary L. Francione / Professor
Animal
Real
Rights
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Forty-two years after Dr. King was murdered, we are still a nation of inequality. People of color, women, gays, lesbians, and others are still treated as second-class citizens. Yes, things have changed but we have still not achieved equality among all humans. And nonhuman animals continue to be chattel property without any inherent value.
Gary L. Francione / Professor
Kings
Animal
Gay
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It's really not rocket science. If animals are not mere things; if they have moral value, we cannot justify eating, wearing, or using them particularly when we have no better reason than palate pleasure or fashion. If you are eating, wearing, or using animals, then your actions say that you regard them as mere things, despite what your words say.
Gary L. Francione / Professor
Animal
Fashion
Rockets
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But if there were two dogs left in the universe and it were up to us as to whether they were allowed to breed so that we could continue to live with dogs, and even if we could guarantee that all dogs would have homes as loving as the one that we provide, we would not hesitate for a second to bring the whole institution of 'pet' ownership to an end.
Gary L. Francione / Professor
Home
Animal
Dog
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We can no more justify using nonhumans 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 nonhumans—however “humanely” we treat them.
Gary L. Francione / Professor
Animal
Important
Use
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We proclaim human intelligence to be morally valuable per se because we are human. If we were birds, we would proclaim the ability to fly as morally valuable per se. If we were fish, we would proclaim the ability to live underwater as morally valuable per se. But apart from our obviously self-interested proclamations, there is nothing morally valuable per se about human intelligence.
Gary L. Francione / Professor
Bird
Self
Underwater
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When it comes to animal agriculture, there is conventional, which is rally hideous, and 'compassionate' and 'certified humane' or whatever, which 'may' be 'slightly' less hideous. But it is all torture. It's all wrong. These 'happy' gimmicks are just designed to make the public feel better about exploiting animals. Don't buy the propaganda of 'happy' exploitation. Go vegan and promote veganism.
Gary L. Francione / Professor
Agriculture
Animal
Feel Better
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So it is always preferable to discuss the matter of veganism in a non-judgemental way. Remember that to most people, eating flesh or dairy and using animal products such as leather, wool, and silk, is as normal as breathing air or drinking water. A person who consumes dairy or uses animal products is not necessarily or usually what a recent and unpopular American president labelled an "evil doer.
Gary L. Francione / Professor
Air
Animal
Drinking
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There is no meaningful distinction between eating flesh and eating dairy or other animal products. Animals exploited in the dairy industry live longer than those used for meat, but they are treated worse during their lives, and they end up in the same slaughterhouse after which we consume their flesh anyway. There is probably more suffering in a glass of milk or an ice cream cone than there is in a steak.
Gary L. Francione / Professor
Animal
Glasses
Meaningful
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Ethical veganism results in a profound revolution within the individual; a complete rejection of the paradigm of oppression and violence that she has been taught from childhood to accept as the natural order. It changes her life and the lives of those with whom she shares this vision of nonviolence. Ethical veganism is anything but passive; on the contrary, it is the active refusal to cooperate with injustice
Gary L. Francione / Professor
Order
Profound
Rejection
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The most important form of incremental change is the decision by the individual to become vegan. Veganism, or the eschewing of all animal products, is more than a matter of diet or lifestyle; it is a political and moral statement in which the individual accepts the principle of abolition in her own life. Veganism is the one truly abolitionist goal that we can all achieve - and we can achieve it immediately, starting with our next meal.
Gary L. Francione / Professor
Animal
Decision
Goal
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Veganism is about nonviolence. It is about not engaging in harm to other sentient beings; to oneself; and to the environment upon which all beings depend for life. In my view, the animal rights movement is, at its core, a movement about ending violence to all sentient beings. It is a movement that seeks fundamental justice for all. It is an emerging peace movement that does not stop at the arbitrary line that separates humans from nonhumans.
Gary L. Francione / Professor
Peace
Animal
Rights
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We need to reshape the movement as one of grassroots activists, and not 'professional activists' who populate the seemingly endless number of national animal rights groups. For many people, activism has become writing a check to a national group that is very pleased to have you leave it to them. Although it is important to give financial support to worthy efforts only, giving money is not enough and giving to the wrong groups can actually do more harm than good.
Gary L. Francione / Professor
Animal
Numbers
Writing
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Being vegan is easy. Are there social pressures that encourage you to continue to eat, wear, and use animal products? Of course there are. But in a patriarchal, racist, homophobic, and ableist society, there are social pressures to participate and engage in sexism, racism, homophobia, and ableism. At some point, you have to decide who you are and what matters morally to you. And once you decide that you regard victimizing vulnerable nonhumans is not morally acceptable, it is easy to go and stay vegan
Gary L. Francione / Professor
Animal
Racism
What Matters
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I find it very annoying that so many animal advocates talk about the difficulty of being vegan. Many animal advocates are inclined to make the issue their suffering and not the animals' suffering, and I suppose that accounts for part of the reason that veganism is portrayed as such a "sacrifice." And many animal advocates are not vegans, or are "flexible vegans," which means that they do not observe veganism at all or not consistently, and emphasizing the supposed difficulty of veganism is part of justifying their own behavior.
Gary L. Francione / Professor
Animal
Mean
Sacrifice
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