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17 quotes
SortEditorial Year Length
Topic·Animals✕clear
Poem

I think I could turn and live ahile with te animals, they are so placid and self-contain'd, I stand and look at them sometimes half the day long. They do not sweat and whine about their condition, They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, Not one is dissatisfied...not one is demented with the mania of owning things, Not one kneels to another nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago, Not one is respectable or industrious over the whole earth.

Walt Whitman
Song of Myself · 1855
★ 3.9
Historical literature

A sharp distinction between humans and "animals" is essential if we are to bend them to our will, make them work for us, wear them, eat them—without any disquieting tinges of guilt or regret... Humans—who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals—have had an understandable penchant for pretending that animals do not feel pain... It is unseemly of us, who often behave so unfeelingly toward other animals, to contend that only humans can suffer... The behavior of other animals, especially the chimps and bonobos, renders such pretensions specious. They are just too much like us.

★ 3.5