'In 500 years (maybe less) people will look back on us and wonder about many things. No doubt behavior we consider normal today will inspire horror in our more enlightened successors. I am completely opposed to any form of animal exploitation, including animal experimentation, keeping animals in zoos or in circuses, (indeed any form of captivity for animals), the use of leather, fur, wool and silk. I also have begun to wonder whether any domesticated animal can lead an ideal life in the company of humans.'
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There is between sleep and us something like a pact, a treaty with no secret clauses, and according to this convention it is agreed that, far from being a dangerous, bewitching force, sleep will become domesticated and serve as an instrument of our power to act. We surrender to sleep, but in the way that the master entrusts himself to the slave who serves him.
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The only mystery about the cat is why it ever decided to become a domesticated animal
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You dehumanize a man as much by returning him to nature - by making him one with rocks, vegetation, and animals - as by turning him into a machine. Both the natural and the mechanical are the opposite of that which is uniquely human. Nature is a self-made machine, more perfectly automated than any automated machine. To create something in the image of nature is to create a machine, and it was by learning the inner working of nature that man became a builder of machines. It is also obvious that when man domesticated animals and plants he acquired self-made machines for the production of food, power, and beauty.
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We have been God-like in our planned breeding of our domesticated plants and animals, but we have been rabbit-like in our unplanned breeding of ourselves.
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