No lepidopterist's collection in the entire world...full if iridescent wings, is worth the life of a single butterfly.
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In their behaviour toward creatures, all men were Nazis. Human beings see oppression vividly when they're the victims. Otherwise they victimize blindly and without a thought. The smugness with which man could do with other species as he pleased exemplified the most extreme racist theories, the principle that might is right.
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Even in the worm that crawls in the earth there glows a divine spark. When you slaughter a creature, you slaughter God.
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The same questions are bothering me today as they did fifty years ago. Why is one born? Why does one suffer? In my case, the suffering of animals also makes me very sad. I’m a vegetarian, you know. When I see how little attention people pay to animals, and how easily they make peace with man being allowed to do with animals whatever he wants because he keeps a knife or a gun, it gives me a feeling of misery and sometimes anger with the Almighty. I say ‘Do you need your glory to be connected with so much suffering of creatures without glory, just innocent creatures who would like to pass a few years in peace?’ I feel that animals are as bewildered as we are except that they have no words for it. I would say that all life is asking: ‘What am I doing here?’
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As long as people will shed the blood of innocent creatures there can be no peace, no liberty, no harmony between people. Slaughter and justice cannot dwell together.
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Life is God's novel. Let him write it.
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People often say that humans have always eaten animals, as if this is a justification for continuing the practice. According to this logic, we should not try to prevent people from murdering other people, since this has also been done since the earliest of times.
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'We know now, as we have always known instinctively, that animals can suffer as much as human beings. Their emotions and their sensitivity are often stronger than those of a human being.'
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What do they know--all these scholars, all these philosophers, all the leaders of the world--about such as you? They have convinced themselves that man, the worst transgressor of all the species, is the crown of creation. All other creatures were created merely to provide him with food, pelts, to be tormented, exterminated. In relation to them, all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka.
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The very essence of literature is the war between emotion and intellect, between life and death. When literature becomes too intellectual -- when it begins to ignore the passions, the motions -- it becomes sterile, silly, and actually without substance.
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I did not become a vegetarian for my health, I did it for the health of the chickens.
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CAVETT: 'Are you saying that you think the life of a mosquito has the same worth as the life of a man?'
SINGER: 'I have seen no evidence to the contrary.'
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The second half of the twentieth century is a complete flop.
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There will be no justice as long as man will stand with a knife or with a gun and destroy those who are weaker than he is.
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What nature delivers to us is never stale. Because what nature creates has eternity in it.
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Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression.
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When a human being kills an animal for food, he is neglecting his own hunger for justice. Man prays for mercy, but is unwilling to extend it to others. Why then should man expect mercy from God? It is unfair to expect something that you are not willing to give.
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The greatness of art is not to find what is common but what is unique.
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If you keep saying things are going to be bad, you have a good chance of being a prophet.
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Doubt is part of all religion. All the religious thinkers were doubters.
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Originality is not seen in single words or even sentences. Originality is the sum total of a man's thinking or his writing.
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When you betray somebody else, you also betray yourself.
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We have to believe in free will. We’ve got no choice.
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There is great treasure there behind our skull and this is true about all of us. This little treasure has great, great powers, and I would say we only have learnt a very, very small part of what it can do.
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To be a vegetarian is to disagree -- to disagree with the course of things today. Starvation, world hunger, cruelty, waste, wars -- we must make a statement against these things. Vegetarianism is my statement. And I think it's a strong one.
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We have to believe in free will. Weve got no choice.
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We know what a person thinks not when he tells us what he thinks, but by his actions.
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