A Quote by Alexandra Harney

The line we draw between animals that are socially acceptable and those we find repugnant can be awfully arbitrary.

Alexandra Harney

Quote Topics

Acceptable Animals Arbitrary Between Draw Find Line Repugnant Socially Those

Quote Author

Alexandra Harney
Journalist

Aspects that we consider normal today could very well be repugnant in the future - eating animals, for one thing, or abundant choice, or invasive surgery. I was simply trying to demonstrate that what is acceptable today may not be acceptable forever, and vice-versa.

Jasper Fforde

The big dividing line is not and has never been between those who advocate more or less militant forms of resistance, or between mainstream and grassroots activists. The dividing line is between those who do something and those who do nothing.

Derrick Jensen

We now know that sex is complicated enough that we have to admit nature doesn't draw the line for us between male and female, or between male and intersex and female and intersex; we actually draw that line on nature.

Alice Dreger

I have endeavoured to show that no absolute structural line of demarcation, wider than that between the animals which immediately succeed us in the scale, can be drawn between the animal world and ourselves; and I may add the expression of my belief that the attempt to draw a physical distinction is equally futile, and that even the highest faculties of feeling and of intellect begin to germinate in lower forms of life.

Thomas Huxley

All those animals that were in the cages, I would spend a lot of time in those cages with the animals in-between shots, just hanging out, because I prefer animals to humans. If I get an opportunity to be with them, I'll usually take it.

Dominic Monaghan

I start out with words, with the idea, the line. Then after I get a line or two, I try to find what melodic line those lines would be suited to. As soon as I find the form I can finish the song in my head.

Mose Allison

Although other animals cannot reason nor speak the way humans do, this does not give us the right to do with them as we like. Even though our supposed possession of a soul and superior intelligence are used to create an arbitrary dividing line over rights, the fact remains that all animals have the capacity to experience pain and suffering, and in suffering they are our equals.

Nathaniel Altman

A doctor is not criticized for describing the manifestations and symptoms of an illness, even though the symptoms may be disgusting. I feel that a writer has the right to the same freedom In fact, I think that the time has come for the line between literature and science, a purely arbitrary line, to be erased.

William S. Burroughs

I find it very difficult to draw a line between what's sex and what isn't. It can be very, very sexy to drive a car, and completely unsexy to flirt with someone at a bar.

Bjork

In men whom men condemn as ill I find so much of goodness still, In men whom men pronounce divine I find so much of sin and blot, I do not dare to draw a line Between the two, where God has not.

Joaquin Miller

The aim of political institutions like the United Nations is to draw the line between struggle and conflict and to make it possible for nations to stay on the right side of that line.

Javier Perez de Cuellar

There is no such thing as an acceptable level of unemployment, because hunger is not acceptable, poverty is not acceptable, poor health is not acceptable, and a ruined life is not acceptable.

Hubert H. Humphrey

Draw a line; draw a line that pleases you. And remember that it is not the artist's role to copy the outlines of things but to create a world of his own lines on paper." (pp.28-29)

Milan Kundera

I was always a creative child. I also liked to paint and draw. All those years of doing those types of things, I was grateful I had those experiences because it changed my life later on. I know they weren't acceptable for what society assumed a boy should do, but I think its just your passion, it's what you're drawn to.