My aim is to advocate that we make this mental switch in respect of our attitudes and practices towards a very large group of beings: members of species other than our own - or, as we popularly though misleadingly call them, animals. In other words, I am urging that we extend to other species the basic principle of equality that most of us recognize should be extended to all members of our own species.
Racists violate the principle of equality by giving greater weight to the interests of members of their own race when there is a clash between their interests and the interests of those of another race. Sexists violate the principle of equality by favoring the interests of their own sex. Similarly, speciesists allow the interests of their own species to override the greater interests of members of other species. The pattern is identical in each case.
You have to be able to love members of your own species before you can branch out and apply that to other species.
Sometimes I get drunk and I get into arguments with taxi drivers. And I get out the cab and I slam the door. That's not the way to win an argument with a taxi driver. The way to win is you get out of the cab and you leave the door open. And then he has to step out and come around and close that door. And while he's doing that, I'm on the other side opening the other doors-and we just go around and around and around, and I got my own Benny Hill situation going on in life.
Free nations are peaceful nations. Free nations don't attack each other. Free nations don't develop weapons of mass destruction.
I remember when I was young, before we started lifting and working out, I looked like I was bench-pressing other humans. I looked different than other girls. I had to be OK with the fact that I had a strong physique, no matter if people looked at me in an accepting way or not.
From the point of view of the species, death is part of this whole process. You could say that species have evolved in such a way that individual members last a certain time. Perhaps a certain kind of species would be better able to survive if the individuals didn't last too long. Other kinds could last longer.
With the exception of certain rodents, no other vertebrate except Homo sapiens habitually destroys members of his own species.
Could I anticipate the enmity of those for whom I encountered such opposition? If they had been willing, I should have gained the victory. But the head faints when it is abandoned by the other members. If they had been wise they would have seen that in attacking me they were attacking their own privileges and serving princes to their own servitude.
In the Age of Perfect Virtue, men lived among the animals and birds as members of one large family. There were no distinctions between superior and inferior to separate one man or species from another. All retained their natural Virtue and lived in a state of pure simplicity.
Years later, my wife, Ilusion, woke me up to the realization that you can't just "dump" your whole species simply because you've had a few bad encounters with some of its members. ... Intimacy's a greater goal to seek. ...That true knowledge of intimacy within our own species will allow us to pass it along to interspecies relations.
In a fragile environment, we need to be aware of ourselves as members of a uniquely powerful species living among other species who are quite as interesting as we are but vulnerable to us because we are cleverer in more destructive ways.
On K-12 education America has gone down, down, down compared to the other nations. It doesn't mean that we have gotten dumber. It just means that we have not advanced as fast in those areas as other nations have done, and we're way down right now.
Individual NRA members, black and white, are publicly questioning why the organization has virtually nothing to say about Philando Castile. Just like with background checks - which most NRA members support - the NRA is out of step with its own members.
Success is putting one step in front of the other to get through that door whatever that door is.
Ever since there have been people, there have been explorers, looking in places where other hadn't been before. Not everyone does it, but we are part of a species where some members of the species do, to the benefit of us all.