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There is increasing social concern about our use of nonhumans for experiments, food, clothing and entertainment. This concern about animals reflects both our own moral development as a civilization and our recognition that the differences between humans and animals are, for the most part, differences of degree and not of kind.

Gary L. Francione

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Gary L. Francione
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: May 24
Philosopher
Professor
University Teacher
New York
United States
Gary Lawrence Francione
Food
Degree
Animal
Entertainment
Moral
Degrees
Reflects
Use
Animals
Clothings
Social
Concern
Clothing
Part
Civilization
Increasing
Humans
Development
Experiments
Kind
Differences
Recognition

More quotes by Gary L. Francione

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Forty-two years after Dr. King was murdered, we are still a nation of inequality. People of color, women, gays, lesbians, and others are still treated as second-class citizens. Yes, things have changed but we have still not achieved equality among all humans. And nonhuman animals continue to be chattel property without any inherent value.
Gary L. Francione
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Humans treat animals as things that exist as means to human ends. That's morally wrong. Sexism promotes the idea that women are things that exist as means to the ends of men. That's morally wrong. We need to stop treating all persons - whether human or nonhuman - as things.
Gary L. Francione
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Every sentient being values her/his life even if no one else does. That is what is meant by saying that the lives of all have inherent value.
Gary L. Francione
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All sentient beings should have at least one right—the right not to be treated as property
Gary L. Francione
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There is no moral distinction between fur and other materials made from animals, such as leather, which also is the result of the suffering and death of sentient beings.
Gary L. Francione
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The idea that we have the right to inflict suffering and death on other sentient beings for the trivial reasons of palate pleasure and fashion is, without doubt, one of the most arrogant and morally repugnant notions in the history of human thought.
Gary L. Francione
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Who I've been is not as important as who I'm becoming.
Gary L. Francione
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Veganism must be the baseline if we are to have any hope of shifting the paradigm away from animals as things and toward animals as nonhuman persons.
Gary L. Francione
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Every time you drink a glass of milk or eat a piece of cheese, you harm a mother. Please go vegan.
Gary L. Francione
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They are nonhuman persons. They are not food. If animals matter morally at all, there is one and only one rational response: go vegan. Everything else is just participation in animal exploitation.
Gary L. Francione
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The distinction between meat and other animal products is total nonsense. Vegetarianism is a morally incoherent position. If you regard animals as members of the moral community, you really don’t have a choice but to go vegan.
Gary L. Francione
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Domesticated animals such as dogs and cats are vulnerable and entirely dependent on us for all of their needs. They live very unnatural lives because they are not part of the human world and they are not part of the animal world.
Gary L. Francione
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Does veganism require a “sacrifice”? Yes. It requires that you give up that which you never had any right to in the first place.
Gary L. Francione
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I certainly believe that we have a moral obligation to care for the dogs, cats, and other nonhumans whose existence we have caused or facilitated as part of the institution of 'pet' ownership. But I maintain that we ought to abolish the institution and stop causing or facilitating the existence of more 'companion' animals.
Gary L. Francione
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If an animal has any rights at all, it's got the right not to be eaten.
Gary L. Francione
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99% of our uses of animals, including our numerically most significant use of them for food, do not involve any sort of necessity or any real conflict between human and nonhuman interests. If animals matter morally at all, then, even without accepting a theory of animal rights, those uses of animals cannot be morally justified.
Gary L. Francione
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In order to be a teacher you've got to be a student first
Gary L. Francione
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If you are not vegan, please consider going vegan. It’s a matter of nonviolence. Being vegan is your statement that you reject violence to other sentient beings, to yourself, and to the environment, on which all sentient beings depend.
Gary L. Francione
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Any serious social, political, and economic change must include veganism.
Gary L. Francione
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The proposition that humans have mental characteristics wholly absent in non-humans is inconsistent with the theory of evolution.
Gary L. Francione