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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
Animal
Entertainment
Moral
Degrees
Reflects
Use
Animals
Clothings
Social
Concern
Clothing
Part
Civilization
Increasing
Humans
Development
Experiments
Kind
Differences
Recognition
Food
Degree

More quotes by 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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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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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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Speciesism is morally objectionable because, like racism, sexism, and heterosexism, it links personhood with an irrelevant criterion. Those who reject speciesism are committed to rejecting racism, sexism, heterosexism, and other forms of discrimination as well.
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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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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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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All sentient beings should have at least one right—the right not to be treated as property
Gary L. Francione
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To say that a being who is sentient has no interest in continuing to live is like saying that a being with eyes has no interest in continuing to see. Death—however “humane”—is a harm for humans and nonhumans alike.
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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It costs us so little to go vegan. It costs animals so much if we don't.
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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The proposition that humans have mental characteristics wholly absent in non-humans is inconsistent with the theory of evolution.
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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Who I've been is not as important as who I'm becoming.
Gary L. Francione
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An aim of an argument should be progress, but progress ultimately means little without victory.
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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Michael Vick may enjoy watching dogs fight. Someone else may find that repulsive but see nothing wrong with eating an animal who has had a life as full of pain and suffering as the lives of the fighting dogs. It's strange that we regard the latter as morally different from, and superior to, the former.
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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...eating animals involves an intentional decision to participate in the suffering and death of nonhumans where there is no plausible moral justification.
Gary L. Francione