It is not an act of kindness to treat animals respectfully. It is an act of justice.
Interpretation
Treating animals with respect is fundamentally about their rights and justice, not just kindness.
This quote by Tom Regan emphasizes that respecting animals is not merely a matter of being kind; rather, it is a moral obligation rooted in justice. It suggests that animals have intrinsic rights that should be recognized and upheld, and treating them well is part of fulfilling those rights, much like any issue of justice in society.
In practice
During a speech on animal rights, one might use this quote to highlight the importance of justice for animals.
The other animals humans eat, use in science, hunt, trap, and exploit in a variety of ways, have a life of their own that is of importance to them apart from their utility to us. They are not only in the world, they are aware of it. What happens to them matters to them. Each has a life that fares better or worse for the one whose life it is.
What could be the basis of our having more inherent value than animals? Their lack of reason, or autonomy, or intellect? Only if we are willing to make the same judgment in the case of humans who are similarly deficient.
It is not larger, cleaner cages that justice demands...but empty cages; not traditional animal agriculture but a complete end to all commerce in the flesh of dead animals; not more humane hunting and trapping, but the total eradication of these barbarous practices.
I would encourage them never to forget that they were not always vegans. The self-righteousness of the recently converted hurts, it does not help, other animals.
No man has a right in America to treat any other man "tolerantly" for tolerance is the assumption of superiority. Our liberties are equal rights of every citizen.
God defines himself as "I am who I am", which also means: My being is such that I shall always be present in every moment of becoming.
We have a dangerous tendency to misunderstand, minimize, and even manipulate the gospel in order to accommodate our assumptions and our desires.
This is the nature of war, whose stake is at once the game and the authority and the justification. Seen so, war is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one's will and the will of another within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence.War is god.
I am not afraid of death. I just don't want to be there when it happens.
Those who visit foreign nations, but associate only with their own country-men, change their climate, but not their customs. They see new meridians, but the same men; and with heads as empty as their pockets, return home with traveled bodies, but untravelled minds.
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