We burned with love for ourselves, all of us, starters of the fire we suffered- our love was the affliction for which only our love was the cure.
Jonathan Safran FoerRead
Find a printer paper and imagine a full-grown bird shaped something like a football with legs standing on it. Imagine 33,000 of these rectangles in a grid. (Broilers are never in cages, and never on multiple levels.) Now enclose the grid with windowless walls and put a ceiling on top. Run in automated (drug-laced) feed, water, heating, and ventilation systems. This is a farm.
Interpretation
This quote critiques industrial farming and its inhumane conditions for animals.
Jonathan Safran Foer vividly describes the confinement and conditions of factory farming, urging readers to understand the scale and cruelty involved. By using a stark visual representation of birds in a grid, he emphasizes the mechanization and lack of natural living conditions for animals raised in such environments, prompting a reflection on ethical food production and animal welfare.
In practice
In a speech about animal rights, this quote can be used to illustrate the harsh realities of industrial farming.
We burned with love for ourselves, all of us, starters of the fire we suffered- our love was the affliction for which only our love was the cure.
Memory was supposed to fill the time, but it made time a hole to be filled. Each second was two hundred yards, to be walked, crawled. You couldn't see the next hour, it was so far in the distance. Tomorrow was over the horizon, and would take an entire day to reach.
She was not crying Which surprised me very much But I understand now That she had found places For her melancholy That were behind more masks Than only her eyes
What do babies dream of? She must be dreaming of the before-life, just as I dream of the afterlife.
A few weeks after the worst day, I started writing lots of letters. I don't know why, but it was one of the only things that made my boots lighter.
What is being awake if not interpreting our dreams, or dreaming if not interpreting our wake?
Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.
Utopia is in the moment. Not in some future time, some other place, but in the here and now, or else it is nowhere.
Why can't we simply borrow what is useful to us from Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, especially Zen, as we borrow from Christianity, science, American Indian traditions and world literature in general, including philosophy, and let the rest go hang? Borrow what we need but rely principally upon our own senses, common sense and daily living experience.
I was asked why I did not give a rod with which to fish, in the hands of the poor, rather than give the fish itself as this makes them remain poor. So I told them: The people whom we pick up are not able to stand with a rod. So today I will give them fish and when they are able to stand, then I shall send them to you and you can give them the rod. That is your job. Let me do my work today.
Authenticity is more than speaking; Authenticity is also about doing. Every decision we make says something about who we are.
Some go to sleep in an organization and never wake up, and those who do wake up put them selves to sleep again by joining another. This acquisitive movement is called expansion of thought, progress.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.