Intellectually, human beings and animals may be different, but it's pretty obvious that animals have a rich emotional life and that they feel joy and pain. It's easy to forget the connection between a hamburger and the cow it came from. But I forced myself to acknowledge the fact that every time I ate a hamburger, a cow had ceased to breathe
Interpretation
This quote highlights the emotional depth of animals and our often overlooked connection to their suffering when consuming meat.
Moby's quote reflects on the moral implications of our dietary choices, emphasizing that while we may intellectually separate ourselves from animals, they possess emotions akin to our own, capable of joy and suffering. He urges the reader to confront the uncomfortable reality that every consumption of meat, such as a hamburger, is connected to the death of an animal, challenging us to reconsider our relationship with these sentient beings.
In practice
During a speech on animal rights, I quoted Moby to illustrate the emotional lives of animals.
So in 1987 I gave up all animal products and became a vegan. Simply so that I could eat and live in accordance with my beliefs that animals have their own lives, that they're entitled to their own lives and that contributing to animal suffering is something that I don't want to be a part of.
But when a man’s religion becomes really frantic; when it is a positive torment to him; and in fine, makes this earth of ours an uncomfortable inn to lodge in; then I think it high time to take that individual aside and argue the point with him.
I love to be busy. I'm envious of people who are able to take their spare time and relax. All I like to do is work. Perhaps it's lingering Calvinist guilt?
There might be a lot of difference between Republicans and Democrats on key social issues like women's rights and health care. But when it comes to taking corporate cash, they're pretty much the same beast.
And if we obey God, we must disobey ourselves, and it is in this disobeying ourselves, wherein the hardness of obeying God consists.
It's heartbreaking that so many hundreds of millions of people around the world are desperate for the right to vote, but here in America people stay home on election day.
You're born naked, and the rest is drag! EVERYBODY is in drag. Whether you're a man or a woman. It just depends on how extreme you wanna go.
Those who persevere in sin are those who are held in abhorrence by God, but those who abandon the ways of sin are loved by the Lord.
We regard God as an airman regards his parachute; it's there for emergencies but he hopes he'll never have to use it.
Custom will reconcile people to any atrocity, and fashion will drive them to acquire any custom.
The secret of life is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for the rest of your life. And the most important thing is, it must be something you cannot possibly do.
He gazes through sunlight's buttresses, back down the refectory at the others, wallowing in their plenitude of bananas, thick palatals of their hunger lost somewhere in the stretch of morning between them and himself. A hundred miles of it, so suddenly. Solitude, even among the meshes of this war, can when it wishes so take him by the blind gut and touch, as now, possessively. Pirate's again some other side of a window, watching strangers eat breakfast.
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