We are vegans not simply because being vegan will reduce suffering. We are vegan because every sentient being values her or his life even if no one else does. We are vegan because justice minimally requires that we not take life for trivial purposes.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the moral imperative of veganism as a means to honor the lives of sentient beings and seek justice.
Gary L. Francione's quote highlights that the choice to be vegan goes beyond the practical benefits of reducing suffering; it is rooted in a deep respect for the lives of all sentient beings. It argues that justice calls for recognizing and valifying the intrinsic worth of each individual's life, rejecting the notion of taking lives for insignificant reasons, thus advocating for a principled stance against unnecessary harm.
In practice
In a discussion on ethical eating at a community event.
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.
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.
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.
We cannot talk simultaneously about animal rights and the 'humane' slaughter of animals.
We can no more justify using nonhumans as human resources than we can justify human slavery. Animal use and slavery have at least one important point in common: both institutions treat sentient beings exclusively as resources of others. That cannot be justified with respect to humans; it cannot be justified with respect to nonhumans—however “humanely” we treat them.
Veganism is the application of the principle of abolition in your own life; it represents your recognition that animals are not things. Veganism is the recognition of the moral personhood of nonhuman animals.
It is a curious thing... that every creed promises a paradise which will be absolutely uninhabitable for anyone of civilized taste.
Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.
The people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions, and all else, now concerns itself no more, and longs eagerly for just two things: bread and circuses!
The ultimate goal of theology isn't knowledge, but worship. If our learning and knowledge of God do not lead to the joyful praise of God, we have failed. We learn only that we might laud, which is to say that theology without doxology is idolatry. The only theology worth studying is a theology that can be sung!
Every being is a spark of the Divine, or God. Look into the eyes of the dog and sense that innermost core. When you are present, you can sense the spirit, the one consciousness, in every creature and love it as yourself.
The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that still carries any reward.
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