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QUOTES


“Our new Animal Protection Litigation section will boast seven full-time attorneys who will tackle new cases and seek justice for animals, will serve as a training ground for the next generation of animal lawyers and law students, and will lay the foundation for implementation of new strategies to help farm animals, wildlife, and companion animals in the courts.”
Wayne Pacelle, HSUS President, in an HSUS press release, December 30, 2004


“Would I advocate taking five guilty vivisector's lives to save hundreds of millions of innocent animal lives? Yes, I would.”
Jerry Vlasak, appearing on a panel on the Australian Special Broadcasting Service program Insight – October 12, 2004


“One generation and out. We have no problem with the extinction of domestic animals. They are creations of human selective breeding...We have no ethical obligation to preserve the different breeds of livestock produced through selective breeding.”
Wayne Pacelle, HSUS, former director of the Fund for Animals, Animal People, May 1993


“It is not larger, cleaner cages that justice demands...but empty cages.”
Tom Regan, Animal Rights Author and Philosopher
North Carolina State University
(Regan, The Philosophy of Animal Rights, 1989)


“Pet ownership is an absolutely abysmal situation brought about by human manipulation.”
Ingrid Newkirk, President of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PeTA), “Just Like Us? Toward a Nation of Animal Rights” (symposium), Harper's, August 1988, p. 50.


“Liberating our language by eliminating the word 'pet' is the first step... In an ideal society where all exploitation and oppression has been eliminated, it will be NJARA's policy to oppose the keeping of animals as 'pets.'"
New Jersey Animal Rights Alliance, “Should Dogs Be Kept As Pets? NO!” Good Dog!
February 1991, p. 20.


“Let us allow the dog to disappear from our brick and concrete junglesfrom our firesides, from the leather nooses and chains by which we enslave it.”
John Bryant, Fettered Kingdoms: An Examination of A Changing Ethic (Washington, DC: People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PeTA), 1982), p. 15.

“The cat, like the dog, must disappear... We should cut the domestic cat free from our dominance by neutering, neutering, and more neutering, until our pathetic version of the cat ceases to exist.”
John Bryant, Fettered Kingdoms: An Examination of A Changing Ethic (Washington, DC: People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PeTA), 1982), p. 15.

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“We are not especially 'interested in' animals. Neither of us had ever been inordinately fond of dogs, cats, or horses in the way that many people are. We didn't 'love' animals.”
Peter Singer, Animal Liberation: A New Ethic for Our Treatment of Animals, 2nd ed. (New York Review of Books, 1990), Preface, p. ii.


“The theory of animal rights simply is not consistent with the theory of animal welfare... Animal rights means dramatic social changes for humans and non-humans alike; if our bourgeois values prevent us from accepting those changes, then we have no right to call ourselves advocates of animal rights.”
Gary Francione, The Animals' Voice, Vol. 4, No. 2 (undated), pp. 54-55.

“Not only are the philosophies of animal rights and animal welfare separated by irreconcilable differences... the enactment of animal welfare measures actually impedes the achievement of animal rights... Welfare reforms, by their very nature, can only serve to retard the pace at which animal rights goals are achieved.”
Gary Francione and Tom Regan, “A Movement's Means Create Its Ends,” The Animals' Agenda, January/February 1992, pp. 40-42.


“Everything we are doing lays the foundation for the one day when animals will have rights.…

“We need to get in their faces and sue the animal users so often they don’t know which courtroom they’re supposed to appear in next.”
Valerie Stanley, ALDF Attorney June, 1996


“We’re looking for good lawsuits that will establish the interests of animals as a legitimate area of concern in the law.”
Ingrid Newkirk, PETA President July, 2000

“A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. They are all mammals.
Ingrid Newkirk, PETA


“When and how legal rights for animals will be established is as yet unknown. We are only beginning to explore the legal theories that may be argued.”
Joyce Tischler, Executive Director, Animal Legal Defense Fund
Epilogue, Animal Law, Cases and Materials, 2002

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“The life of an ant and that of my child should be granted equal consideration.”
Michael W. Fox, Humane Society of the United States


“[Biomedical researchers] are up on a pedestal, but we’re whacking away at the base of that pedestal, and it’s going to fall.”
John McArdle, Humane Society of the United States


“The important first step is to break through this gigantic legal and mental wall that separates humans from every other animal.

“I’ve never made an animal rights argument in a courtroom. There’s no use. All the animal rights arguments I’ve ever made have either been in the classroom or in the public.

“We all know that when we start making a true animal rights argument . . . the other side is going to say, . . . ‘he’s trying to make everyone a vegetarian.’ You turn to the judge and say, ‘I’m not trying to do that.’ But in your heart you may be trying to do just that.”
Steven Wise, 5th Annual Conference on Animals and the Law, 1999


“The law can be used through “court decisions, interpretations of rights, interpretations of the law and using that in part to raise consciousness, to create mobilization, to have people begin thinking in different ways about the treatment of animals.

“We have to take a multi-strategic approach to this problem and the courts can be one piece of that multi-strategic approach.”
Law Professor Helena Silverstein, 5th Annual Conference on Animals and the Law, 1999


“We have to define the rights and statutes. The statutes can be defined, because this room is full and people vote. You can influence the structure of the legislation. Then the courts will follow.”
Northwestern Law Professor, Anthony D’Amato,
5th Annual Conference on Animals and the Law, 1999


“If the death of one rat cured all diseases, it wouldn’t make any difference to me.”
Chris DeRose, Last Chance for Animals

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