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It is also a very remarkable fact that although many animals show more skill than we do in some of their actions, yet the same animals show none at all in many others; so what they do better does not prove that they have any intelligence, for if it did then they would have more intelligence than any of us and would excel us in everything. It proves rather that they have no intelligence at all, and that it is nature which acts in them according to the disposition of their organs. In the same way a clock, consisting only of wheels and springs, can count the hours and measure time more accurately than we can with all our wisdom.
RENE DESCARTES, Discourse on Method
Animals are, like all living things, self-building, self-maintaining, and self-protecting embodiments of their genetic designs, and they are therefore in human eyes objects of their own operations.
A. VAN GINKEL, General Principles of Human Power
Ask experimenters why they experiment on animals, and the answer is: "Because the animals are like us." Ask experimenters why it is morally okay to experiment on animals, and the answer is: "Because the animals are not like us." Animal experimentation rests on a logical contradiction.
CHARLES R. MAGEL, attributed, The PETA Practical Guide to Animal Rights
When animals are no longer colonized and appropriated by us, we can reach out to our evolutionary cousins. Perhaps then the ancient hope for a deeper emotional connection across the species barrier, for closeness and participation in a realm of feelings now beyond our imagination, will be realized.
JEFFREY MOUSSAIEFF MASSON & SUSAN MCCARTHY, When Elephants Weep
Animals have one thing that puts them way ahead of people: they don't dissemble, and you don't have to pretend in front of them.
IVAN KLIMA, Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light
- God gave unto the Animals
- A wisdom past our power to see:
- Each knows innately how to live,
- Which we must learn laboriously.
MARGARET ATWOOD, The Year of the Flood
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