Wayne Pacelle > Quotes

“In our day, there are stresses and fractures of the human-animal bond, and some forces at work would sever it once and for all. They pull us in the wrong direction and away from the decent and honorable code that makes us care for creatures who are entirely at our mercy. Especially within the last two hundred years, we've come to apply an industrial mind-set to the use of animals, too often viewing them as if they were nothing but articles of commerce and the raw material of science, agriculture, and wildlife management. Here, as in other pursuits, human ingenuity has a way of outrunning human conscience, and some things we do only because we can--forgetting to ask whether we should.”
― Wayne Pacelle, The Bond: Our Kinship with Animals, Our Call to Defend Them

“Often the greatest challenge of the animal welfare movement is to remind people of the things they already know to be true-that to mistreat any animal is beneath us, that cruelty of any kind is dishonorable and inexcusable, and that we all have duties of kindness and self-restraint in the treatment of our fellow creatures.”
― Wayne Pacelle, The Bond: Our Kinship with Animals, Our Call to Defend Them

“We know too much, and what might have been excused in other times can no longer stand up to reason. ... with that understanding comes moral responsibility.”
― Wayne Pacelle

“... there's a vast gap between what we know and what we allow, what objective science affirms and what the laws permit.”
― Wayne Pacelle

“The spirit of mercy is found in all the world's great religions , and they remind us of our charge in caring for Creation.”
― Wayne Pacelle, The Humane Economy: How Innovators and Enlightened Consumers Are Transforming the Lives of Animals – Where Innovation Meets Animal Welfare and Sustainable Business

“Yet this natural empathy and connection with other animals is not the final word, and it leads to no predetermined outcomes. There are competing instincts, whether greed, desire, or more a Tavistock and specific I'm pluses like hunting and killing that canight trump our inclination toward more compassionate answer nurturing ways. We can be pulled in opposite directions, and it may be social pressure or conditioning or reason that pushes us down one path or the other.”
― Wayne Pacelle, The Humane Economy: How Innovators and Enlightened Consumers Are Transforming the Lives of Animals – Where Innovation Meets Animal Welfare and Sustainable Business

“Similarly, the people actually causing the the harm directly don't want us to be reminded of the their practices--in fact, they often make very determined efforts to conceal their cruelty.”
― Wayne Pacelle, The Humane Economy: How Innovators and Enlightened Consumers Are Transforming the Lives of Animals – Where Innovation Meets Animal Welfare and Sustainable Business

“This much is sure: as the humanemeconomy asserts its own power, it's own logic, and it's essential decency, an an older order is passing away, and the near-universal reaction to each new step will be "good riddance." By every measure, life will be better when human satisfaction and need are no longer built upon the foundation of animal cruelty, Indefensible practices will no longer need defending; unnecessary evils will no longer need excuses. In their place, in market after market, we'll see the products of human creativity inspired by human compassion, a combination that can solve any problem and overcome any wrong.”
― Wayne Pacelle, The Humane Economy: How Innovators and Enlightened Consumers Are Transforming the Lives of Animals – Where Innovation Meets Animal Welfare and Sustainable Business

“Indeed, consumer choice informed by conscience is an unstoppable force for good.”
― Wayne Pacelle, The Humane Economy: How Innovators and Enlightened Consumers Are Transforming the Lives of Animals – Where Innovation Meets Animal Welfare and Sustainable Business

“... they all have a place and purpose of their own. They have their own dignity and their own destinies to fulfill, in a plan ultimately beyond any man's power to know.”
― Wayne Pacelle

“We are in the midst--much closer to the beginning than to the end, I believe--of an epic, political, cultural, and economic realignment in treatment of animals.”
― Wayne Pacelle, The Humane Economy: How Innovators and Enlightened Consumers Are Transforming the Lives of Animals – Where Innovation Meets Animal Welfare and Sustainable Business