Ana > Ana's Quotes

“It is perhaps the misfortune of my life that I am interested in far too much but not decisively in any one thing; all my interests are not subordinated in one but stand on an equal footing.”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“People may hope that the meat they buy came from an animal who died without pain, but they do not really want to know about it. Yet those who, by their purchases, require animals to be killed do not deserve to be shielded from this or any other aspect of the production of the meat they buy.”
― Peter Singer, Animal Liberation

“The self is a relation which relates itself to its own self, or it is that in the relation that the relation relates itself to its own self; the self is not the relation but that the relation relates itself to its own self.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening

“By ceasing to rear and kill animals for food, we can make so much extra food available for humans that, properly distributed, it would eliminate starvation and malnutrition from this planet. Animal Liberation is Human Liberation too.”
― Peter Singer, Animal Liberation

“Philosophy ought to question the basic assumptions of the age. Thinking through, critically and carefully, what most of us take for granted is, I believe, the chief task of philosophy, and the task that makes philosophy a worthwhile activity.”
― Peter Singer, Animal Liberation

“I am only interested in the views of two people: one is called Bresson and one called Bergman.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky

“It is easy to take a stand about a remote issue, but speciesists, like racists, reveal their true nature when the issue comes nearer home. To protest about bullfighting in Spain, the eating of dogs in South Korea, or the slaughter of baby seals in Canada, while continuing to eat eggs from hens who have spent their lives crammed into cages, or veal from calves who have been deprived of their mothers, their proper diet, or the freedom to lie down with their legs extended, is like denouncing apartheid in South Africa while asking your neighbors not to sell their houses to blacks.”
― Peter Singer, Animal Liberation

“What could I say to you that would be of value, except that perhaps you seek too much, that as a result of your seeking you cannot find.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“What is art? (...) Like a declaration of love: the consciousness of our dependence on each other. A confession. An unconscious act that none the less reflects the true meaning of life—love and sacrifice.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky

“The unchallenged assumption is that humans may use animals for their own purposes, and they may raise and kill them to satisfy their preference for a diet containing animal flesh.”
― Peter Singer, Animal Liberation

“It takes twenty-one pounds of protein fed to a calf to produce a single pound of animal protein for humans. We get back less than 5 percent of what we put in.”
― Peter Singer, Animal Liberation

“say that people are “humane” is to say that they are kind; to say that they are “beastly,” “brutal,” or simply that they behave “like animals” is to suggest that they are cruel and nasty. We rarely stop to consider that the animal who kills with the least reason to do so is the human animal. We think of lions and wolves as savage because they kill; but they must kill, or starve. Humans kill other animals for sport, to satisfy their curiosity, to beautify their bodies, and to please their palates. Human beings also kill members of their own species for greed or power. Moreover, human beings are not content with mere killing. Throughout history they have shown a tendency to torment and torture both their fellow human beings and their fellow animals before putting them to death. No other animal shows much interest in doing this. While”
― Peter Singer, Animal Liberation: The Definitive Classic of the Animal Movement

“I will no longer mutilate and destroy myself in order to find a secret behind the ruins.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“When we eat plants, food takes on a different quality. We take from the earth food that is ready for us and does not fight against us as we take it.”
― Peter Singer, Animal Liberation: The Definitive Classic of the Animal Movement

“There’s a fragment of some conversation, I’m remembering it. Someone is saying: “You have to understand: this is not your husband anymore, not a beloved person, but a radioactive object with a strong density of poisoning. You’re not suicidal. Get ahold of yourself.” And I’m like someone who’s lost her mind: “But I love him! I love him!” He’s sleeping, and I’m whispering: “I love you!” Walking in the hospital courtyard, “I love you.” Carrying his sanitary tray, “I love you.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

“Those who are too lazy and comfortable to think for themselves and be their own judges obey the laws. Others sense their own laws within them.”
― Hermann Hesse, Demian

“Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Book collecting is an obsession, an occupation, a disease, an addiction, a fascination, an absurdity, a fate. It is not a hobby. Those who do it must do it.”
― Jeanette Winterson

“Breathe properly. Stay curious. And eat your beets.”
― Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

“Keep good company, read good books, love good things and cultivate soul and body as faithfully as you can.”
― Louisa May Alcott, Rose in Bloom

“It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humour.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

“Be thine own palace, or the world's thy jail.”
― John Donne, The Poems of John Donne (Volume 1); Miscellaneous Poems (Songs and Sonnets) Elegies. Epithalamions, or Marriage Songs. Satires. Epigrams. the Progress of the Soul. Notes

“Faith is not a question of the existence or non-existence of God. It is believing that love without reward is valuable.”
― Emmanuel Levinas

“The dead can survive as part of the lives of those that still live.”
― Kenzaburō Ōe, Hiroshima Notes

“Quiet descended on her, calm, content, as her needle, drawing the silk smoothly to its gentle pause, collected the green folds together and attached them, very lightly, to the belt. So on a summer’s day waves collect, overbalance, and fall; collect and fall; and the whole world seems to be saying “that is all” more and more ponderously, until even the heart in the body which lies in the sun on the beach says too, That is all. Fear no more, says the heart. Fear no more, says the heart, committing its burden to some sea, which sighs collectively for all sorrows, and renews, begins, collects, lets fall. And the body alone listens to the passing bee; the wave breaking; the dog barking, far away barking and barking.”
― Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

“It takes a person of great care and insight to watch for any abnormality in the green grass even while it grows abundantly and healthily.”
― Kenzaburō Ōe, Hiroshima Notes

“I, myself, spent 9 years in an insane asylum and never had any suicidal tendencies, but I know that every conversation I had with a psychiatrist during the morning visit made me long to hang myself because I was aware that I could not slit his throat.”
― Antonin Artaud

“I myself am an absolute abyss.”
― Antonin Artaud

“The only people who are worth knowing are either saints, scoundrels or madmen; at least their conversation is always interesting. Sensible people are dull by definition, because they are always harping on to the same boring tune about everyday life. They form part of the crowd, the more intelligent part perhaps, but the crowd for all that, and I’m sick of them.”
― Joris-Karl Huysmans

“I will put warm woolen socks on the feet of the people in the other world; but I dream and cannot wake, and I am cast over the cliff and hang there by two fingers that are danced and trampled on by the giant unreality.”
― Janet Frame, Faces in the Water