Emily Hess > Emily's Quotes

“As Theodore Roosevelt observed in his safari diary, "Death by cold, death by starvation - these are the normal endings of the stately and beautiful creatures of the wilderness. The sentimentalists who prattle about the peaceful life of nature do not realize its utter mercilessness." The problem with this outlook is that is obscures our own singular capacity to make choices, for good or evil.... it sees in nature's violence an invitation to compound nature's violence.”
― Matthew Scully, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy

“For me it was a simple moral step of extending that vision out into the world, for what are dogs but affable emissaries from the animal kingdom?”
― Matthew Scully, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy

“There are truths greater than our own wishes.”
― Matthew Scully, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy

“Why just say grace when you can show it?”
― Matthew Scully, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy

“Compassion for animals doesn’t drain away some finite reserve of moral energy and idealism, to the detriment of human welfare, but surely adds to the supply.”
― Matthew Scully, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy

“I know many people far more upright and conscientious than I am who disagree, who think nothing of it. I know that vegetarianism runs agains mankind's most casual assumptions about the world and our place within it. And I now that factory farming is an economic inevitability, not likely to end anytime soon.
But I don't answer to inevitabilities, and neither do you. I don't answer to tradition and I don't answer to Everyone. For me, it comes down to a question of whether I am a man or just a consumer. Whether to reason or just to rationalize. Whether to heed my conscience or my every craving, to assert my free will or just my will. Whether to side with the powerful and comfortable or with the weak, afflicted, and forgotten. Whether, as an economic actor in a free market, I answer to the god of money or to the God of mercy.”
― Matthew Scully, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy

“Self-actualization," for a man, is self-mastery, the strength to govern his appetites and passions and not be governed by them.”
― Matthew Scully, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy

“And so, in labs that neither they nor we will ever seen, more millions of animals must endure internal bleeding, convulsions, seizures, paralysis, and slow death. A stroll through the laboratories of Pfizer or any other pharmaceutical company, of Emory or many other universities, of the EPA, Consumer Safety Commission, Food and Drug Administration, Department of Defense, and a dozen other federal agencies would reveal similar scenes. It is easy to say, a priori, "It has to be done - it's the safety and progress." But we ourselves neither pay that price nor even look at the cost.”
― Matthew Scully, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy

“Gratuitous cruelty cannot take cover behind the fact of inevitable suffering.”
― Matthew Scully, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy

“The shallow and self-centered view that sees what is worthy in nature as that which resembles us seems vapid and petty by comparison. We try so hard to show that chimpanzees, or monkeys, or dogs, or cats, or rats, or chickens, or fish, or frogs are like us in their thoughts and feelings; in doing so we do nothing but denigrate what they really are. We define true intelligence and true feeling in human terms, and in so doing blind ourselves to the wonder of life's diversity that evolution has bequeathed earth."
-Mr. Budiansky”
― Matthew Scully, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy

“Let us at least call things what they are, no matter what else the law permits or prohibits. It may be inconvenient and at times even costly to treat our littlest laboratory animals like animals, living creatures to be spared from needless stress and suffering and death. But the law does not deal in convenient fictions. The laws must speak in the language of truth, and science always the language of reality, even when they are humble realities like Mouse and Rat and Bird. They are animals too, with or without the blessing of the secretary of agriculture.”
― Matthew Scully, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy

“Many scientists and researchers themselves now advocate these methods, most prominently the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. There is no longer any rational basis, they tell us, for the Draize test, dripping chemicals and personal-care products into the eyes of immobilized rabbits. We can now test for eye irritancy by use of human tissue systems mimicking characteristics of the eye. We can stop pouring commercial and industrial chemicals into animals. Acute toxicity is determined more accurately by in vitro methods using human cell cultures obtained from cadavers. Damage to DNA can be studied in bacteria, as in the Ames assay developed thirty years ago, adopted slowly by the EPA and yet now internationally accepted. Further experiments on animals for diseases of the heart, nicotine addiction, obesity, and many other disorders are unwarranted because we have already identified their primary causes by studying human populations.”
― Matthew Scully, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy

“When people say, for example, that they like their veal or hot dogs just too much to ever give them up, and yeah it's sad about the farms but that's just the way it is, reason hears in that the voice of gluttony. We can say that here what makes a human being human is precisely the ability to understand that the suffering of an animal is more important than the taste of a treat.”
― Matthew Scully, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy

“We may not know or agree upon moral truths. But we do know that opposite things cannot at the same time be true: identical creatures at the same time capable of suffering and incapable of suffering, worthy of moral consideration and unworthy of such concern, within the reach of God's love and beneath it.”
― Matthew Scully, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy

“We can challenge farming practices today without passing judgement on the whole of human experience.”
― Matthew Scully, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy

“When we assert our reason as our authority for dominion, we must use that authority reasonably. When we assert free will as our distinctive human quality, we must use our free will not only in acts of self-interest but in acts of self-restraint.”
― Matthew Scully, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy

“It would be enough if more of us would simply compare our own principles, our own vision of life and nature, whether secular or religious or somewhere in between, with the reality of how animals are actually treated, often in our name. If such things cannot be justified, if the great majority of us find them reprehensible and wrong and unworthy of humanity, then why on earth are they all permitted? Why do we tolerate them, in our lives and in our laws?”
― Matthew Scully, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy

“We create these animals for our profit and pleasure, playing with their genes, violating their dignity as living creatures, forcing them to lie and live in their own urine and excrement, turning pens into penitentiaries and frustrating their every desire except what i needed to keep them breathing and breeding. And then we complain about the smell. But no one who has seen the inside of a modern hog farm will find comfort in these assurances of their happiness. And no one who has seen how they are treated will ever again dare to use "pig" as a synonym for filth and greed and ugliness.”
― Matthew Scully, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy

“History is full of other "hidden foundations" too long unexamined, old ways that people could not part with, practices about which they were proud and sure and defiant when they should have been ashamed.”
― Matthew Scully, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy

“It is a terrible thing that religious people today can be so indifferent to the cruelty of the farms, shrugging it off as so much secular, animal rights foolishness. They above all should hear the call to mercy. They above all should have some kindness to spare.”
― Matthew Scully, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy

“Tolerance of the factory farms dictates a tolerance of just about everything else, in effect moving the ethical bar lower and lower until, after a while, the critical faculties break down and one cruelty is used to justify another - new "necessary evils" defended and permitted merely because the old ones still go on.... We cannot seriously question anything because we are not thinking seriously at all.”
― Matthew Scully, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy

“In a strange way mankind does seem to be growing more sentimental about animals, and also more ruthless. No age has ever been more solicitous to animals, more curious and caring. Yet no age has ever inflicted upon animals such massive punishments with such a complete disregard, as witness scenes to be found on any given day at any modern industrial farm.”
― Matthew Scully, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy

“Although one hesitates to put even the most maniacal trophy hunter into quite the same category as a crush-video enthusiast, rationally there is not all that much difference between crushing and filming a small animal for the thrill of it and hunting and filming a large one for the thrill of it. In the pain inflicted and the pleasures gained, there is no great moral distinction to be made between a crush video, now illegal and "With Deadly Intent, Double-Barreled Zambezi Adventure," and all the rest of that sadistic filth we saw in Reno being made and sold by perfectly legal means.”
― Matthew Scully, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy

“Our laws concerning animals are a system of inconsistencies, special privileges, and arbitrary dispensations best described as codified caprice.”
― Matthew Scully, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy

“Most vertebrates and all of our fellow mammals have similar chemical and neurological mechanisms that transmit and control pain. Under stress or trauma, they display physiological reactions identical to ours - increased heartbeat and perspiration, higher cortisone levels in the blood, a release of endorphins, serotonin, and other natural opiates. Their bodies respond to anesthesia just as our bodies do, and of course they display vocalizations, defensive behavior, and bodily contortions similar to ours. We may add to this physical evidence the fact that veterinarians today routinely prescribe exactly the same antidepressant drugs to dogs, cats, pigs, horses and other animals, including Prozac, Ritalin, Xanax, and beta-blockers, and these drugs have exactly the same soothing effects on them as on us.”
― Matthew Scully, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy

“Since when does love ever diminish as we spread it around? Among humans it usually works the other way. So too in our dealings with the animals we know best.”
― Matthew Scully

“If we are defined by reason and morality, then reason and morality must define our choices, even where animals are concerned.”
― Matthew Scully, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy

“It is true that there will always be enough injustice and human suffering in this world to make the wrongs done to animals seem small and secondary. The answer is that justice is not a finite commodity, nor are kindness and love. Where we find wrongs done to animals, it is no excuse to say that more important wrongs are done to human beings, and let us concentrate on those. A wrong is a wrong, and often the little ones, when they are shrugged off as nothing, spread and do the greatest harm to ourselves and others. I believe that this is happening in our treatment of animals.”
― Matthew Scully, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy

“The very industries clinging to such theories employ cats and dogs and chimps and so many other animals in laboratory test of analgesics and surgeries, a useless exercise unless they experience physical pain comparable to ours.”
― Matthew Scully, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy

“Why do any animals scream when they are wounded or killed, even when those screams can have no possible utility? Why do we scream, and why has evolution designed us to consciously experience our physical pain, but not them?”
― Matthew Scully, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy