Violence Against Animals Quotes

“Violence is central to patriarchy, and the forms of systemic violence are interconnected in Western societies. Recognizing similarities across forms of oppression (such as racism, child abuse, speciesism, and sexism, for example) is essential.”
― Lisa Kemmerer, Sister Species: Women, Animals and Social Justice

“Violence does not solve violence.”
― Jaclyn Johnston

“The wolf legends demanded immediate revenge. Groups of colonists entered the forest, killed the predators, and restored their mastery over nature in a day… the legends offered a quick solution: regeneration through violence”
― Jon T. Coleman, Vicious: Wolves and Men in America

“They destroyed wolves for a host of pragmatic reasons: to safeguard livestock, to knit local ecosystems into global capitalist markets, to collect state-sponsored bounties, and to rid the world of beasts they considered evil, wild, corrupt, and duplicitous.”
― Jon T. Coleman, Vicious: Wolves and Men in America

“To overpower savagery one must lash out savagely. In their stories Euro-American colonists invented and broadcast a vision of wolves as threats to human safety. They then modeled their behavior on the ferocity they perceived in wolves. Thus folklore explains not only why humans destroyed wolves but why they did so with such cruel enthusiasm.”
― Jon T. Coleman, Vicious: Wolves and Men in America

“They saluted the last wolves. Sure, they devoured property, but they did so with enthusiasm and panache. The animals had to die, but the humans felt nostalgic about their passing.”
― Jon T. Coleman, Vicious: Wolves and Men in America

“Urban Americans lost the tactile experience of raising food. They neither heard the squeals, nor smelled he offal, nor saw the blood, nor tasted the rage when predators swallowed a cherished investment.”
― Jon T. Coleman, Vicious: Wolves and Men in America

“As Richard Slotkin has argued, frontier cultural forms that stressed regeneration through violence excused all kinds of nasty behavior. The myth freed colonists to chop heads, fire villages, and torture animals. This was wholesome, conservative brutality; atrocities committed in the name of order, authority, and decorum. Travelers’ tales and circle hunts made wildlife abuse socially acceptable. Regeneration through violence rested on the assumption (many times the delusion) of powerlessness. Wolves never threatened humans physically, but they devoured livestock, and colonists identified with their animal property.”
― Jon T. Coleman, Vicious: Wolves and Men in America