Imaginarium

“In each residue (the still uncovered butter dish, the table left dirty, the boredom of the return trip), we are escaping from the residue that we already are, from the unbearable fact that we are discarded every day, as nature’s and society’s leftovers, cast aside and thrown away after having been used. After we are gone, life leaves everything as it was; it makes a final arrangement without us, as we do with the remains of food from the countless breakfasts of our lives.”
― Julio Cabrera, Discomfort and Moral Impediment: The Human Situation, Radical Bioethics and Procreation

“The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.”
― Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life

“As often as Herman had witnessed the slaughter of animals and fish, he always had the same thought: in their behaviour towards creatures, all men were Nazis. The smugness with which man could do with other species as he pleased exemplified the most extreme racist theories, the principle that might is right.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer, Enemies: A Love Story

“Man is a self-conscious nothing.”
― Julius Bahnsen