Valter Liblik > Valter's Quotes

“The problem with feminism, as a liberation movement, is not that it "has gone too far." It is that it has not gone far enough.”
― Richard V. Reeves, Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It

“Just how destructive does a culinary preference have to be before we decide to eat something else? If contributing to the suffering of billions of animals that live miserable lives and (quite often) die in horrific ways isn't motivating, what would be? If being the number one contributor to the most serious threat facing the planet (global warming) isn't enough, what is? And if you are tempted to put off these questions of conscience, to say not now, then when?”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals

“Culture tends to argue that it forbids only that which is unnatural. But from a biological perspective, nothing is unnatural. Whatever is possible is by definition also natural. A truly unnatural behaviour, one that goes against the laws of nature, simply cannot exist, so it would need no prohibition.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“We seek comfort in the fantasy that Dr Frankenstein can create only terrible monsters, whom we would have to destroy in order to save the world. We like to tell the story that way because it implies that we are the best of all beings, that there never was and never will be something better than us. Any attempt to improve us will inevitably fail, because even if our bodies might be improved, you cannot touch the human spirit.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“Finally, we can congratulate ourselves on the unprecedented accomplishments of modern Sapiens only if we completely ignore the fate of all other animals. Much of the vaunted material wealth that shields us from disease and famine was accumulated at the expense of laboratory monkeys, dairy cows and conveyor-belt chickens. Over the last two centuries tens of billions of them have been subjected to a regime of industrial exploitation whose cruelty has no precedent in the annals of planet Earth. If we accept a mere tenth of what animal-rights activists are claiming, then modern industrial agriculture might well be the greatest crime in history. When evaluating global happiness, it is wrong to count the happiness only of the upper classes, of Europeans or of men. Perhaps it is also wrong to consider only the happiness of humans.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“Only with awareness of carnism can we reclaim our freedom of choice; without awareness, there is no free choice.”
― Melanie Joy, Beyond Beliefs: A Guide to Improving Relationships and Communication for Vegans, Vegetarians, and Meat Eaters

“As Anne-Marie Slaughter, head of the New America Foundation, warns, progress will be slow if we continue to define the "care problem" as "women's problem.”
― Richard V. Reeves, Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It

“You can’t really know where you are going until you know where you have been.”
― Maya Angelou

“The favourite phrase, “our four-footed friends,” seems rather an anachronism in the face of our acknowledged relations to them as eater and eaten, for the phrase indicates a mutual pact of friendship, which, however well sustained by them, is dishonoured by man; for even cannibals, we are told, sink no lower than to eat their foes.”
― M.R.L. Sharpe, The Golden Rule Cook Book: Six Hundred Recipes for Meatless Dishes