Anymal Quotes

“Thanks to government sub­sidies, a diet rich in animal products is affordable even though it destroys the earth”
― Lisa Kemmerer, Eating Earth: Environmental Ethics and Dietary Choice

“Grass fed meat is an environmental nightmare perpetuated by elitists who refuse to change their eating habits.”
― Lisa Kemmerer, Eating Earth: Environmental Ethics and Dietary Choice

“Earth and animal activists need to join forces against powerful corporations that are destroying both the earth and anymals.”
― Lisa Kemmerer, Eating Earth: Environmental Ethics and Dietary Choice

“Exploring sacred teachings from around the world demonstrates that nature, including anymals, is sacred, that anymals are central to our spiritual landscape, and that we owe them respect, justice, and compassion. Religious texts remind us that we share a fundamental kinship with tabby cats, rose-ringed parakeets, and slender pygmy swordtails, and that anymals are understood to be remarkable and marvelous—superior to humans in many ways—in the world’s religious traditions. Sacred literature indicates that nonhumans and humans share the same fate after death; faiths that have a Creator teach human beings that the divine is personally invested in the life of every anymal, from the large flightless common rhea to each critically endangered Jenkin’s shrew, from a factory-farmed chicken to each bovine trucked to slaughter. Religious exemplars remind us that all species have personality and intellect—other creatures, whether insects, fish, reptiles, mammals, or birds, can offer much-needed spiritual wisdom for the betterment of humanity. Religions teach of a deep and fundamental unity on planet Earth. Interestingly, consistent with Darwin, the world’s dominant religions teach people that there is much more continuity than separation across species.”
― Lisa Kemmerer, Animals and World Religions

“• religions are, overall, radically friendly toward anymals;
• people tend to be ignorant of these prevalent teachings; and
• our current economic choices (bolstered by our collective spiritual ignorance) perpetuate anymal industries that profit from untold misery and billions of premature deaths.”
― Lisa Kemmerer, Animals and World Religions

“Most people are raised with the belief that anymal exploitation is religiously sanctioned, and they will readily defend this point of view. Consequently, arguments in favor of anymal exploitation—including religious arguments—are easy to come by. On closer examination, most of these arguments do not defend anymal exploitation in general; they merely defend particular habits and practices, most oft en dietary habits and farming practices. People who identify with a given religious tradition oft en use sacred writings to defend personal habits, but such arguments tend to be both shallow and specific, contradicting core and foundational teachings. Those who pose such arguments, when questioned, often agree readily that their religion does not teach or tolerate cruel exploitation, particularly when such cruel exploitation is entirely unnecessary.”
― Lisa Kemmerer, Animals and World Religions

“Those who defend animal exploitation from a religious point of view usually lack
information in three critical areas:
• First, they oft en have no idea what goes on in breeding facilities, on factory farms, in feedlots, on transport trucks, in slaughterhouses, and so on.
• Second, they lack an understanding of—have usually not even heard about—speciesism, and therefore have no idea how our treatment of anymals is connected with social justice issues more broadly, such as racism, sexism, poverty, and world hunger.
• Third, they have often neglected to study sacred teachings or the lives of spiritual exemplars, and even if they have engaged in this important endeavor, they usually have not recognized the implications of religious ideals with regard to anymals or the effect of these teachings on such simple choices as what we eat.”
― Lisa Kemmerer, Animals and World Religions

“Anymal exploiters may or may not be religious, and those who are religious are likely to lack information in three critical areas (just mentioned). Perhaps most fundamentally, religious people tend to be unaware that chewing on a chicken’s body purchased at a grocery store contradicts the core religious ideals of every major religious tradition. Still other religious people do not take their religious commitment seriously and therefore do not care one way or the other about anymal suffering and slaughter. This book is about what religions teach, not about what religious people believe or how they live. There is often shamefully little correlation between the two.”
― Lisa Kemmerer, Animals and World Religions

“Diet–a choice we make every day, several times a day-determines the size of our environmental footprint.”
― Lisa Kemmerer, Eating Earth: Environmental Ethics and Dietary Choice

“Nonhuman primates are many and wondrous, yet few and endangered.”
― Lisa Kemmerer, Primate People: Saving Nonhuman Primates through Education, Advocacy, and Sanctuary

“The lives of anymals matter not just to us—not just in light of our selfish interest in diversity—but to them.”
― Lisa Kemmerer, Primate People: Saving Nonhuman Primates through Education, Advocacy, and Sanctuary

“Our efforts to protect primates will be much more effective if we dismantle the artificial line that we have created between ourselves and other animals.”
― Lisa Kemmerer, Primate People: Saving Nonhuman Primates through Education, Advocacy, and Sanctuary