The Dreaded Comparison Quotes

“It seems that the desire to oppress others is so ingrained in many humans that they readily distort even a liberating theory or concept into its inverse, creating another wall of defense against positive change. Ultimately, an unbiased observer of human behavior must conclude that most action is not shaped by theory, but rather theories are shaped to conform to actions we have no intention of changing.”
― Marjorie Spiegel, The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery

“As long as humans feel they are forced to defend their own rights and worth by placing someone beneath them, oppression will not end.”
― Marjorie Spiegel, The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery

“On the one hand, it is said that the animals are so unlike us that they are not worthy of our consideration. On the other hand, vivisectors claim that animals are so like us that they are essential to research. In these conflicting statements we see a researcher's own confusion as to the genuine nature of his "subjects," and their nature in relation to this own.”
― Marjorie Spiegel, The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery

“The ox,, as the Greeks used to say, was the poor man’s slave; and even the poorest tinker had a dog at his heels on which to bestow the kick which indicated his superiority. – Keith Thomas”
― Marjorie Spiegel, The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery

“It is only human arrogance that is able to find beauty and perfection exclusively in those things human.”
― Marjorie Spiegel, The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery

“Women were told to keep waiting for years for their right to vote because other issues were “more important.” Black people in the United States were told that their slavery was an “economic necessity” to be continued for the good of the country. Until the reforms of the early 1990s, blacks in South Africa were still being told that apartheid was necessary. Necessary for whom? Surely not the people who were living under this form of slavery.”
― Marjorie Spiegel, The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery

“To those who would be master, what matters is not so much who their slaves will be, but that there are slaves to be had. As one group becomes off-bounds due to changing laws or the tie of social change, attention will be turned to a different weak group, or focused more intensely upon a prior class or victims. But even this shift comes begrudgingly, for the oppressors have come to enjoy their cruel pleasures. The most important things to masters, therefore, is that the public will not become cognizant of what is being done – often in its name – and that public opinion will not turn against them, thus depriving them of their slaves.”
― Marjorie Spiegel, The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery

“Often, when a person is ill-treated or relegated to a demeaning position in society, they will respond by venting their frustrations at someone whose societal position is even lower than their own. It is not rational; their violent action in no way serves as a retaliation towards their own oppressors. Taking this concept one step further, we can see that by a torturing or dominating a powerful animal, such as a bull, or a tiger in a big-game hunt, the oppressors feel, unconsciously, that they have destroyed those who held power over them. By destroying or tormenting the weak, such as a rabbit or child, the oppressors become the master who has in turn tortured them, their own victims’ helpless writings echoing what they have so often felt. Temporarily replaced in the role of victim, these new reactive torturers ascend, momentarily in their own minds, to the social- or physical-power position of their own masters.”
― Marjorie Spiegel, The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery

“The habit of claiming that God, or some higher order, has ordained our barbaric or avaricious practices is obviously not new; nor, quite obviously, is it outdated. When someone wants to take slaves, gold, land, someone else’s cattle, or, for that matter, to draw a salary for administering electric shocks to infant rats, it is certainly convenient to say that God or Evolution makes it right.”
― Marjorie Spiegel, The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery

“It has long been contended that, for some – and of course, never us, but always them – life as a slave proves more beneficial than detrimental…. For this rationalization to be effective, the victims need to be transformed – in the mind of the captor/master – from oppressed beings to thankful underlings; grateful for being used, appreciated, and protected, while fulfilling the needs of their superiors. Wrote Aristotle:
For all tame animals there is an advantage in being under human control, as this secures their survival. And as regards the relationship between male and female, the former is naturally superior, the latter inferior, the former rules and the latter is subject.
By analogy, the same must necessarily apply to mankind as a whole. Therefore all men who differ from one another by as much as the soul differs from the body or man from w a wild beast (and that is the sate of those who can work by using their bodies, and for whom that is the best they can do) – these people are slaves by nature, and it is better for them to be subject to this kind of control, and it is better for the other creatures I have mentioned. For a man who is able to belong to another person is by nature a slave (for that is why he belong so someone else)…. Assistance regarding the necessities of life is provided by both groups, by slaves and by domestic animals. Nature must therefore have intended to make the bodies of free men and of slaves different also; slaves’ bodies strong for the services they have to do, those of free men upright and not much use for that kind of work, but instead useful for community life.”
― Marjorie Spiegel, The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery

“Perhaps our society will soon realize, with due horror, that we have been late in extending our respect and consideration to all of those who need protection.”
― Marjorie Spiegel, The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery

“The only relevant requirement which should be necessary to keep us from unnecessarily inflicting pain and suffering on someone is that individual’s ability to feel pain and suffer. Similarly, the only qualification individuals should need to make it wrong for us to dominate their lives is that they possess life, that they are alive. All of these other questions of abilities and attributes can fill philosophy books, but are, for these issues, irrelevant.”
― Marjorie Spiegel, The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery

“We have decided that treatment which is wholly unacceptable when received by a human being is in fact the proper manner in which to treat a non-human animal.”
― Marjorie Spiegel, The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery

“We cannot maintain that oppression is fine for some simply because they are not like us. Only through a rejection of violence and oppression themselves will we ever find a long-term “freedom and justice for all.” It is not an “either-or” situation; the idea that one group will have its rights protected or respected only after another “more important” group is totally comfortable is finally being widely recognized as a delay tactic used by those resisting change.”
― Marjorie Spiegel, The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery

“The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for whites or women for men. – Alice Walker”
― Marjorie Spiegel, The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery

“The owner of slaves destroys two freedoms – that of his slave and that of himself. – John Bryant”
― Marjorie Spiegel, The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery