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Working to spare animals the immense suffering they undergo does not diminish by one iota my determination to alleviate human misery. Needless suffering must be done away with wherever it is, in whatever form it takes. This is a war that has to be waged on all fronts, and it can be.

"Mr Dangerfield, why don't you believe in hell and things like that?"

"Hell is for poor people."

How small we make our worlds. Gather them in, tighten them up into little castles of fear.

The true line is not between “hard” natural science and “soft” social sciences, but between precise science limited to highly abstract and simple phenomena in the laboratory and inexact science and technology dealing with complex problems in the real world.

It is not more anthropomorphic to postulate the existence of mental states in certain animals than it is to compare their anatomy, their nervous system, and their physiology to ours. When an animal is visibly joyous or sad, why not call things by their names?

Since my world picture approximates reality only crudely, I cannot aspire to optimize anything; at most, I can aim at satisficing. Searching for the best can only dissipate scarce cognitive resources; the best is the enemy of the good. (p.361)

The most striking quality that humans and animals have in common is the capacity to experience suffering. Why do we still blind ourselves, now at the beginning of the twenty-first century, to the immeasurable suffering that we inflict on animals, knowing that a great part of the pain that we cause them is neither necessary nor unavoidable? Certainly we should know that there is no moral justification for inflicting needless pain and death on any being.

A change of scene is good for a change of mind.

But Jesus, when you don't have any money, the problem is food. When you have money, it's sex. When you have both it's health, you worry about getting rupture or something. If everything is simply jake then you're frightened of death.

How large was mankind’s sense of obligation? The caveman first had this feeling for his mate, then for his family. It grew until men fought and died for the abstract ideas of cities and nations, then for whole planets. Would the time ever come when men might realize that the obligation should be to the largest and most encompassing reality of all—mankind? And beyond that to life of all kinds.

"What about it, Meta?" he snapped. "No doubts? Do you think that destruction is the only way to end this war?"

"I don't know," she said. "I can't be sure. For the first time in my life I find myself with more than one answer to the same question."

"Congratulations," he said. "It's a sign of growing up."

A person’s true means of expression is his life. Living the shame of life and maintaining silence, that was the greatest accomplishment of all.