Gary L. Francione Quotes

Enjoy the top 91 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Gary L. Francione.

“Domesticated animals such as dogs and cats are vulnerable and entirely dependent on us for all of their needs. They live very unnatural lives because they are not part of the human world and they are not part of the animal world.”
— Gary L. Francione —

Every time you drink a glass of milk or eat a piece of cheese, you harm a mother. Please go vegan.

— Gary L. Francione

“Forty-two years after Dr. King was murdered, we are still a nation of inequality. People of color, women, gays, lesbians, and others are still treated as second-class citizens. Yes, things have changed but we have still not achieved equality among all humans. And nonhuman animals continue to be chattel property without any inherent value.”

— Gary L. Francione

“We cannot justify treating any sentient nonhuman as our property, as a resource, as a thing that we an use and kill for our purposes.”

— Gary L. Francione

If you are a feminist and are not a vegan, you are ignoring the exploitation of female nonhumans and the commodification of their reproductive processes, as well as the destruction of their relationship with their babies;
If you are an environmentalist and not a vegan, you are ignoring the undeniable fact that animal agriculture is an ecological disaster;
If you embrace nonviolence but are not a vegan, then words of nonviolence come out of your mouth as the products of torture and death go into it;
If you claim to love animals but you are eating them or products made from them, or otherwise consuming them, you see loving as consistent with harming that which you claim to love.
Stop trying to make excuses. There are no good ones to make. Go vegan.

— Gary L. Francione

“Just as we reject racism, sexism, ageism, and heterosexism, we reject speciesism. The species of a sentient being is no more reason to deny the protection of this basic right than race, sex, age, or sexual orientation is a reason to deny membership in the human moral community to other humans.”

— Gary L. Francione

“There is no 'need' for us to eat meat, dairy or eggs. Indeed, these foods are increasingly linked to various human diseases and animal agriculture is an environmental disaster for the planet.”

— Gary L. Francione

We do not need to eat animals, wear animals, or use animals for entertainment purposes, and our only defense of these uses is our pleasure, amusement, and convenience.

— Gary L. Francione

“There is increasing social concern about our use of nonhumans for experiments, food, clothing and entertainment. This concern about animals reflects both our own moral development as a civilization and our recognition that the differences between humans and animals are, for the most part, differences of degree and not of kind.”

— Gary L. Francione

“We eat animals because they taste good. And if that's O.K., what's wrong with wearing fur? We need as a society to think seriously about our institutionalized animal use.”

— Gary L. Francione

The proposition that humans have mental characteristics wholly absent in non-humans is inconsistent with the theory of evolution.

— Gary L. Francione

“Most of the time, those who use animals in experiments justify that use by pointing to alleged benefits to human and animal health and the supposed necessity of using animals to obtain those benefits.”

— Gary L. Francione

“Veganism is about nonviolence. It is about not engaging in harm to other sentient beings; to oneself; and to the environment upon which all beings depend for life. In my view, the animal rights movement is, at its core, a movement about ending violence to all sentient beings. It is a movement that seeks fundamental justice for all. It is an emerging peace movement that does not stop at the arbitrary line that separates humans from nonhumans.”

— Gary L. Francione

“Being vegan is not a matter of "lifestyle." It is a matter of fundamental moral obligation. Is being vegan a matter of "choice"? Only insofar as we are able to choose to ignore our moral obligations not to exploit the vulnerable.”

— Gary L. Francione

“To say that a sentient being is not harmed by death denies that the being has the very interest that sentience serves to perpetuate. It would be analogous to saying that a being with eyes does not have an interest in continuing to see or is not harmed by being made blind. The Jains of India expressed it well long ago: All beings are fond of life, like pleasure, hate pain, shun destruction, like life, long to live. To all life is dear.”

— Gary L. Francione

“The notion that animals are not self-aware is based on nothing more than a stipulation that the only way to be self-aware is to have the self-awareness of a normal adult human. That is certainly one way to be self-aware. It's not the only way.”

— Gary L. Francione

“When it comes to animals, we suffer from moral schizophrenia.”

— Gary L. Francione

“The problem with this game of special characteristics is that non-humans can never win. When we determine that parrots have the conceptual ability to understand and manipulate single-digit numbers, we demand that they be able to understand and manipulate double-digit numbers in order to be sufficiently like us. When a chimpanzee indicates beyond doubt that she has an extensive vocabulary, we demand that she exhibit certain levels of syntactical skill in order to demonstrate that her mind is like ours. The irony, of course, is that whatever characteristic we are talking about will be possessed by some nonhumans to a greater degree than some humans, but we would never think it appropriate to exploit those humans in the ways that we do nonhumans.”

— Gary L. Francione

“After all, in the nineteenth century, racists relied on phrenology, or the "science" of determining personality traits based on the shape of the head, to declare that people of color, Jews, and others had different minds. Thus, even having an identical mind is not sufficient if there is a reason and desire to discriminate.”

— Gary L. Francione

“Veganism is an act of nonviolent defiance. It is our statement that we reject the notion that animals are things and that we regard sentient nonhumans as moral persons with the fundamental moral right not to be treated as the property or resources of humans.”

— Gary L. Francione

“Veganism is not a "sacrifice." It is a joy.”

— Gary L. Francione

“Veganism is not about giving anything up or losing anything; it is about gaining the peace within yourself that comes from embracing nonviolence and refusing to participate in the exploitation of the vulnerable”

— Gary L. Francione

“You cannot live a nonviolent life as long as you are consuming violence. Please consider going vegan.”

— Gary L. Francione

“If we can live and prosper without killing, why would we not do so? I do not see veganism as 'extreme' in any way. I see killing for no reason as extreme in every way.”

— Gary L. Francione

Being vegan provides us with the peace of knowing that we are no longer participants in the hideous violence that is animal exploitation.

— Gary L. Francione

Any serious social, political, and economic change must include veganism.

— Gary L. Francione

“Does veganism require a "sacrifice"? Yes. It requires that you give up that which you never had any right to in the first place.”

— Gary L. Francione

“Ethical veganism represents a commitment to nonviolence.”

— Gary L. Francione

Every sentient being values her/his life even if no one else does. That is what is meant by saying that the lives of all have inherent value.

— Gary L. Francione

“They are nonhuman persons. They are not food. If animals matter morally at all, there is one and only one rational response: go vegan. Everything else is just participation in animal exploitation.”

— Gary L. Francione

Being vegan is easy. Are there social pressures that encourage you to continue to eat, wear, and use animal products? Of course there are. But in a patriarchal, racist, homophobic, and ableist society, there are social pressures to participate and engage in sexism, racism, homophobia, and ableism. At some point, you have to decide who you are and what matters morally to you. And once you decide that you regard victimizing vulnerable nonhumans is not morally acceptable, it is easy to go and stay vegan

— Gary L. Francione

“People say that being a vegan creates a social problem in that others may react negatively. But isnt that the case if you take a principled position on any issue, whether its racism, sexism, heterosexism, violence as a general matter-or speciesism? The key is to educate others about *why* you take the position.”

— Gary L. Francione

“If you are not vegan, please consider going vegan. It's a matter of nonviolence. Being vegan is your statement that you reject violence to other sentient beings, to yourself, and to the environment, on which all sentient beings depend.”

— Gary L. Francione

“Speciesism is morally objectionable because, like racism, sexism, and heterosexism, it links personhood with an irrelevant criterion. Those who reject speciesism are committed to rejecting racism, sexism, heterosexism, and other forms of discrimination as well.”

— Gary L. Francione

“To say that a being who is sentient has no interest in continuing to live is like saying that a being with eyes has no interest in continuing to see. Death-however "humane"-is a harm for humans and nonhumans alike.”

— Gary L. Francione

“Veganism is about nonviolence:
nonviolence to other sentient beings;
nonviolence to yourself;
nonviolence to the earth.”

— Gary L. Francione

“Who I've been is not as important as who I'm becoming.”

— Gary L. Francione

We are vegans not simply because being vegan will reduce suffering. We are vegan because every sentient being values her or his life even if no one else does. We are vegan because justice minimally requires that we not take life for trivial purposes.

— Gary L. Francione

We should never present flesh as somehow morally distinguishable from dairy. To the extent it is morally wrong to eat flesh, it is as morally wrong - and possibly more morally wrong - to consume dairy

— Gary L. Francione

“Being vegan is not just a matter of being 'kind' to animals. First and foremost, it is a matter of being just and observing our moral obligation to not treat other sentient beings as things.”

— Gary L. Francione

“An aim of an argument should be progress, but progress ultimately means little without victory.”

— Gary L. Francione

“There is no morally coherent difference between fur and other animal clothing, such as leather, wool, etc., just as there is no morally coherent distinction between meat and milk or eggs.”

— Gary L. Francione

So it is always preferable to discuss the matter of veganism in a non-judgemental way. Remember that to most people, eating flesh or dairy and using animal products such as leather, wool, and silk, is as normal as breathing air or drinking water. A person who consumes dairy or uses animal products is not necessarily or usually what a recent and unpopular American president labelled an evil doer.

— Gary L. Francione

“There is no meaningful distinction between eating flesh and eating dairy or other animal products. Animals exploited in the dairy industry live longer than those used for meat, but they are treated worse during their lives, and they end up in the same slaughterhouse after which we consume their flesh anyway. There is probably more suffering in a glass of milk or an ice cream cone than there is in a steak.”

— Gary L. Francione

“It costs us so little to go vegan. It costs animals so much if we don't.”

— Gary L. Francione

“Not only are the philosophies of animal rights and animal welfare separated by irreconcilable differences ... the enactment of animal welfare measures actually impedes the achievement of animal rights ... Welfare reforms, by their very nature, can only serve to retard the pace at which animal rights goals are achieved.”

— Gary L. Francione

“We cannot talk simultaneously about animal rights and the 'humane' slaughter of animals.”

— Gary L. Francione

“Eating animals involves an intentional decision to participate in the suffering and death of nonhumans where there is no plausible moral justification.”

— Gary L. Francione

“Veganism must be the baseline if we are to have any hope of shifting the paradigm away from animals as things and toward animals as nonhuman persons.”