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"Before child labor laws, there were businesses that treated their ten-year-old employees well. society didn't ban child labor because it's impossible to imagine children working in a good environment, but because when you give that much power to businesses over powerless individuals, it's corrupting. When we walk around thinking we have a greater right to eat an animal than the animal has a right to live without suffering, it's corrupting."
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Explore more quotes by Jonathan Safran Foer

"Humans are the only animals that have children on purpose, keep in touch (or don't), care about birthdays, waste and lose time, brush their teeth, feel nostalgia, scrub stains, have religions and political parties and laws, wear keepsakes, apologize years after an offense, whisper, fear themselves, interpret dreams, hide their genitalia, shave, bury time capsules, and can choose not to eat something for reasons of conscience. The justifications for eating animals and for not eating them are often identical: we are not them."

"Ironically, the utterly unselective omnivore -- "I'm easy; I'll eat anything" -- can appear more socially sensitive than the individual who tries to eat in a way that is good for society."

"If we communicated with something like music, we would never be misunderstood, because there is nothing in music to understand...... But until we find this new way of speaking, until we can find a nonapproximate vocabulary, nonsense words are the best thing we've got. Ifactifice is one such word."

"There were things I wanted to tell him. But I knew they would hurt him. So I buried them, and let them hurt me."

"Not responding is a response--we are equally responsible for what we don't do. In the case of animal slaughter, to throw your hands in the air is to wrap your fingers around a knife handle."

"That is what death is like. It doesn't matter what uniforms the soldiers are wearing. It doesn't matter how good the weapons are. I thought if everyone could see what I saw, we would never have war anymore."

"Why do beautiful songs make you sad?' 'Because they aren't true.' 'Never?' 'Nothing is beautiful and true."
Exlpore more Activism quotes

"It partook ... of eternity ... there is a coherence in things, a stability; something, she meant, is immune from change, and shines out (she glanced at the window with its ripple of reflected lights) in the face of the flowing, the fleeting, the spectral, like a ruby; so that again tonight she had the feeling she had had once today, already, of peace, of rest. Of such moments, she thought, the thing is made that endures."

"16 days of activism? I don't know about you folks, but I'm an activist every single day."

"As a human rights activist it is concerning to me that those committing atrocities against vulnerable people view these atrocities as 'progress', and assert with pride and conviction that they are 'Christians' and that they are doing 'God's will'."

"Denying the facts is what enables people to hate and to persecute marginalized and threatened minority groups. Labeling the advocacy, educational and informational initiatives of these persecuted minority groups dismissively as 'propaganda for the gay agenda' undermines, belittles and trivializes the cause of those whose right to exist is under threat."

"Our freedoms are vanishing. If you do not get active to take a stand now against all that is wrong while we still can, then maybe one of your children may elect to do so in the future, when it will be far more riskier - and much, much harder."
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