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"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."
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Exlpore more Ethics quotes
"Your moral foundation and character currently depend on what you hear."
"Ethics are the things that say, 'Don't stick your finger in the socket.' The world says, 'It's okay because we've shut off the electricity.' And at the point that we've chosen to listen to the world and ignore our ethics, we say, 'I'm having a really hard time getting back up."
"The Lord does not love wicked people with self-interest and involved in inquity."
"Sometimes you will do good and not get an acknowledgement for it. Don't let that dishearten you, the world is a better place with your good deeds."
"Do I understand, sir, that you mean the Cause for which our heroes have died is not sacred?'If you were run over by a railroad train your death wouldn't sanctify the railroad company, would it?' asked Rhett and his voice sounded as if he were humbly seeking information."
Explore more quotes by Jonathan Safran Foer
"I' was the last word I was able to speak aloud, which is a terrible thing, but there it is, I would walk around the neighborhood saying, 'I I I I.' 'You want a cup of coffee, Thomas?''I.' 'And maybe something sweet?''I.' 'How about this weather?''I.' 'You look upset. Is anything wrong?' I wanted to say, 'Of course,' I wanted to ask, 'Is anything right?' I wanted to pull the thread, unravel the scarf of my silence and start again from the beginning, but instead I said 'I.' I know I'm not alone in this disease, you hear the old people in the street and some of them are moaning, 'Ay yay yay,' but some of them are clinging to their last word, 'I,' they're saying, because they're desperate, it's not a complaint, it's a prayer, and then I lost 'I' and my silence was complete."
"I went to my grandmother, your great-great-grandmother, and asked her to write a letter. She was my mother's mother. Your father's mother's mother's mother. I hardly knew her. I didn't have any interest in knowing her. I have no need for the past, I thought, like a child. I did not consider that the past might have a need for me.What kind of letter? my grandmother asked.I told her to write whatever she wanted to write.You want a letter from me? she asked.I told her yes.Oh, God bless you, she said.The letter she gave me was sixty-seven pages long. It was the story of her life. She made my request into her own. Listen to 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."
"He promised us that everything would be okay. I was a child, but I knew that everything would not be okay. That did not make my father a liar. It made him my father."
"If we were to one day encounter a form of life more powerful and intelligent than our own, and it regarded us as we regard fish, what would be our argument against being eaten?"
"God loves the plagiarist. And so it is written, 'God created humankind in His image, in the image of God He created them." God is the original plagiarizer. With a lack of reasonable sources from which to filch - man created in the image of what? the animals? - the creation of man was an act of reflexive plagiarizing; God looted the mirror. When we plagiarize, we are likewise creating in the image and participating in the completion of Creation."
"It's true, I am afraid of dying. I am afraid of the world moving forward without me, of my absence going unnoticed, or worse, being some natural force propelling life on. Is it selfish? Am I such a bad person for dreaming of a world that ends when I do? I don't mean the world ending with respect to me, but every set of eyes closing with mine."
"Not in all ways (of course), but the animals you know have power: they have abilities humans lack, could be dangerous, could bring life, mean things that mean things."
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