"Sentimentalist" is the abuse with which people counter the accusation that they are cruel, thereby implying that to be sentimental is worse that to be cruel, which it isn't.

I don't myself believe that, even when we fulfil our minimum obligation not to cause pain, we have the right to kill animals.

I don't hold animals superior or even equal to humans. The whole case for behaving decently to animals rests on the fact that we are the superior species. We are the species uniquely capable of imagination, rationality, and moral choice - and that is precisely why we are under an obligation to recognize and respect the rights of animals.

"Sentimentalist" is the abuse with which people counter the accusation that they are cruel, thereby implying that to be sentimental is worse that to be cruel, which it isn't.

By the age of three ... I was already an addicted reader. I still crave daily immersion in experience other than my own; (it needn't be more pleasant, exciting or illuminating -- merely other) and I still fall into books as though into catalepsy.

The person who kills for fun is announcing that, could he get away with it, he'd kill you for fun. Your...life may be of no consequence to anyone else but is invaluable to you because it's the only one you've got. Exactly the same is true of each individual deer, hare, rabbit, fox, fish, pheasant and butterfly. Humans should enjoy their own lives, not taking others'.

The fact that there are bigger injustices and wrongs doesn't make it right to sacrifice an innocent monkey. It doesn't alter the case at all.