Gary L. Francione Quotes

Ethical veganism results in a profound revolution within the individual; a complete rejection of the paradigm of oppression and violence that she has been taught from childhood to accept as the natural order. It changes her life and the lives of those with whom she shares this vision of nonviolence. Ethical veganism is anything but passive; on the contrary, it is the active refusal to cooperate with injustice

We proclaim human intelligence to be morally valuable per se because we are human. If we were birds, we would proclaim the ability to fly as morally valuable per se. If we were fish, we would proclaim the ability to live underwater as morally valuable per se. But apart from our obviously self-interested proclamations, there is nothing morally valuable per se about human intelligence.

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

Animal rights without veganism is like human rights with slavery. It makes no sense. None whatsoever.

Ethical veganism represents a commitment to nonviolence.

Michael Vick may enjoy watching dogs fight. Someone else may find that repulsive but see nothing wrong with eating an animal who has had a life as full of pain and suffering as the lives of the fighting dogs. It's strange that we regard the latter as morally different from, and superior to, the former.

There is no moral distinction between fur and other materials made from animals, such as leather, which also is the result of the suffering and death of sentient beings.

99% of our uses of animals, including our numerically most significant use of them for food, do not involve any sort of necessity or any real conflict between human and nonhuman interests. If animals matter morally at all, then, even without accepting a theory of animal rights, those uses of animals cannot be morally justified.

Even if plants were sentient, veganism would still be a moral imperative given that it takes many pounds of plants to produce one pound of flesh.

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

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

When it comes to animal agriculture, there is conventional, which is rally hideous, and 'compassionate' and 'certified humane' or whatever, which 'may' be 'slightly' less hideous. But it is all torture. It's all wrong. These 'happy' gimmicks are just designed to make the public feel better about exploiting animals. Don't buy the propaganda of 'happy' exploitation. Go vegan and promote veganism.

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.

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.

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.

We should stop bringing more domestic animals into existence.

If an animal has any rights at all, it's got the right not to be eaten.

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.

Vegetarianism as a moral position is no more coherent than saying that you think it morally wrong to eat meat from a spotted cow but not morally wrong to eat meat from a non-spotted cow.

People need to be educated so that they can make intelligent moral choices

In order to be a teacher you've got to be a student first

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.

If you love animals but think that veganism is extreme, then you are confused about the meaning of love.

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

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.

None of that is necessary. It's not as if we're in a situation where it is us or them.There's something peculiar about talking about the moral status of animals, when we are killing and eating them for no reason whatsoever.

There is no difference between sitting around the pit watching dogs fight and sitting around a summer barbecue roasting the corpses of tortured animals or enjoying the dairy or eggs from tortured animals.

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

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.

The theory of animal rights simply is not consistent with the theory of animal welfare... Animal rights means dramatic social changes for humans and non-humans alike; if our bourgeois values prevent us from accepting those changes, then we have no right to call ourselves advocates of animal rights.

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.

We can no more justify using nonhumans as human resources than we can justify human slavery. Animal use and slavery have at least one important point in common: both institutions treat sentient beings exclusively as resources of others. That cannot be justified with respect to humans; it cannot be justified with respect to nonhumans—however “humanely” we treat them.

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

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

We do not think clearly about our moral obligations to animals.

I maintain that we ought to abolish the institution and stop causing or facilitating the existence of more 'companion' animals.

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

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.

All sentient beings should have at least one right—the right not to be treated as property

But if there were two dogs left in the universe and it were up to us as to whether they were allowed to breed so that we could continue to live with dogs, and even if we could guarantee that all dogs would have homes as loving as the one that we provide, we would not hesitate for a second to bring the whole institution of 'pet' ownership to an end.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

We need to reshape the movement as one of grassroots activists, and not 'professional activists' who populate the seemingly endless number of national animal rights groups. For many people, activism has become writing a check to a national group that is very pleased to have you leave it to them. Although it is important to give financial support to worthy efforts only, giving money is not enough and giving to the wrong groups can actually do more harm than good.