Support Quotations
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I do not intend to offer these statements in defense of any one position or to inspire any person to action. Do not expect a single continuous view as you read through these quotations as they represent varying viewpoints, some of which may be at odds. I use this page to realize that others have overcome problems similar in scope to those animal advocates face. These people have survived and become stronger and more whole from the experience. Also included are statements concerning tactics and ideology which, considering their semi-related nature, could appeal to others. Stay Strong!
(25 Quotations)
- Abraham Lincoln - "The Shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as a destroyer of liberty."
- Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr. - "A radical is one who speaks the truth."
- James Madison - "It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of citizens, and one of the noblest characteristics of the late Revolution. The freeman of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise, and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle."
- Nelson Mandela - "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our Light, not our Darkness, that most frightens us."
- Nelson Mandela - "The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear."
- Nelson Mandela - "…all men, even the most seemingly cold-blooded, have a core of decency, and if their heart is touched, they are capable of changing."
- George Orwell - "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they don't want to hear."
- George Orwell - "In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible."
- General George S. Patton, Jr. - "I don't measure a man's success by how high he climbs but how high he bounces when he hits bottom."
- Tom Regan (Philosopher: Animal Rights View) - "The dissolution of commercial animal farming as we know it obviously requires more than our individual commitment to vegetarianism. To refuse on principle to buy products of the meat industry is to do what is right, but it is not to do enough. To recognize the rights of animals is to recognize the related duty to defend them against those who violate their rights, and to discharge this duty requires more than our individual abstention. It requires acting to bring about those changes that are necessary if the rights of these animals are not to be violated. Fundamentally, then, it requires a revolution in our culture's thought about, and its accepted treatment of, farm animals... But prejudices die hard, all the more so when they are insulated by widespread secular customs and religious beliefs, sustained by large and powerful economic interests, and protected by the common law. To overcome the collective entropy of those forces against change will not
be easy. The animal rights movement is not for the faint heart."
- Tom Regan (Philosopher: Animal Rights View) - "All great movements, it is written, go through three stages: ridicule, discussion, adoption. It is the realisation of this third stage, adoption, that requires our passion and our discipline, our hearts and our heads. The fate of animals is in our hands."
- John Scharr - "Surely a large part of the zealous repression of radical protest in America has its roots in the fact that millions of men who are apparently "insiders" know how vulnerable the system is because they know how ambiguous their own attachments to it are. The slightest challenge exposes the fragile foundations of legitimacy of the state."
- Eric Schaub - "Standing up to a tyrant has always been illegal and dangerous. There is no guarantee but one -- to not die a slave, nor live like one."
- Dr. Seuss - "Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.”
- Isaac Bashevis Singer - "We know what a person thinks not when he tells us what he thinks, but by his actions."
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - "It is far better to fight on your feet than on your knees, but you can still fight on your knees."
- Henry David Thoreau - "Even voting for the right thing is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority."
- J.R.R. Tolkein - "He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom."
- Sun Tzu - "In battle, there are not more than two methods of attack - the direct and the indirect; yet these two in combination give rise to an endless series of maneuvers."
- Sun Tzu - "The clever combatant imposes his will on the enemy, but does not allow the enemy's will to be imposed on him."
- Sun Tzu - "We can form a single united body, while the enemy must split up into fractions. Hence there will be a whole pitted against separate parts of a whole, which means that we shall be many to the enemy's few."
- Sun Tzu - "Do not repeat the tactics which have gained you one victory, but let your methods be regulated by the infinite variety of circumstances."
- George Washington - "Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force."
- Woodrow Wilson - "Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of government. The history of liberty is the history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it."
- Paul Watson (Founder, Captain: Sea Shepherd) - "In the great scheme of things, what matters is not how long you live, but why you live, what you stand for, and what you are willing to die for."
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Posted/Updated: 1/17/05
