Marc Bekoff

We can easily do what they ask — to stop causing them unnecessary pain, suffering, loneliness, sadness, and death, even extinction.

Denial and apathy must be replaced by urgency. If we all work to improve the lives of animals, we will improve our lives as well

about how we conduct research to learn about the natural world and to develop human medicine, about how we entertain ourselves, about what we buy, where we live, who we eat, who we wear, and even family planning

Of course, it’s hard to speak for the animals, but because they share so much with us, it’s not presumptuous to believe that what they want isn’t so different from what we want: to avoid pain, to be healthy, to feel love. Their feelings are as important to them as our feelings are to us

Anyone who says that life matters less to animals than it does to us has not held in his hands an animal fighting for its life. The whole of the being of the animal is thrown into that fight, without reserve

Goodness, kindness, empathy, and compassion come naturally, and they allow us to do what needs to be done, whether healing our conflicts with other animals or among ourselves. Despite enormous problems, there are some very promising trends that show that most people really do care.

I wished that word-processing software would stop asking me to change the words “who” and “whom” to “that” or “which” when I refer to animals — because animals aren’t objects but subjects

On one flight I happened to be sitting next to a woman who worked for a major software company

At first she didn’t get it, but eventually she did, and she said she’d talk to the people at her company about changing their software

she recognized that the language we use affects our attitudes