Ingrid Newkirk
66 quotes
Biography
Ingrid Elizabeth Newkirk is a British and American animal rights activist, author and the co-founder of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the world's largest animal rights organization.
"We have to be aggressive when those we stick up for have no voice. I don't consider it radical to say cruelty is wrong and that animals should be respected. I consider it radical to eat corpses, put electrodes in animals' heads, make elephants live in chains in the circus, and poison animals we consider a nuisance."
"Seriously, I think everybody needs to be more disciplined; nobody needs any meat. But from a perspective of how many animals suffer, it’s probably better to kill and eat one whale than it is to eat fish, chickens, cows, lambs and eggs."
"I think that’s just a throwaway line, because most people don’t really care if they are being true to their original nature. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be wearing clothes and driving cars, but out picking berries and eating bark. If you study anthropology — which most people don’t — and you start to learn about our intestinal structure, our teeth, our digestive system, our mouth structure, you begin to realize that maybe we aren’t meant to be eating animals after all."
"Eating meat is primitive, barbaric, and arrogant."
"There is no hidden agenda. If anybody wonders about — what’s this with all these reforms — you can hear us clearly. Our goal is total animal liberation."
"Six million people died in concentration camps, but six billion broiler chickens will die this year in slaughterhouses."
"That's what the Nazis did, isn't it? Treated those "others" they thought subhuman by making them lab subjects and so on. Even the Nazis didn't eat the objects of their derision."
"Animal liberationists do not separate out the human animal, so there is no rational basis for saying that a human being has special rights. A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. They are all mammals"
"I am not a morose person, but I would rather not be here. I don’t have any reverence for life, only for the entities themselves. I would rather see a blank space where I am. This will sound like fruitcake stuff again but at least I wouldn’t be harming anything"
"Humans have grown like a cancer. We're the biggest blight on the face of the earth."
"I’m not only uninterested in having children. I am opposed to having children. Having a purebred human baby is like having a purebred dog; it is nothing but vanity, human vanity."
"If that hideousness came here, it wouldn't be any more hideous for the animals — they are all bound for a ghastly death anyway. But it would wake up consumers. … I openly hope it [hoof and mouth disease] comes here. It will bring economic harm only for those who profit from giving people heart attacks and giving animals a concentration camp-like existence. It would be good for animals, good for human health and good for the environment."
"While the final decision as to the use of my body remains with PETA, I make the following suggested directions:"
"In the end, I think it would be lovely if we stopped this whole notion of pets altogether."
"Pet ownership is an absolutely abysmal situation brought about by human manipulation."
"I don’t use the word 'pet.' I think it’s speciesist language. I prefer 'companion animal.' For one thing, we would no longer allow breeding. People could not create different breeds. There would be no pet shops. If people had companion animals in their homes, those animals would have to be refugees from the animal shelters and the streets. You would have a protective relationship with them just as you would with an orphaned child. But as the surplus of cats and dogs (artificially engineered by centuries of forced breeding) declined, eventually companion animals would be phased out, and we would return to a more symbiotic relationship — enjoyment at a distance."
"You don't have to own squirrels and starlings to get enjoyment from them … One day, we would like an end to pet shops and the breeding of animals. [Dogs] would pursue their natural lives in the wild … they would have full lives, not wasting at home for someone to come home in the evening and pet them and then sit there and watch TV."
"When we build an attractive home, we raze land on which animals have already built their homes. They have nowhere to go."
"Probably everything we do is a publicity stunt … we are not here to gather members, to please, to placate, to make friends. We're here to hold the radical line."
"The bottom line is that people don't have the right to manipulate or to breed dogs and cats... If people want toys, they should buy inanimate objects. If they want companionship, they should seek it with their own kind."
"If Vice President Al Gore advocated killing rabbits to see if women are pregnant and called it a step forward for science, we'd all think he'd gone 'round the bend. We don't need to do that sort of thing anymore, we'd say. We have better, kinder ways."
"We are opposed to all cruelty, so as advocates of non-violence, opponents of oppression, people who abhor the cruelty inherent in slaughtering we say the only ethical way to consume flesh is to pick up the carcass of an animal who has died naturally or been killed accidentally, say by being hit by a car, and eat that."
"In today’s world of tabloid press and with so much competing for people’s attention, it’s a miracle to get their attention at all. And of course having to compete with the advertising budget of even one of our adversaries is impossible. If the whole movement pooled its resources and went after simply one thing, like the veal industry, we wouldn’t make a dent, advertising dollar for advertising dollar. To me the greatest success is in catching the attention of the public and reminding them that there’s an animal involved, and that that animal is believed not to have been treated properly by a segment of the population."
"And I love walking someone else’s dog. I don’t have the luxury of having a dog myself because I travel too much, but I love walking and cuddling somebody else’s dog. I just came back from the shelter today and they let me walk three dogs at lunchtime. It was great."
"If a girl gets sexual pleasure from riding a horse, does the horse suffer? If not, who cares? If you French kiss your dog and he or she thinks it's great, is it wrong? We believe all exploitation and abuse is wrong. If it isn't exploitation and abuse, it may not be wrong."