Benjamin Zephaniah Quotes
The way animals are carted around reminds me of the slavery of my people... The slavery of animals has to be ended too.
Quotes to Explore
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Because animals are property, we consider as 'humane treatment' that we would regard as torture if it were inflicted on humans.
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In Yellowstone National Park, there are more 'do not feed the animals' signs than there are animals you might wish to feed.
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There was no United States before slavery. I am sure somebody can make some sort of argument about modern French identity and slavery and North Africa, but there simply is no American history before black people.
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I like using animals because they help suspend my reader's disbelief. We have certain ideas about dentists. We don't have many ideas about rhinoceros dentists.
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Radical thought has inspired many of the great political and social reform movements in American history, from ending slavery to establishing the minimum wage.
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These Scriptures, therefore, are infinitely far from justifying the slavery under consideration; for it cannot be made to appear that one in a thousand of these slaves has done any thing to forfeit his own liberty.
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Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!
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I have always loved animals since I was very young.
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I refuse to accept that the shackles of slavery can ever be stronger than the quest for freedom.
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When I need to cry, I think of very sad things, mostly about animals.
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If all consciousness is subject to essential laws in a manner similar to that in which spatial reality is subject to mathematical laws, then these essential laws will be of most fertile significance in investigating facts of the conscious life of human and brute animals.
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I have no neighbours other than animals and Joshua Trees.
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Making lasting gifts for animals in our estate plans is perhaps the single most important thing we can do to ensure animals have the strongest possible voice for their protection.
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I've been out all over the world tranquilizing animals.
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I walked around feeling, in a sense, that people of color, we began at the bottom of a slave ship. We were enslaved; we picked cotton. There was Honest Abe, who wore a top hat and was taller than anyone and who said, 'Enough is enough; slavery must end.' And then, black people could stand up again. But after that, we didn't catch up.
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Our expression and our words never coincide, which is why the animals don't understand us.
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I believe that modern slavery is the most outrageous assault on the rights of an individual. It is something that touches me deeply because I grew up in rural Brazil and could see first-hand how poverty forced people to work in harsh, exploitative conditions.
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I excavate history. I look at lives buried under too much silence. Periods of time, like slavery, have to be revisited, reimagined, so we can move through them.
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I will to my dying day oppose, with all the powers and faculties God has given me, all such instruments of slavery on the one hand and villainy on the other as this Writ of Assistance is.
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Our lives have a countdown clock that we can't see. Mine reminds me to only do work that matters.
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Whether animals admit it or not, they and I communicate.
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My main message to folks who love animals is that you can do something every day to help them.
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To be spiritual is to be genuine in everything you say and do, come what may.
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The way animals are carted around reminds me of the slavery of my people... The slavery of animals has to be ended too.
