Norm Phelps Quotes

United States, Writer
May 16, 1939 – December, 31, 2014.

Norm Phelps (born Norman Nelson Phelps, III) was an American writer. He was a founding member of the Society of Ethical and Religious Vegetarians (SERV), and a former outreach director of the Fund for Animals. He authored four books on animal rights: The Dominion of Love: Animal Rights According to the Bible (2002), The Great Compassion: Buddhism and Animal Rights (2004), The Longest Struggle: Animal Advocacy from Pythagoras to PETA (2007), and Changing the Game: Animal Liberation in the Twenty-first Century (2015).

Farmed animals are not future Buddhas donating their flesh out of compassion for those of us who have developed a craving for it. They are victims of our greed from whom we steal the most precious gift any of us has: life.

Norm Phelps
- Life
- Animals
- Victim
When virtuous mental attitudes, like mindfulness, respect, and compassion, are invoked to justify nonvirtuous acts like hunting, fishing, and eating animal products, the mental attitudes are insincere. They are self-deceptions that we create to justify habits that in our hearts we know are wrong, but to which we have become attached.

Norm Phelps
- Compassion
- Habits
- Acts

Veganism is simply letting compassion guide our choice of food. As such, it is a basic Buddhist practice that ought to be expected of everyone who takes refuge vows.

Norm Phelps
The Buddha's teaching leads us to the realization that we must always strive to harm no sentient being, human or nonhuman, whether or not it is in our selfish interest to do so.

Norm Phelps
- Interest
- Teaching
- Harm
Buddhism cannot be true to itself until Buddhists resolve their ambivalence toward nonhuman animals and extend the full protection of their compassion to the most harmless and helpless of those who live at our mercy in the visible realms.

Norm Phelps
The beginning of mindful eating is the realization that eating meat is not about the meat-eater; it is about the animals who are tormented and killed.

Norm Phelps
- Animals
- Killed
- Meat
If we are not able to bring the churches, the synagogues, [and] the mosques around to the animal rights view, we will never make large-scale progress for animal rights in the United States.

Norm Phelps
- Progress
- Animal
- Rights
It is a feeble compassion that pulls up short where self-interest begins.

Norm Phelps