Hans Ruesch: Animal

Hans Ruesch was Swiss racing driver. Explore interesting quotes on animal.

Hans Ruesch: 10 quotes0 likes

“The desire to protect animals derives inevitably from better acquaintance with them, from the realization that they are sensitive and intelligent creatures, affectionate and seeking affection, powerless in a cruel and incomprehensible world, exposed to all the whims of the master species. According to the animal haters, those who are fond of animals are sick people. To me it seems just the other way around, that the love for animals is something more, not something less. As a rule, those who protect animals have for them the same feeling as for all the other defenseless or abused creatures: the battered or abandoned children, the sick, the inmates of penal or mental institutions, who are so often maltreated without a way of redress. And those who are fond of animals don't love them for their "animality" but for their "humanity" — their "human" qualities. By which I mean the qualities humans display when at their best, not at their worst. Man's love for the animal is, at any rate, always inferior in intensity and completeness to the love the animal has for the human being that has won its love. The human being is the elder brother, who has countless different preoccupations, activities and interests. But to the animal that loves a human being, this being is everything. That applies not only to the generous, impetuous dog, but also to the more reserved species, with which it is more difficult to establish a relationship without personal effort and plenty of patience.”

Source: Slaughter of the Innocent (1978), pp. 45-46

“It is difficult to become familiar with animals without becoming fond of them, provided one doesn't wish to domineer them. I have never heard that love for animals has changed to hate, but many cases where the opposite happened. Many hunters, obliged to observe the animals while stalking them, in time grow increasingly reluctant to kill them, and finally wish to become wardens in the national parks, to help protect them. Very few vivisectors seem to be hampered by this natural evolution that leads to the love and respect of the animals through a deeper knowledge of them.”

Source: Slaughter of the Innocent (1978), p. 52

“The moral sense is at the root of pity. Pity means compassion — the capacity to resent someone else's suffering as if it were one's own. The absence of pity is a mark of obtuseness: incapacity of identifying oneself with those who are in pain or downtrodden. Worthy of pity are mainly mistreated or bereaved children, the old, the sick, all those that are helpless and abused. This includes the majority of animals. And we mustn't ask ourselves whether or not they are able to go to heaven, whether or not they are able to reason, or to speak, or to count, or to vote, but we must ask ourselves only one question: "Are they able to suffer?"”

And it is their misfortune that they are only too able to suffer.
Source: Slaughter of the Innocent (1978), pp. 328-329