“Europeans are awakening more and more to a sense that beasts have rights, in proportion as the strange notion is being gradually overcome and outgrown, that the animal kingdom came into existence solely for the benefit and pleasure of man. This view, with the corollary that non-human living creatures are to be regarded merely as things, is at the root of the rough and altogether reckless treatment of them, which obtains in the West.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer , book On the Basis of Morality

Part III, Ch. VIII, 7, p. 225 https://archive.org/stream/basisofmorality00schoiala#page/225/mode/2up
On the Basis of Morality (1840)

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Arthur Schopenhauer 261

German philosopher 1788–1860

James Rachels (1941–2003) American philosopher

Created from Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism (1990), p. 5

“I have already indicated to you the meaning of the word religion, as applied to Islam. The truth is that Islam is not a Church. It is a State conceived as a contractual organism long before Rousseau ever thought of such a thing, and animated by an ethical ideal which regards man not as an earth-rooted creature, defined by this or that portion of the earth, but as a spiritual being understood in terms of a social mechanism, and possessing rights and duties as a living factor in that mechanism.”

Muhammad Iqbál (1877–1938) Urdu poet and leader of the Pakistan Movement

Sir Muhammad Iqbal’s 1930 Presidential Address to the 25th Session of the All-India Muslim League, Allahabad, 29 December 1930 (from University of Columbia website http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00islamlinks/txt_iqbal_1930.html)

“The more we learn of the true nature of non-human animals, especially those with complex brains and corresponding complex social behavior, the more ethical concerns are raised regarding their use in the service of man — whether this be in entertainment, as "pets," for food, in research laboratories, or any of the other uses to which we subject them.”

Jane Goodall (1934) British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist

Through a Window: My Thirty Years with the Chimpanzees of Gombe (2000), p. 245

“Man is an evasive beast, given to cultivating strange notions about himself.”

Upton Sinclair book The Profits of Religion

Introductory, "Bootstrap-lifting"
The Profits of Religion (1918)
Context: Man is an evasive beast, given to cultivating strange notions about himself. He is humiliated by his simian ancestry, and tries to deny his animal nature, to persuade himself that he is not limited by its weaknesses nor concerned in its fate. And this impulse may be harmless, when it is genuine. But what are we to say when we see the formulas of heroic self-deception made use of by unheroic self-indulgence? What are we to say when we see asceticism preached to the poor by fat and comfortable retainers of the rich? What are we to say when we see idealism become hypocrisy, and the moral and spiritual heritage of mankind twisted to the knavish purposes of class-cruelty and greed? What I say is — Bootstrap-lifting!

“'Our kingdom go' is the necessary and unavoidable corollary of 'Thy kingdom come.' For the more there is of self, the less there is of God.”

Aldous Huxley book The Perennial Philosophy

Source: The Perennial Philosophy (1945), Chapter VI - Mortification, Non-Attachment, Right Livelihood

“Love does strange things to a man’s sense of proportion, which is why—contrary to rumor—it is by no means the Devil’s least favorite emotion.”

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

Source: Blameless in Abaddon (1996), Chapter 1 (p. 11)

“Temple is an intensely moral creature. She has a passionate sense of right and wrong, for example, in regard to the treatment of animals; and law, for her, is clearly not just the law of the land but, in some far deeper sense, a divine or cosmic law, whose violation can have disastrous effects—seeming breakdowns in the course of nature itself.”

Oliver Sacks (1933–2015) British neurologist and writer

An Anthropologist On Mars, The New Yorker, 27 December 1993

“Granted that any practice causes more pain to animals than it gives pleasure to man; is that practice moral or immoral? And if, exactly in proportion as human beings raise their heads out of the slough of selfishness, they do not with one voice answer 'immoral,' let the morality of the principle of utility be for ever condemned.”

John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) British philosopher and political economist

Dr. Whewell on Moral Philosophy (1852), in Dissertations and Discussions: Political, Philosophical, and Historical, vol. 2, London: John W. Parker and son, 1859, p. 485 https://books.google.it/books?id=w-I3AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA485

“[A]lthough my attempted reconstruction of the view of Whitehead and Russell overcomes, I think, many of the difficulties, it is impossible to regard it as altogether satisfactory.”

Frank P. Ramsey (1903–1930) British mathematician, philosopher

As quoted by B. A. Bernstein, Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society 38 (1932), pp. 611-612.
The Foundations of Mathematics (1925)

“As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.”

C.G. Jung book Memories, Dreams, Reflections

Variant: ‎"... the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.
Source: Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1963), p. 326

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Arthur Schopenhauer 261

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