Skip to content

Throughout the history of our ascent to dominance as the master species, our victimization of animals has served as the model and foundation for our victimization of each other. The study of human history reveals the pattern: first, humans exploit and slaughter animals; then, they treat other people like animals and do the same to them.

— Charles Patterson Eternal Treblinka (2002)

Another quote →

Topics

Pets

More quotes by Charles Patterson

Those who kill “humanely” often contend that their victims suffer minimally or not at all. This contention helps ease their guilt and makes the continuation of the killing more acceptable.

Eternal Treblinka (2002)

Calling people animals is always an ominous sign because it sets them up for humiliation, exploitation, and murder. It is significant, for example, that in the years leading up to the Armenian genocide, the Ottoman Turks referred to Armenians as rajah (cattle).

Eternal Treblinka (2002)

This use of animal terms to vilify and dehumanize the victims, combined with the abominably degraded conditions in the camps, made it easier for the SS to do their job, since treating prisoners like animals made them begin to look and smell like animals.

Eternal Treblinka (2002)

Once animal exploitation was institutionalized and accepted as part of the natural order of things, it opened the door to similar ways of treating other human beings, thus paving the way for such atrocities as human slavery and the Holocaust.

Eternal Treblinka (2002)

All Charles Patterson quotes →

You may also like

All breathing, existing, living, sentient creatures should not be slain, nor treated with violence, nor abused, nor tormented, nor driven away.

Mahavira

A dog cannot relate his autobiography; however eloquently he may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were honest but poor.

Bertrand Russell Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (1948)

Histories are more full of Examples of the Fidelity of dogs than of Friends.

Alexander Pope

True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power.

Milan Kundera The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Charles Patterson (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.