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Axiom 8. That the importance of any action is measured by the degree of pleasure or pain that it causes or prevents.

— Lewis Gompertz Moral Inquiries on the Situation of Man and of Brutes (1824)

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More quotes by Lewis Gompertz

Does it follow that a person is to withhold the performance of the good which may be within his power, because he does not attempt that which may seem beyond it?

Moral Inquiries on the Situation of Man and of Brutes (1824)

Much as animals suffer in a natural state, much more do they seem to suffer when under the dominion of the generality of men. What suffering in the former can be supposed to equal the constant torture of a hackney-coach horse?

Fragments in Defence of Animals, and Essays on Morals, Soul, and Future State (1852)

Such animals as be wants, he will nourish on the dregs and refuse of his own food, and give this as a gift; while those which are useless to him are left in a state of starvation, and deprived of the shelter of the forests, cut down by man.

Fragments in Defence of Animals, and Essays on Morals, Soul, and Future State (1852)

[E]very animal has more right to the use of its own body than others have to use it.

Lawrence W. Baker in Animal Rights and Welfare: A Documentary and Reference Guide (2015)

First, how do you prove that mankind is invested with the right of killing them, and that brutes have been created for the purpose you assert them to be? Secondly, it is to be observed that the flesh of man himself possesses the same nourishing and palatable qualities? And are we then to become cannibals for that reason?

Moral Inquiries on the Situation of Man and of Brutes (1824)

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