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For the heart to truly share another's being, it must be an embodied heart, prepared to encounter directly the embodied heart of another. I have met the “other” in this way, not once or a few times, but over and over during years spent in the company of “persons” like you and me, who happen to be nonhuman.

— Barbara Smuts Reflections (1999)

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When a human being relates to an individual nonhuman being as an anonymous object, rather than as a being with its own subjectivity, it is the human, and not the other animal, who relinquishes personhood.

Reflections (1999)

There were 140 baboons in the troop, and I came to know every one as a highly distinctive individual. Each one had a particular gait, which allowed me to know who was who, even from great distances when I couldn't see anyone's face. Every baboon had a characteristic voice and unique things to say with it; each had a face like no other, favorite foods, favorite friends, favorite bad habits.

Reflections (1999)

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