Gary Yourofsky

Gary Yourofsky in 2013

Gary Yourofsky (born August 19, 1970) is an American vegan, animal rights activist, lecturer and educator.

Quotes

• Sometimes I think the only effective method of destroying speciesism would be for each uncaring human to be forced to live the life of a cow on a feedlot, or a monkey in a laboratory, or an elephant in the circus, or a bull in a rodeo, or a mink on a fur farm. Then people would be awakened from their soporific states and finally understand the horrors that are inflicted on the animal kingdom by the vilest species to ever roam this planet: the human animal!
  • Empathy, Education, and Violence: A Time for Everything, ADAPTT website (2013)

• If mentally retarded children were in tiny cages at the National Institutes of Health waiting to be mutilated, blinded, burnt and killed by a vivisectionist, the tactics of the ALF and ARM would be unassailable. If black people were being hung upside down at a slaughterhouse as someone sliced their throats and dismembered their bodies, society would embrace the tactics of the ALF and the Revolutionary Cells. If our husbands, wives or best friends were traipsing through the woods as someone fired an arrow or a bullet destined for their chest, then we would all give thanks to the compassionate revolutionaries who call themselves ALF and Justice Department activists. If you honestly placed yourself in any animals' position, anything would be acceptable to prevent your torture, enslavement and eventual murder.
  • Empathy, Education, and Violence: A Time for Everything, ADAPTT website (2013)

• Is slavery - owner, victim, profit, domination - exclusive to the human race? Have blacks, Jews, women and children been the only victims of this atrocity? Have not cows been enslaved? What about pigs, chickens, turkeys, fish, sheep? If they're not enslaved, then what are they? Free? Can slavery have a victim that is neither a human, nor an animal? Have not the oceans, the forests, the earth itself, become victims of ownership too?
  • Part of the speech to the students of the Georgia Institute of Technology (Summer 2010)

• Exactly what is your definition of humane? Besides psychological and physical abuse, torture, dismemberment and murder, what else do you think happens to animals inside of a slaughterhouse? Do you think they get belly rubs and tushy slaps? And if you think there is such a thing as humane slaughter. I'm curious, do you also think there is such a thing as humane rape? Humane child molestation? Humane slavery? How about a humane holocaust? In fact, what is your definition of a holocaust? Is it a massacre of human beings, or a massacre of innocent beings?
  • Part of the speech to the students of the Georgia Institute of Technology, On the subject of humane slaughter (Summer 2010)

• That Descartes' Cartesian way of looking at animals, like they're machines... It is outdated, and quite frankly, 100% insane. Because, if we all understand that animals use their eyes to see, ears to hear, noses to smell, mouths to eat, legs to walk, feathers to fly, fins to swim, genitalia to procreate, bowels to defecate.. I'm always perplexed that most people don't believe that they can also use their brains to think, feel, be rational, be aware and be self-aware! Am I supposed to believe, that every body part of an animal functions just like it's supposed to, except the brain?
  • Part of the speech to the students of the Georgia Institute of Technology, On animal intelligence (Summer 2010)

• My goal is simple. All I want to do is re-connect people with animals. Awaken some emotions and some feelings and some logic, that is been buried and suppressed, intentionally, by our society. And the reason why I say re-connect it's because each and every person in this room used to be a real animal rights person at one time, a true animal lover, and a real friend to the animal kingdom. And it's when we were kids! When we were young... When we were kids! We used to be in awe of animals."They used to make us laugh, and giggle and smile. They made us pretty happy! And there was a time in our lives, when we would do just about anything in the world to make them happy as well. To protect them from cruelty! Or to, at least, acknowledge the cruelty they were receiving. I mean, if somebody was mean to an animal in front of us when we were little, we would have screamed and cried. And that's because we all used to understand right from wrong, when it came to the treatment of animals. Until somebody told us, and taught us differently. You better believe that somebody told us to ignore their suffering! To mock and excuse, their pain, and their misery. To make fun of their very existence. And this is something I want you to focus on - today, tomorrow and beyond... What in the hell happened along the way?! Who taught us to be so mean, and nasty and vicious and hateful, or indifferent towards animals when they used to be our friends? These are innocent beings, who have done nothing wrong to us.
  • Part of the speech to the students of the Georgia Institute of Technology (Summer 2010)

• I want to ask you, to use some empathy right now. And when I say 'empathy', what I'm saying is: place yourself in the position of the animals, and start to view this issue from the animals' point of view. From the victims' point of view. When you examine any form of injustice, whether humans are victims or animals are victims, please remember the victim's point of view. If you are not the victim, don't examine it entirely from your point of view because when you're not the victim, it becomes pretty easy to rationalize and excuse cruelty, injustice, inequality, slavery, and even murder. But when you're the victim, things look a lot differently from that angle.
  • Part of the speech to the students of the Georgia Institute of Technology (Summer 2010)

• Right now, at this very moment, on American highways, there are no less than 5,000 concentration camp trucks. Trucks that we have constructed. Inside these trucks, there are living, terrified innocent beings. Cows and pigs and chickens. These trucks are being driven to concentration camp's slaughterhouses that we carefully constructed all across America. When the trucks arrive, the animals are so frightened that they won't even get off the truck. They're not stupid, they know what's next. So people go on the trucks with electric prods and force them to walk down the chutes to their own deaths. Or if the animals are small enough to man handle, like chickens, we'll just grab them off the trucks and toss them inside.Inside, these innocent, living beings are hanged upside down, fully conscious. In other words,they go in alive, against their will, and come out chopped up, into hundreds of pieces.
  • Part of the speech to the students of the Georgia Institute of Technology (Summer 2010)

Terrorists or Freedom Fighters? Reflections on the Liberation of Animals (2004)

• Each human carnivore is responsible for the death and dismemberment of more than 3,000 animals throughout his or her lifetime. Annually, in the US alone, over 10 billion cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys and other animals live in concentration camps. Within the first year of their pathetic lives, they're sent to killing houses where knife-wielding terrorists slit their throats, drain their blood and dismember their bodies, all too often while the animals are still conscious and awake.
  • Abolition, Liberation, Freedom. Coming to a Fur Farm Near You, pp. 129-130

• Without question, ALF liberations are akin to Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad, which assisted in the liberation of blacks from white slave-owners. One must understand that ALF raids have two goals: giving enslaved animals a chance at freedom and causing major economic damage. As a movement, we must let go of the fantasy that those directly involved in torturing and murdering animals, and profiting handsomely from it, will listen to reason, common sense, and moral truth. The vast majority will not. If they did, there wouldn't be an animal liberation movement, because they would have understood the cruelty of their ways by now and adopted a vegan lifestyle.
  • Abolition, Liberation, Freedom. Coming to a Fur Farm Near You, pp. 130-131

External links

• ADAPTT - Gary Yourofsky's website