J. Howard Moore Quotes

The human beings who possess the dominion of land and machinery and compel others, in order to obtain the essentials of existence, to serve them, are as truly masters of slaves as they who exact blood from the dorsals of their fellows with literal slave whips.

So the disinherited loan themselves to the possessors of things, the landlords and the capitalists, who allow to them a rental for the use of their bodies. The industrial system which allows the unlimited appropriation of land and inventions furnishes to the more powerful and avaricious classes of communities the means by which they compel the rest to labor for them. And not to call such deprivation slavery is to neglect to use the word with its most essential connotation.

Man, in satisfying his desires, in avoiding misery and achieving happiness, strives to do two things with the inanimate universe: to manage it and to foreknow it. The inanimate is not devoted to us. We are not birdlings cuddled in an order of things where we need simply to yawn and be filled. We must bestir ourselves, or be in a position to compel others to bestir themselves for us, or perish. We are waifs, brought into existence by a universe whose solicitude for us ended with the travail that brought us forth. The inanimate universe is our mother, but without the blessed mother-love. The first thing we are conscious of, and about the only thing we ever absolutely know, is that we are whirling around in a very helpless manner on a whirligig of a ball, out of whose substance by the sweat of our brows we must quarry our existence. The universe is practically independent of us. But we, alas, are not independent of it. The food we eat, our raiment, our habitations, our treasures, our implements of knowledge, and our means of amusement are all portions of the inanimate, which we living beings must somehow subtract from the rest. In order to obtain these indispensable portions of the universe about us, we must halter it and control it and compel it to produce to the tune of our desires.

Every pain is to be avoided, except those whose endurance will enable the avoidance of greater pain, and every possible happiness is to be harvested, save those whose foregoing will help the universe to larger happiness. There is no obligation commanding any being to endure misery save to avoid misery, and no consideration demanding any one to neglect happiness save for larger happiness—those ascetics who proclaim the divinity of wretchedness to the contrary notwithstanding.

The satisfaction of the much stigmatized <nowiki>''</nowiki>animal propensities," or <nowiki>''</nowiki>carnal desires," whatever they are, may be just as exemplary and noble as the satisfaction of the desire for knowledge or opulence; and they are, in fact, frequently more so. The only rational characterization of a low desire is one incapable of yielding to the universe in its satisfaction large returns of happiness. And a high desire is simply one affording to the universe in its satisfaction wide and profound welfare. The only reason why any desire, so-called "high" or so-called <nowiki>''</nowiki>low," should be kept in abeyance is that its satisfaction will not contribute to the utilities. There is no reason why any desire capable of satisfaction possessed by a living being should not be satisfied, except that its satisfaction may interfere with the satisfaction of other more valuable desires possessed by the being himself or by other beings.

Man's desires are, indeed, innumerable, often hopeless, and sometimes vile, but they may all be rolled together into two: the desire to avoid pain, and the desire to experience pleasure. Every conscious movement made by living beings, from oyster to philosopher, is directed toward the accomplishment of one or both of these ends.

No being knows. He thinks he knows. A few grams strategically shifted here and there in his organism, and he knows, or thinks he knows, something altogether otherwise. All is attitude and relativity.

We are striving for the amelioration of this suffering world. Let us be economical.

I am a vegetarian, therefore, because cannibalism is unnecessary. I can live just as well and be just as happy without drinking the blood of my fellows, and why should I slay them? Why should I not live and let live—especially when I can do it just as well as not? It is not necessary that ten thousand creatures should give up their lives in order that I may keep mine, and if I make any pretensions to morality why should I require them to do it? If you say such a thing is necessary in your case, I say to you it is not—and further, that if it were, it would be your duty as an ethical being to call on your undertaker. There is no sense in carnivora talking about ethics and justice and mercy, for their very existence is a travesty on such things. It makes me indignant and sad when I hear men deplore sin and prate about justice and love and mercy, when the very energy they expend in preaching justice and mercy is obtained from the skeletons and sensibilities of their fellows. It is a spectacle that ought to make the imps of netherdom tremble for their laurels—man, the remorseless glutton, going about with a tongue and a knife, with his tongue preaching peace, mercy, and love, and with his knife making the very earth sodden with blood.

I am a vegetarian because I believe that present-day ethics is founded on that puerile, pre-Darwinian delusion that all other kinds of creatures and all worlds were created explicitly for the hominine species. Vegetarianism is the ethical corollary of evolution. It is simply the expansion of ethics to suit the biological revelations of Charles Darwin. Evolution has taught us the kinship of all creatures.

I became a vegetarian by my own reflection. I did not know at the time of the vegetarian movement, and hence, supposed myself among republics of carnivora. It did not seem to me graceful or ideal that I, an ethical being should maintain my existence at the incessant expense of misery and death to others.

[This work] would be inexcusable to suppose it to be exhaustive. It is not even defensive. It is a projectile, and projectiles do not apologize.
It intends to be followed.

The human race is like a snake—it sheds. Ever and anon, as the ages bloom, old forms of thought are superseded by intellectual bran-news. Shrines at which one generation adores become to the succeeding desolate and despised.

This is a gray world. There is enough sorrow in it, even though we cease to scourge each other—the sorrow of floods, famines, fires, earthquakes, storms, diseases, and death. We should trust each other, and love each other, and sympathize with and help each other, and be patient and forgiving.

The long struggle is ended. I must pass away. Good-by. Oh, men are so cold and hard and half conscious toward their suffering fellows. Nobody understands. Oh my mother! and Oh my little girl! What will become of you? And the poor four-footed! May the long years be merciful! Take me to my river. There, where the wild birds sing and the waters go on and on, alone in my groves, forever.