“Bearing witness takes the courage to realize the potential of the human spirit. Witnessing requires us to call forth the highest qualities of our species, qualities such as conviction, integrity, empathy, and compassion. It is easier by far to retain… — Melanie Joy Copy Share
“Becoming aware of the intense suffering of billions of animals, and of our own participation in that suffering, can bring up painful emotions: sorrow and grief for the animals; anger at the injustice and deception of the system; despair at… — Melanie Joy Copy Share Image
“The carnistic schema, which twists information so that nonsense seems to make perfect sense, also explains why we fail to see the absurdities of… — Melanie Joy Copy Share Image
“To identify with others is to see something of yourself in them and to see something of them in yourself--even if the only thing… — Melanie Joy Copy Share Image
“As with any violent ideology, the populace must be shielded from direct exposure to the victims of the system, lest they begin questioning the… — Melanie Joy Copy Share Image
“Our values and behaviors are incongruent, and this incongruence causes us a certain degree of moral discomfort. In order to alleviate this discomfort, we… — Melanie Joy Copy Share Image
“It is impossible to exercise free will as long as we are operating from within the system. Free will requires consciousness, and our pervasive and deep-seated patterns of thought are unconscious; they are outside of our awareness and therefore outside of our control. While we remain in the system, we see the world through the eyes of carnism. And as… — Melanie Joy Copy Share
“Only with awareness of carnism can we reclaim our freedom of choice; without awareness, there is no free choice.” — Melanie Joy Copy Share Image
“Educating yourself does not mean that you were stupid in the first place; it means that you are intelligent enough to know that there… — Melanie Joy Copy Share Image
“Many of us spend long minutes in the aisle of the drugstore mulling over what toothpaste to buy. Yet most of us don't spend any time at all thinking about what species of animal we eat and why. Our choices as consumers drive an industry that kills ten billion* animals per year in the United States alone. If we choose… — Melanie Joy Copy Share
“There is a vast mythology surrounding meat, but all the myths are in one way or another related to what I refer to as the Three Ns of Justification: eating meat is normal, natural, and necessary . The Three Ns have been invoked to justify all exploitative systems, from African slavery to the Nazi Holocaust. When an ideology is in… — Melanie Joy Copy Share
“Yet on some level we do know the truth. We know that meat production is a messy business, but we choose not to know just how messy it is. We know that meat comes from an animal, but we choose not to connect the dots. And often, we eat animals and choose not to know we're even making a choice.… — Melanie Joy Copy Share
“Bearing witness takes the courage to realize the potential of the human spirit. Witnessing requires us to call forth the highest qualities of our species, qualities such as conviction, integrity, empathy, and compassion. It is easier by far to retain the attributes of carnistic culture: apathy, complacency, self-interest, and "blissful" ignorance. I wrote this book––itself an act of witnessing––because I… — Melanie Joy Copy Share
