Skip to content

Animal Quote by Talal Asad

“It seems to me perfectly possible to act humanely towards other beings, whether humans or animals or plants. One simply has to learn how to behave. To behave "humanely" it is perfectly possible to do without the notion of "humanity."” quote by Talal Asad — Download Open image

“It seems to me perfectly possible to act humanely towards other beings, whether humans or animals or plants. One simply has to learn how to behave. To behave "humanely" it is perfectly possible to do without the notion of "humanity."”

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 2.7 out of 5 (6 ratings)

Animal Behave Humanity Humans Nature of man Notion Plant Seems

More by Talal Asad

The propensity to intellectualize is itself both essential and dangerous. I think in our modern world we are much more aware of its essential…

Image

Certainly in order to understand the natural world one needs clarity, logic, and the capacity for theory building. But that understanding tends to improve…

Image

I think the approach to Islam as a tradition is helpful. Tradition helps us to focus on questions about authority and temporality, and about…

Image

Language has multiple uses, and is embedded in different forms of life. It is not necessary to have this grand concept of "humanity" in…

Image

Believers are often thought of as people who have some kind of private conviction or repudiation of something, whereas "the faithful" refers to a relationship, which was also incidentally the earlier sense of "faith" in premodern, preliberal Christianity. This is not to say, incidentally, that "faith" refers simply to external behavior as opposed to internal belief but that it refers…

You do not need intellectuality for deep faith. You do not need it for behaving humanely towards people whether fellow Muslims or non-Muslims. You do not need a concept, a theory, you do not need intellectual arguments for justifying a way of living that is already in place in order for it to proceed.

The Genealogical Science is a wonderful account of how old-fashioned race science has come to be re-defined by resort to the most recent developments in genetics. But this book is not simply another story of the ideological uses to which science may be put. Nadia Abu El-Haj has provided the reader with a very detailed analysis of the historical entanglement…

In liberal society we claim that freedom of speech is sacred and therefore has an absolute character. But we know (or should know) that "free speech" inhabits a structured space: not only is "hate speech" legally forbidden in liberal societies, but there are also laws protecting the circulation of copyrighted material, and the reproduction of trademarks and patents without explicit…

“The construction of civilizational difference is not exclusive in any simple sense. The de-essentialization of Islam is paradigmatic for all thinking about the assimilation of non-European peoples to European civilization. The idea that people's historical experience is inessential to them, that it can be shed at will, makes it possible to argue more strongly for the Enlightenment's claim to universality:…

For the law, the clarity of language and the finality of judgment is crucial, because you have to decide a case one way or another - whether it is criminal or civil or whatever. In ordinary life, you do not have to decide things with absolute finality. You do not have to decide on a theory in order to behave…

You should never employ your intellect but only that it is not essential to exercise it in order to live a humane life. Language…

Image

The notion of "humanity" as a form of transcendence derives, I think, from the conviction that intellectuality possesses an absolute power, from the demand that our best behavior depends on our ability to think abstractly, in terms of a universal rule, about something called humanity, that we need to understand humanity abstractly so that we can act responsibly towards those…

Explore all 23 Talal Asad quotes

More Animal quotes

I was 3-years-old - to this day it is a vivid memory. My family and I were on a boat, catching fish. As one fish was caught, he was writhing, then he was thrown against the side of the boat. You couldn't disguise what it was. This was what we did to animals to eat them. The animal went from…

Joaquin Phoenix

Animals know nothing of themselves, and they also know nothing of the world.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Image

When grubbing for necessities man is still an animal. He becomes uniquely human when he reaches out for the superfluous and extravagant.

Image

A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!

William Shakespeare

Image

“What does it mean to be a self-conscious animal? The idea is ludicrous, if it is not monstrous. It means to know that one is food for worms. This is the terror: to have emerged from nothing, to have a name, consciousness of self, deep inner feelings, an excruciating inner yearning for life and self-expression and with all this yet…

We must love animals in such a powerful way that we should reject to eat them!

Mehmet Murat Ildan

Image

This brings me back to the image of Kafka standing before a fish in the Berlin aquarium, a fish on which his gaze fell…

Jonathan Safran Foer

Image

Animal rights without veganism is like human rights with slavery. It makes no sense. None whatsoever.

Gary L. Francione

Image

It’s a small thing to help one animal, but to that one animal it’s a big thing

Image

We animals are the most complicated things in the known universe.

Richard Dawkins

Image

Even with clothing naked animals, there were people who wanted to send in money. A woman in Santa Barbara, California, sent a $40,000 check.…

Image

We're not very dangerous animals; we don't have a horn like a rhino or quills like a porcupine.

Image

Browse all 7,647 Animal quotes