-"Animal liberationists do not separate out the human animal, so there is no rational basis for saying that a human being has special rights. A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. They're all mammals."
Ingrid Newkirk
Founder, PETA
As quoted in Vogue, September, 1989

-"The life of an ant and the life of my child should be granted equal consideration."
Michael Fox
Vice President, HSUS

-"Six million Jews died in concentration camps, but six billion broiler chickens will die this year in slaughterhouses."
Ingrid Newkirk
Founder, PETA
Washington Post, 1983

-"Humans have grown like cancer. We're the biggest blight on the face of the planet."
Ingrid Newkirk
Founder, PETA
Reader's Digest, June, 1990

-"I am not a morose person but I would rather not be here. I don't have any reverence for life, only for the entities themselves. I would rather see a blank space where I am. This will sound like fruitcake stuff again, but at least I wouldn't be harming anything."
Ingrid Newkirk
Founder, PETA
Washington Post, November 13, 1983

-"Probably everything we do is a publicity stunt...We are not here to gather members, to please, to placate, to make friends. We're here to hold the radical line."
Ingrid Newkirk
Founder, PETA
USA Today, September 3, 1991

-"Even if animal research resulted in a cure for AIDS, we'd be against it."
Ingrid Newkirk
Founder, PETA
Vogue, September, 1989

-"Even painless research is fascism, supremacism, because the act of confinement is traumatizing in itself."
Ingrid Newkirk
Founder, PETA
Washington Magazine, August, 1986

-"It (animal research) is immoral even if it is essential."
Ingrid Newkirk
Founder, PETA
Washington Post, May 30, 1989

-"Pet ownership is an absolutely abysmal situation brought on by human manipulation."
Ingrid Newkirk
Founder, PETA
Washington Magazine, August 1986

-"One day we would like an end to pet shops and the breeding of animals. (Dogs) would pursue their natural lives in the wild...They would have full lives, not waiting at home for someone to come home in the evening and pet them and then sit there and watch TV."
Ingrid Newkirk
Founder, PETA
"Where Would We Be Without Animals?, Chicago Daily Herald, March 1, 1990

-"...Eventually companion animals would be phased out, and we would return to a more symbiotic relationship, enjoyment at a distance."
Ingrid Newkirk
Founder, PETA
Harpers, August, 1988

-"We feel that animals have the same rights as a retarded human child."
Alex Pacheco
Chairman, PETA,
The New York Times, Jan. 14, 1989

-"We have a lazy, sick society. People bring diseases on themselves. [People should] avoid getting the disease in the first place."
Dan Mathews
PeTA spokesperson
USA Today, July 27, 1994

-Question to PeTA Outreach Coordinator Susan Rich: "If you were aboard a lifeboat with a baby and a dog, and the boat capsized, which would you rescue?"
Rich's answer: "I wouldn't know for sure...I might choose the human baby or I might choose the dog."
Steve Kane Show
WIOD-AM Radio
Miami, FL
Feb, 23, 1989

-"In a perfect world, all other than human animals would be free of human interference, dogs and cats would part of the ecological scheme."
PeTA's Statement on Companion Animals

-In response to Animal Liberation Front violence in the Pacific Northwest: "We cannot condemn the Animal Liberation Front...they act courageously, risking their freedom and their careers to stop the terror inflicted every day on animals in the labs. [ALF's activities] comprise an important part of today's animal protection movement."
PeTA statement
June 19, 1991

-"Homelessness drives me crazy! I take responsibility for everything that happens to me. Everyone can pull themselves up. I have more sympathy for animals because they don't deserve anything that happens to them. They're innocent."
PeTa member
"What Becomes a Zealot Most?"
GQ Magazine
November 1993

-"The life of an ant and the life of my child should be granted equal consideration."
Michael Fox
HSUS President
Inhumane Society
Fox Publication

-"We're not superior. There are no clear distinctions between us and animals."
Michael Fox
Washingtonian Magazine
February 1990

-"Man is the most dangerous, destructive, selfish and unethical animal on earth."
Michael Fox
The Intellectual Activist
Sept. 14, 1983

-(Expressing opposition to use of bug sprays) "Only a few of the million you kill would have bitten you."
Michael Fox
Returning to Eden
Fox Publication

-"We have no ethical obligation to preserve the different breeds of livestock produced through selective breeding. ...One generation and out. We have no problem with the extinction of domestic animals. They are creations of human selective breeding."
Wayne Pacelle
Animal People
May 1993

-"If we could shut down all sport hunting in a moment, we would."
Wayne Pacelle
formerly of Friends of Animals
Impassioned Agitator
Associated Press
Dec. 30, 1991

-"If abandoning animal research means that there are some things we cannot learn, then so be it... We have no basic right...not to be harmed by those natural diseases we are heir to."
Tom Regan
North Carolina State University
The Case for Animal Rights, 1983

-"It is not larger, cleaner cages that justice demands...but empty cages; not traditional animal agriculture but a complete end to all commerce in the flesh of dead animals; not more humane hunting and trapping, but the total eradication of these barbarous practices."
Tom Regan
North Carolina State University
The Philosophy of Animal Rights, 1989

-When asked which he would save, a dog or a baby, if a boat capsized in the ocean: "If it were a retarded baby and a bright dog, I'd save the dog."
Tom Regan
North Carolina State University
Q & A session following speech
"Animal Rights, Human Wrongs"
U of Wisconsin-Madison
Oct. 27, 1989

-"Even granting that we [humans] face greater harm than laboratory animals presently endure if research on these animals is stopped, the animal rights view will not be satisfied with anything less than total abolition."
Tom Regan
North Carolina State University
The Case for Animal Rights, 1983