“Sad but true: individual intelligence probably peaked in the Upper Paleolithic, and we have been self-domesticated creatures ever since”

“Farm animals are far more aware and intelligent than we ever imagined and, despite having been bred as domestic slaves, they are individual beings in their own right. As such, they deserve our respect. And our help. Who will plead for them if we are silent? Thousands of people who say they ‘love’ animals sit down once or twice a day to enjoy the flesh of creatures who have been treated so with little respect and kindness just to make more meat.”

“Since art is merely and ultimately self-expressive, we conclude that the fullest art, the most individual, uninfluenced, unrepressed, uninhibited expression of art is true expression and the true art.”

“Since we are not yet fully comfortable with the idea that people from the next village are as human as ourselves, it is presumptuous in the extreme to suppose we could ever look at sociable, tool-making creatures who are from other evolutionary paths and see not beasts, but brothers, not rivals, but fellow pilgrims journeying to the shrine of intelligence...The difference... is not in the creature judged, but in the creature judging.”

“We do not like the idea that any other creature can be better than we are. It is highly probable that if we ever have to face a superior race, we will die of it.”

“Their wine was probably the best I’d ever had, and I was quickly coming to the conclusion that the creation of alcohol was probably an instinctual trait throughout all intelligent life. A silly concept, I know, but it had to be more than a coincidence that every world I’d ever been to had some form of alcoholic beverage. It was as if the first thing creatures did when they achieved a level of intelligence that no longer required them spending their entire lives scavenging for food or reproducing, was look for ways to get fucked up.”