"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."
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."
Q&A session following speech, "Animal Rights, Human Wrongs," University of Wisconsin-Madison, October 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."
The Case for Animal Rights, 1983.

"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."
The Case for Animal Rights, 1983.

"The ultimate objective of the [animal] rights view is the total dissolution of the animal industry as we know it." (In "The Animal Rights Controversy", Pringle)