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Field flowers

by louise gluck

what are you saying?  that you want
eternal life?  are your thoughts really
as compelling as all that?  certainly
you don't look at us, don't listen to us,
on your skin
stain of sun, dust
of yellow buttercups: i'm talking
to you, you staring through
bars of high grass shaking
your little rattle - o
the soul!  the soul!  is it enough
only to look inward?  contempt
for humanity is one thing, but why
disdain the expansive
field, your gaze rising over the clear heads
of the wild buttercups into what?  your poor
idea of heaven: absence
of change.  better than earth?  how
would you know, who are neither
here nor there, standing in our midst?

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Moral kantiana e o que devemos aos outros animais

On a Kantian conception, what is special about human beings is not that we are the universe’s darlings, whose fate is absolutely more important than the fates of the other creatures who like us experience their own existence. It is exactly the opposite: What is special about us is the empathy that enables us to grasp that other creatures are important to themselves in just the way we are important to ourselves, and the reason that enables us to draw the conclusion that follows: that every animal must be regarded as an end in herself, whose fate matters, and matters absolutely, if anything matters at all.
 
— Christine M. Korsgaard, citada por Thomas Nagel em What We Owe a Rabbit

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Teorias conspiratórias

Toda teoria conspiratória confere uma gratificação narcisista a quem acredita nela (diferentemente da massa ignara, eu sei o que está acontecendo de verdade). Infelizmente, toda teoria conspiratória, assim que ela for constituída, adota um viés de confirmação: ou seja, tudo que discorda dela é considerado como o fruto da atividade oculta dos inimigos. Torna-se impossível argumentar.

— Contardo Calligaris: 'Marxismo cultural'