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By "ARAs" the author is referring to animal rights activists.

According to an official FBI definition, "Eco-terrorism is a crime committed to save nature." It speaks volumes about capitalistic society and it's dominionist mindset that actions to "save nature" are classified as criminal actions while those that destroy nature are sanctified by God and Flag.

Cowardice asks the question, Is it safe? Expediency asks the question, Is it politic? Vanity asks the question, Is it popular? But conscience asks the question, Is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because his conscience tells him that it is right. --Martin Luther King, Jr.

The human onlookers adjust. They go to the zoo almost in the same way that they go out to eat--to entertain themselves and their children, like a trip to Disneyland, which succeeds where zoos fail, because, like hamburgers and chicken nuggets, "animated" creatures are more prized by our culture than living animals are.

It's a matter of taking the side of the weak against the strong, something that the best people have always done. --Harriet Beecher Stowe

How many of us would be content writing letters to the editor and politely talking about the situation if our very own loved ones had been snatched away from us and were being imprisoned and tortured? Would we sit back if our sisters were being force-fed bleach? Well, someone's sister is being force-fed bleach...We know about it, but we continue sitting here. Should we blame the ALF for getting up and trying to stop it? --Ingrid Newkirk

To know what is right and not do it is the worst form of cowardice. --Confucius

Animal liberation is an honorable cause. The enlightened have always known that improving the lot of the oppressed is just. There are none more oppressed than animals and none more innocent. We welcome you to the battle.

Animal liberation is not a campaign, not just a hobby to put aside when it becomes tiresome or a new interest catches your eye. It's a war. A long, hard, bloody war in which all the countless millions of its victims have, so far, been on one side only, have been defenseless and innocent, whose tragedy was being born nonhuman.

Even Gandhi said "Where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence. "

During the nineteen century, abolitionists in the US broke every law protecting the ownership of slaves and were condemned by the press as violent criminals. Now, we uphold these abolitionists to schoolchildren as heroes far ahead of their time. We hope history will someday view the ALF in the same light, and that the ALF proves worthy of the honor.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) has overridden numerous progressive laws such as those protecting sea turtles or banning steel-jawed leg hold traps as "barriers to free trade."

There is a huge difference between breaking the neck of a mink and smashing a fur store window, but the values of society are revealed all too clearly when only the latter action is condemned as a crime worthy of intense opprobrium and legal action.

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. --George Orwell

If one's definition of "terrorism" involves only a conscious effort to instill fear and anxiety in the mind of others (as a sufficient condition of terrorism), then SHAC is a kind of "terrorist" organization--and so too is the Internal Revenue Service.

Those who cry "eco-terrorist" the loudest are typically those who profit the most from violence and killing, and those who seek to disguise their own crimes against life by vilifying others.

A man that should call everything by its right name would hardly pass the streets without being knocked down as a common enemy. --George Savile, the first Marquess of Halifax

We're very dangerous philosophically. Part of the danger is that we don't buy into the illusion that property is worth more than life...we bring that insane priority into the light, which is something the system cannot survive. --David Barbarash, former spokesman for the ALF

We should never feel like we're going too far in breaking the law, because whatever laws you break to liberate animals or protect the environment are very insignificant compared to the laws that are broken by that parliament of whores in Washington. They are the biggest lawbreakers, the biggest destroyers, the biggest mass-murderers on this planet right now. --Paul Watson

Not to hurt our humble brethren is our first duty to them, but to stop there is not enough. We have a higher mission--to be of service to them whenever they require it. --St. Francis of Assisi

In the words of Voltairine de Clyre, "the evil of pinning faith to indirect action is far greater than any minor results. The main evil is that it destroys initiative, quenches the individual rebellious spirit, and teaches people to rely on someone else to do for them what they should do for themselves. People must learn that their power does not lie in voting strength, that their power lies in their ability to stop production."

Even voting for the right thing is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. --Henry David Thoreau