Quotes by Karen Davis

“Weve been talking too much about how much it costs to provide health insurance and not enough about what we lose as a country and as employers by having employees who are too sick to work.”

“The magnitude was surprising and we were fairly conservative in trying to estimate the economic cost of lost labor time.”

“That added up to an economic cost of about $48 billion a year,”

“That adds another $27 billion to the price tag.”

“We dont have in this report how much that would go down. Its obviously not going to go to zero because we will always have people with cancer and stroke.”

“We as a nation lose if workers arent healthy, ... Its an investment in workers health and productivity to make sure they get the medical care they need.”

“We know from a lot of studies if you have health insurance youre more likely to get preventive care, detect conditions early on and youre more likely to have chronic conditions like diabetes or hypertension controlled effectively,”

“We dont have in this report how much that would go down, ... Its obviously not going to go to zero because we will always have people with cancer and stroke .”

“...promises to be one of the most influential books of the 21st century.”

“This was a group of families that didnt want to send their children off to a residential school, or have them sit in a corner all day and color.”

I have been impressed by the realization that a few men have virtually decided what experiences count and even exist in the world. The language of Western science--the reigning construct of male hegemony--precludes the ability to express the experiential realities it talks about. Virtually all the actual experiences of this world, expressed through the manifest and mysterious characteristics of all the different beings, are unrepresented in the stainless steel edicts of experts. Where is the voice of the voiceless in the scientific literature, including the literature of environmental ethics?

Thus far, our responsibility for how we treat chickens and allow them to be treated in our culture is dismissed with blistering rhetoric designed to silence objection: “How the hell can you compare the feelings of a hen with those of a human being?” One answer is, by looking at her. It does not take special insight or credentials to see that a hen confined in a battery cage is suffering, or to imagine what her feelings must be compared with those of a hen ranging outside in the grass and sunlight. We are told that we humans are capable of knowing just about anything that we want to know—except, ironically, what it feels like to be one of our victims. We are told we are being “emotional” if we care about a chicken and grieve over a chicken’s plight. However, it is not “emotion” that is really under attack, but the vicarious emotions of pity, sympathy, compassion, sorrow, and indignity on behalf of the victim, a fellow creature—emotions that undermine business as usual. By contrast, such “manly” emotions as patriotism, pride, conquest, and mastery are encouraged.

The recognition that human beings are specifically and deliberately responsible for whatever aberrances farm animals may embody, that their discordances reflect our, not their, primary disruption of natural rhythms, and that we owe them more rather than less for having stripped them of their birthright and earthrights has not entered into the environmentalist discussions that Ive encountered to date.

Especially when it comes to animals used for food, humanity’s reasoning power and concern about fairness plummets.

“I have been impressed by the realization that a few men have virtually decided what experiences count and even exist in the world. The language of Western science--the reigning construct of male hegemony--precludes the ability to express the experiential realities it talks about. Virtually all the actual experiences of this world, expressed through the manifest and mysterious characteristics of all the different beings, are unrepresented in the stainless steel edicts of experts. Where is the voice of the voiceless in the scientific literature, including the literature of environmental ethics?”