Norm Phelps (1939–2014,) fully Norman Nelson Phelps, III, was an American animal rights activist, vegetarian, and author. A disciple of the Tibetan Buddhist (Sakya) tradition and a Unitarian Universalist, he focused his animal rights activism and writing on religion.
Phelps earned a B.A. in history, philosophy from the University of Maryland-College Park. He was a founding member of the Society of Ethical and Religious Vegetarians (SERV) and a former outreach director of the Fund for Animals.
Phelps authored four books on animal rights: The Dominion of Love: Animal Rights According to the Bible (2002,) The Great Compassion: Buddhism and Animal Rights (2004,) The Longest Struggle: Animal Advocacy from Pythagoras to PETA (2007,) and Changing the Game: Animal Liberation in the Twenty-first Century (2015.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Norm Phelps
Buddhism cannot be true to itself until Buddhists resolve their ambivalence toward nonhuman animals and extend the full protection of their compassion to the most harmless and helpless of those who live at our mercy in the visible realms.
—Norm Phelps
The beginning of mindful eating is the realization that eating meat is not about the meat-eater; it is about the animals who are tormented and killed.
—Norm Phelps
Farmed animals are not future Buddhas donating their flesh out of compassion for those of us who have developed a craving for it. They are victims of our greed from whom we steal the most precious gift any of us has: life.
—Norm Phelps
It is a feeble compassion that pulls up short where self-interest begins.
—Norm Phelps
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