| The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been witheld from them but by the hand of tyranny...a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day, or a week, or even a month old. But suppose the case were otherwise, What would it avail? The question is not, can they reason? Nor, can they talk? But can they suffer? Why should the law refuse its protection to any sensitive being? The time will come when humanity will extend its mantle over anything that breathes... Jeremy Bentham We have seen that the senses and intuitions, the various emotions and faculties, such as love, memory, attention and curiosity, imitation, reason, etc., of which man boasts, may be found in an incipient, or even sometimes in a well-developed condition, in the lower animals... ...There is no fundamental difference between man and the higher mammals in their mental faculties...The difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind.... ...Animals, whom we have made our slaves, we do not like to consider our equal. Charles Darwin Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages. Thomas A. Edison Now I can look at you in peace; I don't eat you any more. Franz Kafka The assumption that animals are without rights, and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance, is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality. Arthur Shopenhauer Until he extends the circle of compassion to all living things, Man will not himself find peace. Dr. Albert Schweitzer The fate of animals is of greater importance to me than the fear of appearing ridiculous; it is indissolubly connected with the fate of men. Emile Zola I am in favour of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being. Abraham Lincoln The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated. Mohandas Gandhi The more we come in contact with animals and observe their behaviour, the more we love them, for we see how great is their care of their young. If (man) is not to stifle his human feelings, he must practice kindness towards animals, for he who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals. Immanuel Kant The reasons for legal intervention in favour of children apply not less strongly to the case of those unfortunate slaves and victims of the most brutal part of mankind - the lower animals. John Stuart Mill The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men. Leonardo Da Vinci Humans are the only hunters who kill when not hungry. Steven Spielberg A human can be healthy without killing animals for food. Therefore if he eats meat he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. Leo Tolstoy He is a heavy eater of beef. Me thinks it doth harm to his wit. (Twelfth Night). William Shakespeare Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet. Albert Einstein I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals. One farmer says to me, "You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones with;" and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying his system with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plough along in spite of every obstacle. Henry David Thoreau I am not interested to know whether vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn't. The pain which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity toward it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further. Mark Twain Atrocities are not less atrocities when they occur in laboratories and are called medical research. Animals are my friends, and I don't eat my friends. George Bernard Shaw I grew up in cattle country - that's why I became a vegetarian. Meat stinks, for the animals, the environment, and your health. K.D. Lang If you could see or feel the suffering, you wouldn't think twice. Give back life. Don't eat meat. Kim Basinger As custodians of the planet it is our responsibility to deal with all species with kindness, love and compassion. That these animals suffer through human cruelty is beyond understanding. Please help stop this madness. Richard Gere Ever occur to you why some of us can be this much concerned with animals' suffering? Because government is not. Why not? Animals don't vote. Paul Harvey We consume the carcasses of creatures of like appetites, passions and organs with our own, and fill the slaughterhouses daily with screams of pain and fear. Robert Louis Stevenson You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity. Ralph Waldo Emerson Men hunt, I think, maybe because they have something wrong with their own equipment, and they need something else to shoot. Pamela Lee Anderson When I was old enough to realize all meat was killed, I saw it as an irrational way of using our power, to take a weaker thing and mutilate it. It was like the way bullies would take control of younger kids in the schoolyard. River Phoenix It is only by softening and disguising dead flesh by culinary preparation, that it is rendered susceptible of mastication and digestion; and that the sight of its bloody juices and raw horror does not excite intolerable loathing and disgust. Percy Bysshe Shelley If you don't want to be beaten, imprisoned, mutilated, killed ot tortured, then you shouldn't condone such behaviour towards anyone, be they human or not. Moby I don't have any understanding of a human being who doesn't respect the beauty of life, and that goes for all creatures that have thoughts, feelings and needs. Alicia Silverstone I admit to having worn suede and leather pants myself for a while, but you just never feel clean, and its degenerate, anyway, to wear animal skins...so I went back to blue jeans after my degenerate period. Andy Warhol |
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