"I quote others only to better express myself."
~ Michel de Montaigne ~

This is a collection of quotes I have found in books & while surfing the web.
They are in no particular order.
Enjoy!

"I expect to pass through this world but once. Any good therefore that I can do, or any kindness or ablities that I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now. Let me not defer it or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again."
~William Penn


"We should be able to refuse to live if the price of living be the torture of sentient beings."
~Mahatma Gandhi


"Let us pray that our food should not be colored with animal blood and human suffering."
~Chitrabhanuji


"Animals are our younger brothers and sisters, also on the ladder of evolution but a few rungs lower. It is an important part of our responsibilities to help them in their ascent, and not to retard their development by cruel exploitation of their helplessness."
~Lord Dowding


"The misery we inflict on sentient beings slackens our human evolution."
~Dr. Annie Besant


"Cruelty is the obvious cancer of modern civilization."
~Rev. A. D. Beldon


"I think that sacrifices of animals in the name of religion are barbarous and they degrade the name of religion."
~Jawaharlal Nehru


"Anything that can feel pain should not be put to pain."
~R.M. Dolgin


"No nation is truly free until the animal, man's younger brother is free and happy."
~T.L. Vaswani


"Which religion gives the greatest joy to God? That which inspires human beings to practice Ahimsa and compassion to all creatures."
~Vallabha Acharya


"If he be really and seriously seeking to live a good life, the first thing from which he will abstain will always be the use of animal food, because...its use is simply immoral, as it involves the performance of an act which is contrary to the moral feeling -- killing."
~Leo Tolstoy


"I wish no living thing to suffer pain."
~Percy Bysshe Shelley


"Animals cannot speak, but can you and I not speak for them and represent them? Let us all feel their silent cry of agony and let us all help that cry to be heard in the world."
~Rukmini Devi Arundale


"The deeper minds of all ages have had pity for animals."
~Friedrich Nietzsche


"The reason why I am against animal research is because it doesn't work, it has no scientific value and every good scientist knows that."
~ Dr. Robert Mendelsohn, M.D.


"Everyone should know that most cancer research is largely a fraud, and that the major cancer research organisations are derelict in their duties to the people who support them."
~ Linus Pauling, PhD


"Give me the helpless, the lost, the homeless little ones struggling just to live, the innocent refuse of an uncaring land. Send these, the weak abandoned lives to me - I offer hope, care, warmth & love."
~ The Pledge of a Rescue Worker


"Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself and yourself alone one question: Does this path have a heart? If the path does, it is good. If not, it is of no use."
~ Carlos Castenada


"In the long run it is the cumulative effect that matters. One can do much. And one and one and one and one can move mountains."
~ Joan Ward-Harris


"If having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans."
~ James Herriot


"Everyone wants to understand painting. Why is there no attempt to understand the song of the birds?"
~ Pablo Picasso


"Life is life--whether in a cat, or dog or man. There is no difference there between a cat or a man. The idea of difference is a human conception for man's own advantage..."
~Sri Aurobindo


"The question is not, can they reason? Nor, can they talk? But, can they suffer?"
~ Jeremy Bentham


"We can not have peace among men whose hearts find delight in killing any living creature"
~ Rachel Carson


"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


"If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men"
~ St. Francis of Assisi


"Humanity advances only as it becomes more humane"
~ Dr.Frank Crane


"Who can believe that there is no soul behind those luminous eyes!"
~Theophile Gautier


"I could not have slept to-night if I had left that helpless little creature to perish on the ground." (reply to friends who chided him for delaying them by stopping to return a fledgling to its nest.)
~ Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)



"I am sometimes asked "Why do you spent so much of your time and money talking about kindness to animals when there is so much cruelty to men?" I answer: "I am working at the roots."
~ George T.Angell


"He who harms animals has not understood or renounced deeds of sin ...Those whose minds are at peace and who are free from passions do not desire to live at the expense of others."
~ Acharanga Sutra (Jainism)


"All beings seek for happiness; so let your compassion extend itself to all."
~ Mahavamsa


"The love of animals, like the love of our neighbor, is not a gift to be condescendingly bestowed, but a profound and humble acceptance of their kinship."
~ Robert R. Logan


"Any society which does not insist upon respect for all life must necessarily decay."
~ Albert Einstein


"We cannot discount the lives of sensitive and intelligent creatures merely because they assume non-human form."
~ Gary Kowalski


"The love for all living creatures is the noblest attribute of man."
~Charles Darwin


"I hope to make people realize how totally helpless animals are, how dependent on us, trusting as a child must that we will be kind and take care of their needs ...[they] are an obligation put on us, a responsibility we have no right to neglect, nor to violate by cruelty."
~James Herriot


"The awful wrongs and sufferings forced upon the innocent, helpless, faithful animal race form the blackest chapter in the whole world's history."
~Edward Freeman


"People often say that humans have always eaten animals, as if this is a justification for continuing the practice. According to this logic, we should not try to prevent people from murdering other people, since this has also been done since the earliest of times."
~Isaac Bashevis


"He is very imprudent, a dog; he never makes it his business to inquire whether you are in the right or the wrong, never asks whether you are rich or poor, silly or wise, sinner or saint. You are his pal. That is enough for him."
~Jerome K. Jerome


"True benevolence or compassion, extends itself through the whole of existence and sympathises with the distress of every creature capable of sensation."
~Joseph Addison


"We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the devil in human form."
~William Ralph Inage


"Cruelty has cursed the human family for countless ages. It is almost impossible for one to be cruel to animals and kind to humans. If children are permitted to be cruel to their pets and other animals, they easily learn to get the same pleasure from the misery of fellow-humans. Such tendencies can easily lead to crime."
~Fred A. McGrand


"Healing the relationship between humans and animals is crucial to restoring the health of the world."
~Susan Chernak McElroy


"All beings tremble before violence. All fear death, all love life. See yourself in others. Then whom can you hurt? What harm can you do?"
~Buddha


"The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for whites or women for men."
~Alice Walker


"Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it."
~Mark Twain


"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


"A man can live and 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. And to act so is immoral."
~Leo Tolstoy


"The soul is the same in all living creatures, although the body each is different."
~Hippocrates


"When a man wants to murder a tiger it is called a sport, when the tiger wants to murder him it is called ferocity."
~Geroge Bernard Shaw


"I feel very sorry for women who continue to purchase real fur coats. They are lacking in a woman's most important requisites, heart and sensitivity."
~Jayne Meadows


"The lives of animals are woven into our very being -closer than our own breathing-and our souls will suffer when they are gone."
~Gary Kowalski


"As long as man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower beings, he will never know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seeds of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love"
~Pythagorus


"I abhor vivisection with my whole soul. All the scientific discoveries stained with the innocent blood I count as of no consequence."
~Mahatma Gandhi


"I cannot significantly improve on the assertion that it simply is proper for us, as intelligent members of the universe, to try to look after our fellow creatures, and evil for us to do otherwise."
~Colin Tudge


"It is difficult to picture the great Creator conceiving of a program of one creature (which He has made) using another living creature for purposes of experimentation. There must be other less cruel ways of obtaining knowledge."
~Adlai Stevenson


"Let us create Peace by our thoughts and our actions. Then let us share this Peace with the birds of the air, the creatures of the sea, And all who dwell upon the earth. For all life is interconnected. The smallest is no less precious than the largest."
~Unknown


"Much of the indifference, apathy, and even cruelty which we see has its origin in the false education given the young concerning the rights of animals, and their duty towards them."
~ J. Todd Ferrier


"The butcher relenteth not at the bleating of the lamb; neither is the heart of the cruel moved with distress. But the tears of the compassionate are sweeter than dew-drops, falling from roses on the bosom of spring."
~Akhenaton


"For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love."
~Pythagoras (6th Century BC)


"As we talked of freedom and justice one day for all, we sat down to steaks. I am eating misery, I thought, as I took the first bite. And spit it out."
~Alice Walker


"You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity."
~Ralph Waldo Emerson


""A man can live and 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. And to act so is immoral."
~Leo Tolstoy


"Do we, as humans, having an ability to reason and to communicate abstract ideas verbally and in writing, and to form ethical and moral judgments using the accumulated knowledge of the ages, have the right to take the lives of other sentient organisms, particularly when we are not forced to do so by hunger or dietary need, but rather do so for the somewhat frivolous reason that we like the taste of meat? In essence, should we know better?"
~Peter Cheeke


"Honourable men may honourably disagree about some details of of human treatment of the non-human, but vegetarianism is now as necessary pledge of moral devotion as was the refusal of emperor-worship in the early church...Those who still eat flesh when they could do otherwise have no claim to be serious moralists."
~Stephen Clark


"The eating of meat extinguishes the great seed of compassion."
~Buddha (563-483 BC)


"The animals, you say, were "sent" for man's free use and nutriment. Pray, then, inform me, and be candid, why came they ions before man did, to spend long centuries on earth awaiting their devourer's birth? Those ill-timed chattels, sent from heaven, were, sure, the maddest gift ever given "sent" for man's use (can man believe it?) when there was no man to receive it!"
~Henry Salt


"We would consider it cruel to confine a dog permanently in a kennel. Yet we visit zoos where hundreds of wild animals are kept permanently in the equivalent of a kennel. It is as if we, like the animals, become trapped within the zoo concept and we cannot see beyond the bars. We forget that wildlife in zoos is still wildlife."
~Virginia McKenna


"To a man whose mind is free there is something even more intolerable in the sufferings of animals than in the sufferings of man. For with the latter it is at least admitted that suffering is evil and that the man who causes it is a criminal. But thousands of animals are uselessly butchered every day without a shadow of remorse. If any man were to refer to it, he would be thought ridiculous. And that is the unpardonable crime."
~ Romain Rolland


"There can be no justification for causing suffering to animals simply to serve mans' pleasure or simply to enhance mans' lifestyle."
~The Dean of York


"Isn't man an amazing animal? He kills wildlife- birds, kangaroos, deer, all kinds of cats, coyotes, beavers, groundhogs, mice, foxes, and dingoes- by the million in order to protect his domestic animals and their feed. Then he kills domestic animals by the billions and eats them. This in turn kills man by the million, because eating all those animals leads to degenerative- and fatal- health conditions like heart disease, kidney disease, and cancer. So then man tortures and kills millions more animals to look for cures for these diseases. Elsewhere, millions of other human beings are being killed by hunger and malnutrition because food they could eat is being used to fatten domestic animals. Meanwhile, some people are dying of sad laughter at the absurdity of man, who kill so easily and so violently, and yet once a year sends out cards praying for "Peace on Earth."
~C. David Coats, author of Old MacDonald's Factory Farm


"While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth?"
~George Bernard Shaw


"If humans have stature above all other creatures, is it not our responsibility to show kindness, care and compassion to those lesser then ourselves? To speak for those with no voice, to act for those who cannot?"
~ CloudDancer Mogle


"Compassion for animals is intimately connected with goodness of character; and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man."
~Arthur Schopenhauer


"Can one regard a fellow creature as a property item, an investment, a piece of meat, an "it," without degenerating into cruelty towards that creature?"
~Karen Davis, PhD


"The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest."
~Henry David Thoreau


"Killing animals for sport, for pleasure, for adventures, and for hides and furs is a phenomenon which is at once disgusting and distressing. There is no justification in indulging in such acts of brutality."
~His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama of Tibet


"There is no fundamental difference between man and the higher animals in their mental faculties... The lower animals, like man, manifestly feel pleasure and pain, happiness, and misery."
~Charles Darwin


"We must educate the public. The average person has no idea of what's going on in factory farms, in laboratories, circuses, roadside zoos or rodeos."
~Bob Barker


"Of all the creatures, man is the most detestable. Of the entire brood, he is the only one that possesses malice. He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain. The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot."
~Mark Twain


"The indifference, callousness and contempt that so many people exhibit toward animals is evil first because it results in great suffering in animals, and second because it results in an incalculably great impoverishment of the human spirit."
~Ashley Montagu


"Poor animals. How jealously they guard their pathetic bodies...that which to us is merely an evening's meal, but to them is life itself."
~T. Casey Brennan


"Because one species is more clever than another, does it give it the right to imprison or torture the less clever species? Does one exceptionally clever individual have a right to exploit the less clever individuals of his own species? To say that he does is to say with the Fascists that the strong have a right to abuse and exploit the weak - might is right, and the strong and ruthless shall inherit the earth."
~Richard Ryder


"I despise 'animal welfare.' That's like saying, 'Let's beat the slaves three times a week instead of five times a week'."
~Professor Gary Francion


"The tendency to cruelty should be watched in children and if they incline to any such cruelty, they should be taught the contrary usage. For the custom of tormenting and killing other animals will, by degrees, harden their hearts even toward man. Children should from the beginning be brought up in an abhorrence of killing or tormenting living beings."
~John Locke


"Life is life--whether in a cat, or dog or man. There is no difference there between a cat or a man. The idea of difference is a human conception for man's own advantage..."
~Sri Aurobindo


"I went snorkeling and noticed how gently the fish welcomed us into their world.. as compared to the violence with which we welcomed them into ours. I became a vegetarian."
~Syndee Brinkman


"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."
~Henry David Thoreau


"How good it is to be well-fed, healthy, and kind all at the same time."
~Henry J. Heimlich


"Animals give me more pleasure through the viewfinder of a camera than they ever did in the crosshairs of a gunsight. And after I've finished 'shooting,' my unharmed victims are still around for others to enjoy. I have developed a deep respect for animals. I consider them fellow living creatures with certain rights that should not be violated any more than those of humans."
~Jimmy Stewart


"...if one person is unkind to an animal, it is considered to be cruelty, but where a lot of people are unkind to animals, especially in the name of commerce, the cruelty is condoned and, once sums of money are at stake, will be defended to the last by otherwise intelligent people."
~Ruth Harrison


"Do not kill any animal for pleasure, see harmony in nature, and lend a helping hand to all living creatures."
~Hindu Proverb


"Take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented."
~Elie Wiesel


"I do not see any reason why animals should be slaughtered to serve as human diet when there are so many substitutes. After all, man can live without meat."
~ Tenzin Gyatso


"Vegetarianism serves as the criterion by which we know that the pursuit of moral perfection on the part of humanity is genuine and sincere."
~ Leo Tolstoy


"The highest realms of thought are impossible to reach without first attaining an understanding of compassion."
~ Socrates


"If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion."
~The 14th Dalai Lama


"..it does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brushfires in people's minds."
~Samuel Adams


"We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animals shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth."
~Henry Beston


"Only a life lived for others is worth living."
~Albert Einstein


"To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men."
~Abraham Lincoln


"He who, seeking his own happiness, punishes or kills beings who also long for happiness, will not find happiness after his death."
~Dhammapada (Buddhist)


"A man is truly ethical only when he obeys the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist and shrinks from injuring anything that lives."
~Dr. Albert Schweitzer


"Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight."
~Dr. Albert Schweitzer


"It is man's sympathy with all creatures that first makes him truly a man."
~Dr. Albert Schweitzer


"I am conscious that meat eating is not in accordance with the finer feelings, and I abstain from it whenever I can."
~Dr. Albert Schweitzer


"Anyone who has accustomed himself to regard the life of any living creature as worthless is in danger of arriving also at the idea of worthless human lives."
~Dr. Albert Schweitzer


"The deeper we look into nature the more we recognize that it is full of life, and the more profoundly we know that all life is a secret, and we are all united to all this life."
~Dr. Albert Schweitzer


"[After almost being pressured by other boys to sling rocks at birds.] From that day onward I took courage to emancipate myself from the fear of men, and whenever my inner convictions were at stake I let other people's opinions weigh less with me than they had done previously. I tried also to unlearn my former dread of being laughed at by my school-fellows. This early influence upon me of the commandment not to kill or to torture other creatures is the great experience of my youth. By the side of that all others are insignificant."
~Dr. Albert Schweitzer


"Until he extends the circle of compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace."
~Dr. Albert Schweitzer


"The thinking [person] must oppose all cruel customs no matter how deeply rooted in tradition and surrounded by a halo. When we have a choice, we must avoid bringing torment and injury into the life of another..."
~Dr. Albert Schweitzer


"Very little of the great cruelty shown by men can really be attributed to cruel instinct. Most of it comes from thoughtlessness or inherited habit. The roots of cruelty, therefore, are not so much strong as widespread. But the time must come when inhumanity protected by custom and thoughtlessness will succumb before humanity championed by thought. Let us work that this time may come."
~Dr. Albert Schweitzer


"As far back as I can remember I was saddened by the amount of misery I saw in the world around me. Youth's unqualified joie de vivre I never really knew, and I believe that to be the case with many children, even though they appear outwardly merry and quite free from care. One thing that specially saddened me was that the unfortunate animals had to suffer so much pain and misery. The sight of an old limping horse, tugged forward by one man while another kept beating it with a stick to get it to the knacker's yard at Colmar, haunted me for weeks. It was quite incomprehensible to me--this was before I began going to school--why in my evening prayers I should pray for human beings only. So when my mother had prayed with me and had kissed me goodnight, I used to add silently a prayer that I had composed myself for all living creatures. It ran thus: 'O, heavenly Father, protect and bless all things that have breath; guard them from all evil, and let them sleep in peace.'"
~Dr. Albert Schweitzer - Excerpt from "The Light Within Us"


"A woman gains status when she refuses to see anything killed to be put on her back. Then she's truly beautiful!"
~Doris Day


"Suppose that tomorrow a group of beings from another planet were to land on Earth, beings who considered themselves as superior to you as you feel yourself to be to other animals. Would they have the right to treat you as you treat the animals you breed, keep and kill for food?"
~ John Harris


"The beef industry has contributed to more American deaths than all the wars of this century, all natural disasters, and all automobile accidents combined. If beef is your idea of `real food for real people,' you'd better live real close to a real good hospital."
~Neal D. Barnard, M.D.


"I brainwashed youngsters into doing wrong. I want to say sorry to children everywhere for selling out to concerns who make millions by murdering animals."
~Geoffrey Guiliano, Ronald McDonald actor in the 1980's


"Ask the experimenters why they experiment on animals, and the answer is: 'Because the animals are like us.' Ask the experimenters why it is morally OK to experiment on animals, and the answer is: 'Because the animals are not like us.' Animal experimentation rests on a logical contradiction."
~Professor Charles R.Magel


"Results from animal tests are not transferable between species, and therefore cannot guarantee product safety for humans...In reality these tests do not provide protection for consumers from unsafe products, but rather they are used to protect corporations from legal liability."
~Herbert Gundersheimer, M.D.


"Doctors who speak out in favour of vivisection do not deserve any recognition in society, all the more so since their brutality is apparent not only during such experiments, but also in their practical medical lives. They are mostly men who stop at nothing in order to satisfy their ruthless and unfeeling lust for honours and gain."
~Dr. Hugo Knecht


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