"How can he practice true compassion who eats the flesh of an animal to fatten his own flesh?"
~Hindu scripture


"May all beings look at me with a friendly eye. May I do likewise, and may we all look on each other with the eyes of a friend."
~Yajur Veda


"Ahimsa is not causing pain to any living being at any time through the actions of one's mind, speech or body."
~Sandilya Upanishad


"Without doing injury to living things, flesh cannot be had anywhere; and the killing of living beings is not conducive to heaven; hence eating of flesh should be avoided."
~Dharma Shastras


"Do not injure the beings living on the earth, in the air and in the water."
~Yajur Veda


"Refrain from killing knowingly even the trifling insects like a louse, a bug or a mosquito. Use no violence even to gain possession of a woman, wealth or kingdom. Never kill any animals even for the purpose of sacrifice. Non-violence is the greatest of all religions."
~Swami Sahajanand


"You do not like to suffer yourself. How can you inflict suffering on others?"
~Ramana Maharishi


"When a man realizes that meat is the butchered flesh of another creature, he must abstain from eating it."
~The Tirukural (2,000-year-old masterpiece of ethics)


"Strictly speaking, no activity and no industry is possible without a certain amount of violence, no matter how little. Even the very process of living is impossible without a certain amount of violence. What we have to do is to minimize it to the greatest extent possible."
~ Mahatma Gandhi


"By having reverence for life, we enter into a spiritual relation with the world."
~Albert Schweitzer


"Where the strong and the weak are face to face, all the rights are on the side of the weak and the duties are on the side of the strong. People say: 'We have rights over animals. They are given to us for use.' You have no rights over them. You have duties towards them."
~Annie Besant


"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world."
~Anne Frank


"We have allowed the words "hunting" and "sport" to cover actions which, if done under their right name, would be seen for what they are -- gross violations of the rights of animals and the ethics of man."
~Hope Sawyer Buyukmihci


"No animal should suffer just to make an audience smile."
~Casey Kasem


"To become a vegetarian, it is not necessary to make an oath of allegiance to the Great Turnip over a sack of soybeans. All one needs to do is to make the decision and alter their diet. This can be done gradually or all at once, depending on the strength and urgency of one's beliefs."
~Blanche Leonardo, Ph.D.


"I don't myself believe that, even when we fulfill our minimum obligations not to cause pain, we have the right to kill animals. I know I would not have the right to kill you, however painlessly, just because I liked your flavour, and I am not in a position to judge that your life is worth more to you than the animal's to it."
~Brigid Brophy


"But for the use of physical punishment by, and fear of their oppressors, animals would never be a part of a circus."
~Richard Pryor


"I just couldn't stand the idea of eating meat--and I really do think it has made me calmer...People's general awareness is getting much better, even down to buying a pint of milk: the fact that the calves are actually killed so that the milk doesn't go to them but to us can't really be right, and if you've seen a cow in a state of extreme distress because she can't understand why her calf isn't by her, it can make you think a lot."
~Kate Bush


"We and others indeed believe that along with the preeminence that Homosapiens has achieved goes a very great moral responsibility--a stewardship if you will--upon which we must not turn our backs. Perhaps especially because we have the power to destroy them we must respect the rights of our cohabitants of earth."
~Paul Ehrlich


"One does not meet oneself until one catches the reflection from an eye other than human."
~Loren Eiseley


"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 to stop this madness."
~Richard Gere


"...what has been called the "Golden Rule" should be enlarged from the area of mere mankind to that of the whole animal kingdom."
~Thomas Hardy


"Every year tens of thousands of animals suffer and die in laboratory tests of cosmetics and household products...despite the fact that the test results do not help prevent or treat accidental or purposeful misuse of the products. Please join me in using your voice for those whose cries are forever sealed behind the laboratory doors."
~Woody Harrelson


"First it was necessary to civilize man in relation to man. Now it is necessary to civilize man in relation to nature and the animals."
~Victor Hugo


"The recklessness with which we sacrifice our sense of decency to maximize profit in the factory farming process sets a pattern for cruelty to our own kind."
~Jonathan Kozal


"It should not be believed that all beings exist for the sake of the existence of man. On the contrary, all the other beings too have been intended for their own sakes and not for the sake of anything else."
~Maimonides


"Compassion is the foundation of everything positive, everything good. If you carry the power of compassion to the marketplace and the dinner table, you can make your life really count."
~Rue McClanahan


"I have always felt that the way we treat animals is a pretty good indicator of the compassion we are capable of for the human race."
~Ali McGraw


"Animals form an inalienable fragment of nature, and if we hasten the disappearance of even one species, we diminish our world and our place in it."
~James Michener


"Behind every beautiful fur, there is a story. It is a bloody, barbaric story."
~Mary Tyler Moore


"They were shooting pigeons...How hardening to the heart it must be to do this thing: to change an innocent soaring being into a bundle of struggling rags and pain. At one moment -- graceful, mysterious, desirable and free -- and the next moment there is nothing but struggling and blood and confusion."
~Iris Murdoch


"It were much better that a sentient being should never have existed, than that it should have existed only to endure unmitigated misery."
~Percy Bysshe Shelley


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