Words of Wisdom
"Truly man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds theirs. We live by the death of others: we are burial places! I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look on the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men." Leonardo da Vinci (1452 - 1519)
"If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities." - Voltaire
(1694-1778)
"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 Schopenhauer
(1788-1860)
"In the relations of man with animals, there is a whole great ethic
scarcely seen as yet, but which will eventually break through into the
light and be the corollary and the complement to human ethics." - Victor
Hugo (1802-1885)
"I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way
of a whole human being." - Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
"It is a matter of taking the side of the weak against the strong,
something the best people have always done." - Harriet Beecher Stowe
(1811-1896)
"I have no doubt that it is part of the gradual destiny of the human
race in its gradual development to leave off the eating of animals." -
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
"The fate of animals is of greater importance to me than the fear of
appearing ridiculous; it is indissolubly connected with the fate of
man." - Emile Zola (1840-1902)
While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we
expect any ideal positions on this earth?" - George Bernard Shaw
(1856-1950)
"The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to
be indifferent to them. That's the essence of inhumanity." - G. B. Shaw
"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the
way its animals are treated. I hold that the more helpless a creature,
the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of man." -
Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)
"We must fight against the spirit of unconscious cruelty with which we
treat the animals. Animals suffer as much as we do. True humanity does
not allow us to impose such sufferings on them. It is our duty to make
the whole world recognize it. Until we extend our circle of compassion
to all living beings, humanity will not find peace." - Dr. Albert
Schweitzer (1875-1965)
"The thinking man must oppose all cruel customs no matter how deeply
rooted in tradition or surrounded by a halo. We need a boundless ethic
which will include the animals also." - Albert Schweitzer
"Those who experiment on animals should never be able to quiet their own
conscience by telling themselves that these cruelties have a worthy
aim." - Albert Schweitzer
"It is my view that the vegetarian manner of living, by its purely
physical effect on the human temperament, would most beneficially
influence the lot of mankind." - Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"Our task must be to free ourselves by widening the circle of compassion
to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
- Albert Einstein
"Everything connected with vegetarianism is of the highest importance
because there will never be peace in the world so long as we eat
animals." - Isaac Bashevis Singer
"If chimpanzees have consciousness, if they are capable of abstractions,
do they not have what until now has been described as `human rights'?
How smart does a chimp have to be before killing him constitutes
murder?" - Carl Sagan (1934-1997)
"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 created for men." - Alice Walker (1944-)
"Nothing is more powerful than an individual acting out their
conscience, thus helping to bring the collective conscience to life." -
Norman Cousins
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can
change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever does." -
Margaret Mead
"I abhor vivisection. It should at least be curbed. Better it should be
abolished. I know of no achievement through vivisection, no scientific
discovery that could not have been obtained without such barbarism and
cruelty. The whole thing is evil." - Dr. Charles Mayo, one of the
founders of the Mayo clinic.
"A drug is a substance when injected in a rat will provide a scientific
paper." - Anon
"But if you have no relationship with the living things on this earth,
you may lose whatever relationship you have with humanity." - J.
Krishnamurti
"Humans - who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals
-
have had an understandable penchant for pretending animals do not feel
pain. A sharp distinction between humans and "animals" is essential if
we
are to bend them to our will, wear them, eat them - without any
disquieting
tinges of guilt or regret. It is unseemly of us, who often behave so
unfeelingly toward other animals, to contend that only humans can
suffer.
The behavior of other animals renders such pretensions specious.
They are just too much like us."
-- Drs. Carl Sagan & Ann Druyan, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors
"Perhaps
the time has come to formulate a moral code which would govern our
relations with the great creatures of the sea as well as those on dry land. That
this will come to pass is our dearest wish." -- Jacques Cousteau
"Not to hurt our humble brethren is our first duty to them, but to stop
there is
not enough. We have a higher mission - to be of service to them wherever they
require it." -- St. Francis of Assisi
"If a man aspires towards a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is
from
injury to animals." -- Leo Tolstoy
"The monstrous sophism that beasts are pure unfeeling machines, and do not
reason, scarcely requires a confutation." -- Percy Bysshe Shelley
"The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of
man."
-- Charles Darwin
"We consume the carcasses of creatures of like appetites, passions, and
organs with our own, and fill the slaughterhouses daily with screams of fear
and pain." -- Robert Louis Stevenson
"I do not regard flesh food as necessary for us. I hold flesh food to be
unsuited
to our species. To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of
a
human being. I should be unwilling to take the life of a lamb for the sake of
the
human body." -- Mahatma Gandhi
"Animals and humans suffer and die alike. If you had to kill your own calf
before
you ate it, most likely you would not be able to do it. To hear the calf scream,
to see the blood spill, to see the baby being taken away from its momma, and
to see the look of death in the animal's eye would turn your stomach. So you
get the man at the packing house to do the killing for you."
-- Dick Gregory, Longtime Peace Activist (The Shadow That Scares Me)
"Animals are my friends...and I don't eat my friends!" -- George
Bernard Shaw
"A vegetarian diet is the acid test of humanitarianism." -- Tolstoy
"Can
you really ask what reason Pythagoras had for abstaining from flesh? I,
for my part, marvel at what sort of feeling, mind, or reason that man was
possessed who was the first to pollute his mouth with gore, and to allow his
lips to touch the flesh of the murdered beings; who spread his table with the
mangled forms of dead bodies, and claimed as his daily food what were but now
beings endowed with movement, with perception, and with voice. How could his
eyes endure the spectacle of the flayed and dismembered limbs? How was his
taste not sickened by contact with festering wounds, with the pollution of
corrupted blood and juices? Man makes use of flesh not out of want and
necessity, seeing that he has the liberty to make his choice of herbs and fruits
the plenty of which is inexhaustible; but out of luxury, and being cloyed with
necessaries, he seeks after impure and inconvenient diet, purchased by the
slaughter of living beings; by showing himself more cruel than the most savage
of wild beasts." -- Plutarch (Essay on Flesh Eating)
"Why should you call me to account for eating decently? If I battered on
the
scorched corpses of animals, you might well ask me why I did that. While we
ourselves are the living graves of murdered animals, how can we expect any
ideal conditions on the earth??? ... We are the living graves of murdered
beasts,
slaughtered to satisfy our appetites. We never pause to wonder at our feasts, if
animals, like men, can possibly have rights. We pray on Sundays that we have
light, to guide our footsteps on the path we tread. We're sick of war, we do not
want to fight -- the thought of it now fills our hearts with dread, and yet --
we
gorge ourselves upon the dead! Like carrion crows, we live and feed on meat,
regardless of the suffering and pain we cause by doing so. If thus we treat
defenseless animals for sport or gain, how can we hope in this world to attain
The PEACE we say we are so anxious for. We pray for it, o'er hecatombs of
slain, to God, while outraging the moral law, this cruelty begets its offspring
--
WAR!" -- George Bernard Shaw
"I became a vegetarian not just for my own health...but for the health of
the
chickens." -- Isaac Bashevis Singer (Awarded Nobel Prize in Literature)
"It seems to me of great importance to teach children respect for life.
Towards
this end, experiments on living animals in classrooms should be stopped. To
encourage cruelty in the name of science can only destroy the finer emotions
of affection and sympathy, and breed an unfeeling callousness in the young
towards suffering in all living creatures." -- Eleanor Roosevelt
"Torturing animals to prolong human life, has separated science from the
most
important thing that life has produced...the human conscience!"
-- John Cowper Powys
"I believe I am not interested to know whether vivisection produces results
that
are profitable to the human race or doesn't. To know that the results are
profitable to the race would not remove my hostility to it. 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 no less atrocities when they occur in laboratories and are
called
'medical research." -- George Bernard Shaw
"It is difficult to entertain a warm feeling for a 'medical man' who straps
dogs to
a table, cuts their vocal cords, and spends an interesting day or week slowly
vivisecting or dismembering them." -- Clare Booth Luce
"Humans call animals 'dumb'...after they robbed their entire own precious
world.
They are intelligent beings, but after a millennia of slavery/forced to obey
selfish/callous humans we make them look dumb! If we were in their situations
we, too, would appear 'dumb.'" -- Unknown
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good persons to do
nothing." -- Edmund Burke
"Active hatred of cruelty, injustice and oppression is perhaps the main
difference
between a good person and a bad one." -- John Morley
"And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe,
nor
political, nor popular, but he must take it because his conscience tells him
that
it is right." -- Martin Luther King Jr.