Everything of persecution between man and man and everything of cruelty to animals is a violation of moral duty.
Thomas Paine
"If a man earnestly seeks a righteous life,
his first act of abstinence is from animal food..."
COUNT LEO TOLSTOY (1828-1910)
Russian novelist and philosopher
"Every man who has ever been earnest to preserve
his higher or poetic faculties in the best condition,
has been particularly inclined to abstain from animal food."
HENRY DAVID THOREAU (1817-1862)
American author, poet, and naturalist
"The animals share with us
the privilege of having a soul."
PYTHAGORAS (circa 582-507 B.C.)
Greek philosopher, mathematician, mystic
"Father of Vegetarianism
"My refusing to eat meat occasioned an inconveniency,
and I have been frequently chided for my singularity.
But my light repast allows for greater progress,
for greater clearness of head and quicker comprehension."
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (1706-1790)
American statesman, inventor and author
"The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man."
CHARLES DARWIN (1809-1882)
English biologist and naturalist
"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 SINGER (1904-1991)
Laureate of Literature,
1978 Nobel Prize recipient
Some of the brightest, most significant minds in the history of our world, such as Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Plutarch, Da Vinci, Tolstoy, Tagore, Buddha, Rousseau, Shelley, Thoreau, Isaac Bashevis Singer, George Bernard Shaw, Einstein, Gandhi and Schweitzer, were vegetarians, for ethical reasons. In their quest for truth, they all experienced a similar epiphany: that compassion is the heart of love.
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
"I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being" -Abraham Lincoln
"In all the round world of utopia there is no meat. There used to be. But now we cannot stand the thought of slaughterhouses. And in a population that is all educated and at about the same level of physical refinement, it is practically impossible to find anyone who will hew a dead ox or pig. We never settled the hygienic aspect of meat-eating at all. This other aspect decided us. I can still remember as a boy the rej over the closing of the last slaughterhouse." -H.G. Wells
"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., President, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, Washington, D.C
"Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages."
Thomas Jefferson, 3rd U.S. President
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, author
"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 Edison, inventor
"...there is something so very dreadful, so satanic in tormenting those who have never harmed us, and who cannot defend themselves, who are utterly in our power, who have weapons neither of offence nor
defense, that none but very hardened persons can endure the thought of it"
--Cardinal Newman
is in the battery shed that we find the parallel with Auschwitz....To shut your mind, heart and imagination from the sufferings of others is to begin slowly, but inexorably, to die. Those Christians who close their minds and hearts to the cause of animal welfare, and the evils it seeks to combat, are ignoring the Fundamental spiritual teachings of Christ himself"
--John Baker, Bishop of Salisbury
Since we're sharing quotes here, which I admire very much, here goes: "The cruel wild beast is not behind the bars of the cage. He stands in front of it." Axel Munthe
"My doctrine is this: That if we see cruelty or wrong that we have the power to stop, and we do nothing, we make ourselves sharers in the guilt." Anna Sewell, (English Novelist)
"All the arguments used to justify vivisection are those which could
be used to justify any atrocity." Bernard Shaw
"The whole case for behaving decently towards animals rests on the
fact that we are the superior species." Brigid Brophy
Cruelty to animals is one of the most significant vices of a low and ignoble people. (Alexander von Humboldt)
"The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of
animals as now they look upon the murder of men. - Leonardo da Vinci "
"A human being is part of a whole, called by us the "Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest--a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty." -Albert Einstein
"Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet"-Albert Einstein
The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing." ~ Albert Einstein
When a man's love of finery clouds his moral judgment, that is vanity.
When he lets a demanding palate make his moral choices, that is gluttony.
When he ascribes the divine will to his own whims, that is pride.
And when he gets angry at being reminded of animal suffering that his own
daily choices might help avoid, that is moral cowardice.
--Matthew Scully, Dominion
if there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want
to go where they went.
-Will Rogers