Animal Ethics Quotes

• We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.

  Immanuel Kant

  Dog, Heart, Animal

  "True animal instinct", www.theguardian.com. September 2, 2005.

  508 Copy quote

  Show source

• Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Animal, Rights, Vegetarian Diet

  204 Copy quote

• 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

  Life, Peace, Honesty

  "Innovate Like Edison : The Five-Step System for Breakthrough Business Success". Book by Michael J. Gelb and Sarah Miller Caldicott, p. 67,

  163 Copy quote

  Show source
• 

  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 things, humanity will not find peace.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Fighting, Compassion, Animal

  174 Copy quote

• Compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Freedom, Kindness, Compassion

  Albert Schweitzer (1958). “A Selection of Writings of and about Albert Schweitzer”, Boston : [s.n.], 1958 (Boston : H.N. Sawyer Company)

  39 Copy quote

  Show source

• A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him, that of plants and animals as that of his fellow men, and when he devotes himself helpfully to all life that is in need of help.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Life, Death, Animal

  Albert Schweitzer (2014). “A Treasury of Albert Schweitzer”, p.67, Open Road Media

  68 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  Positive, Philosophical, Compassion

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2016). “101 Facts of life”, p.8, Publishdrive

  98 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  Heart, Men, Animal

  Immanuel Kant (1963). “Lectures on ethics”

  93 Copy quote

  Show source

• Compassion for animals is intimately associated with goodness of character, and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Character, Animal, Men

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2016). “101 Facts of life”, p.15, Publishdrive

  119 Copy quote

  Show source
• 

  Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, Life, Beauty

  Albert Einstein (2015). “Bite-Size Einstein: Quotations on Just About Everything from the Greatest Mind of the Twentieth Century”, p.15, St. Martin's Press

  151 Copy quote

  Show source

• universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Friendship, Compassion, Animal

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2016). “101 Facts of life”, p.8, Publishdrive

  31 Copy quote

  Show source

• Unless we have courage to recognize cruelty for what it is - whether its victim is human or animal - we cannot expect things to be much better in the world.

  Rachel Carson

  Animal, Vegetarianism, World

  "Rachel Carson: Legacy and Challenge", ed. Lisa H. Sideris and Kathleen Dean Moore Albany: State University of New York Press, (p. 102), 2008.

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• We cannot have peace among men whose hearts find delight in killing any living creature.

  Rachel Carson

  Life, Peace, Heart

  Paul Brooks, Rachel Carson (1972). “The house of life: Rachel Carson at work”

  152 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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 humankind.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Dog, Nature, Greatness

  146 Copy quote

• I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Meaningful, Nature, Compassion

  86 Copy quote

• When it comes to having a central nervous system, and the ability to feel pain, hunger, and thirst, a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy.

  Ingrid Newkirk

  Dog, Pain, Animal

  "Washingtonian" Magazine, August 1, 1986.

  48 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  Dog, Philosophical, Cat

  259 Copy quote

• 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.

  Francis of Assisi

  Religious, Peace, Men

  432 Copy quote

• A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Men, Animal, Thinking Man

  Albert Schweitzer (2014). “A Treasury of Albert Schweitzer”, p.69, Open Road Media

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• I care not much for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Inspiring, Dog, Cat

  Attributed in "Animal century" by Mark Gold (, 1998.

  37 Copy quote

  Show source

• We are the living graves of murdered beasts.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Animal, Vegetarian Diet, Vegetarianism

  20 Copy quote

• People must have renounced, it seems to me, all natural intelligence to dare to advance that animals are but animated machines.... It appears to me, besides, that such people can never have observed with attention the character of animals, not to have distinguished among them the different voices of need, of suffering, of joy, of pain, of love, of anger, and of all their affections. It would be very strange that they should express so well what they could not feel.

  Voltaire

  Pain, Philosophical, Character

  25 Copy quote

• 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.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Life, Cat, Animal

  27 Copy quote

• Slaughter and justice cannot dwell together.

  Isaac Bashevis Singer

  Animal, Vegetarianism, Justice

  "Animal life in Jewish tradition: attitudes and relationships". Book by Elijah Judah Schochet, p. 297, 1984.

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  Albert Einstein

  Compassion, Animal, Vegetarianism

  46 Copy quote