The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated.
A human can be healthy without killing animals for food.
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.
Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.
Animals are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time.
To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being.
I ask people why they have deer heads on their walls. They always say because it's such a beautiful animal. There you go. I think my mother is attractive, but I have photographs of her.
I care not much for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.
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.
The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest.
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.
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.
If a man aspires towards a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from injury to animals.
I abhor vivisection with my whole soul. All the scientific discoveries stained with innocent blood I count as of no consequence.
If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reasons.
Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.
When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.
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.
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.
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.
or simply:
