The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated.
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.
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.
I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men.
We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.
The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men.
Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.
Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow creatures is amusing in itself.
universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.
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.
If a man aspires towards a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from injury to animals.
The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity.
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.
I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being.
Animals are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We cannot have peace among men whose hearts find delight in killing any living creature.
or simply:
