I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.  Author: Henry David Thoreau   I never married because there was no need. I have three pets at home, which answer the same purpose as a husband. I have a dog which growls every morning, a parrot which swears all afternoon and a cat that comes home late at night. Author: Marie Corelli   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. Author:Isaac Bashevis Singer   I have reached zero tolerance for the cruelty against our animal brothers. If we are to nuture our culture, let’s begin with the animals who have been nothing but our beasts of burden for so long. Author: Riki Rocket   We call them dumb animals, and so they are, for they cannot tell us how they feel, but they do not suffer less because they have no words.: Author: Anna Sewell   Commemoration of Osmund, Bishop of Salisbury, 1099 What does this desire and this inability of ours proclaim to us but that there was once in man a genuine happiness, of which nothing now survives but the mark and the empty outline; and this he vainly tries to fill from everything that lies around him, seeking from things that are not there the help that he does not get from those that are present? Yet they are quite incapable of filling the gap, because this infinite gulf can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object -- that is, God, Himself. He alone is man's veritable good, and since man has deserted Him it is a strange thing that there is nothing in nature that has not been capable of taking His place for man: stars, sky, earth, elements, plants, cabbages, leeks, animals, insects, calves, serpents, fever, plague, war, famine, vices, adultery, incest. And since he has lost the true good, everything can equally appear to him as such -- even his own destruction, though that is so contrary at once to God, to reason, and to nature. Author: Blaise Pascal   Chickens: The only animals you eat before they are born and after they are dead. Author: Unknown    The zoo is a place for animals to study the behaviour of human beings. Author: Unknown   Is it men or women who work the most in slaughterhouses? Is it men or women who are most involved in domestic battering? Is it men or women who commit the most rapes? Is it men or women who vote for the most executions? Is it men or women who promote war, vote for war, kill in war? Is it men or women who as 'talk show hosts' allow no talk? Is it men or women who are more often pedophiles? Is it men or women who torture lab animals more? Author O Anna Niemus If a man aspires towards a righteous life, his first act is abstinence of injury to animals. Leo Tolstoy The beasts are very wise, Their mouths are clean of lies, They talk one to the other, Bullock to bullock brothers Resting after their labors, Each in stall with his neighbors, But man with goad and whip, Breaks up their fellowship, Shouts in their silky ears Filling their soul with fears. When he has plowed the land, He says: "they understand." But the beasts in stall together, Freed from the yoke and tether, Say as the torn flank smoke: "Nay, 'twas the whip that spoke." Rudyard Kipling, The Beasts are Very Wise There will be no justice as long as man will stand with a knife or with a gun and destroy those who are weaker than he is. Isaac Bashevis Singer   If people were superior to animals, they'd take better care of the world.  A A Milne, Winnie the Pooh   When you bury dead animals under fruit trees, the fruits of these trees will be sweet. Author Unknown A bear boasted very much of his philanthropy, saying that of all animals he was the most tender in his regard for man, for he had such respect for him that he would not even touch his dead body. A Fox hearing these words said with a smile to the Bear, Oh! that you would eat the dead and not the living. Author: Aesop   People who are willing to kill animals just to satisfy their greed for meat are ultimately, really, killing themselves by their cruelty . . . that is God at work Author: Fleur Wiorkowski    I hate a word like "pets": it sounds so much Like something with no living of its own. Author: Elizabeth Jennings   It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favour of vegetarianism, while the wolf remains of a different opinion. Author: William Ralph Inge   Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet                                     Albert Einstein   Caesar's armies marched on vegetarian foods. Author: Will Durant   I have known many meat eaters to be far more nonviolent than vegetarians. Author: Mahatma Ghandi   To become vegetarian is to step into the stream which leads to nirvana. Author: Buddha   Everyone's a pacifist between wars. It's like being a vegetarian between meals. Author: Colman McCarthy   If there is justice with no mercy, Ira Flatow will have to come back countless times as a lab rat for all the cruelty he has promoted on NPR. Author: Unknown   Every animal loves itself. Author: Charles Churchill   Every animal knows more than you do. Author: Proverb   Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes and pompous in the grave. Author: Sir Thomas Browne   One disadvantage of being a hog is that at any moment some blundering fool may try to make a silk purse out of your wife's ear. Author: J B Morton   Even bear-baiting was esteemed heathenish and unchristian: the sport of it, not the inhumanity, gave offence. Author: Alexander Hume   The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators. Author: Thomas Babington Macaulay   We hold these truths to be self-evident,--that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Author: Thomas Jefferson Declaration of Independence of the United States of America   You should never name an animal which is not yours to keep, or which you intend to eat. Author: Deborah Boliver Boehm   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. Author: James Anthony Froude   Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them. Author: Samuel Butler   We who revel in nature's diversity and feel instructed by every animal tend to brand Homo sapiens as the greatest catastrophe since the Cretaceous extinction. Author: Stephen Jay Gould   Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think. Author: Arthur Shopenhauer   The only real equality is in the cemetery. Author Proverb   Animals are human just like us in a different shape and form so do not abuse them. Author: Unknown   Every animal knows more than you do. Author Proverb I used to be a meat lover. And oh man, how I loved to eat meat! But when I stopped to think about what I was doing (I mean really think, i.e., to reflect deeply on the subject), the remorse was so big that I would get depressed. Luckily, being a vegetarian is much easier and much more fun than I first imagined :-) Urbana, july/2000. Vegetarian Quotes   For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love." Pythagoras, mathematician   "The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men." Leonardo da Vinci, artist and scientist "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." Romain Rolland, author, Nobel Prize 1915   "If a group of beings from another planet were to land on Earth -- beings who considered themselves as superior to you as you feel yourself to be to other animals -- would you concede them the rights over you that you assume over other animals?" George Bernard Shaw, playwright, Nobel Prize 1925   "What is it that should trace the insuperable line? ...The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?" Jeremy Bentham, philosopher You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity." Ralph Waldo Emerson, essayist "As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields." "What I think about vivisection is that if people admit that they have the right to take or endanger the life of living beings for the benefit of many, there will be no limit to their cruelty." Leo Tolstoy author "I cannot fish without falling a little in self-respect...always when I have done I feel it would have been better if I had not fished." Henry David Thoreau, author "While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth?" "Atrocities are not less atrocities when they occur in laboratories and are called medical research." George Bernard Shaw There is an Indian legend which says when a human dies there is a bridge they must cross to enter into heaven. At the head of that bridge waits every animal that human encountered during their lifetime. The animals, based upon what they know of this person, decide which humans may cross the bridge.... and which are turned away... Author Unknown Man is the only slave. And he is the only animal who enslaves. He has always been a slave in one form or another, and has always held other slaves in bondage under him in one way or another. In our day, he is always some man's slave for wages, and does that man's work; and this slave has other slaves under him for minor wages, and they do his work. The higher animals are the only ones who exclusively do their own work and provide their own living. Mark Twain I will remember what I was, I am sick of rope and chain I will remember my old strength And all of my forest affairs. I will not sell my back to man For a bundle of sugar cane. I will go out to my own kind And the wood-folk in their lairs. I will go out until the morning break, Out to the winds' untainted kiss, The water's clean caress. I will forget my ankle ring And snap my picket stake. I will revisit my lost loves And playmates, masterless. Rudyard Kipling, The Captive's Dream Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. But a pig will look a man in the eye and see his equal. Winston Churchill "The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated." "To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being." Mahatma Gandhi, statesman and philosopher "I 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   He prayeth best, who loveth best All things both great and small; For the dear God who loveth us, He made and loveth all. Samuel Coleridge   He is truly thankless, and not worthy of the gift of corn, who could, in a moment, remove the weight of the curved plough, and kill his labourer, striking that work-worn neck with his axe, that has helped turn the hard earth as many times as the earth yielded harvest. [Plutarch (c. 46-120) So many gods, so many creeds, So many paths that wind and wind, While just the art of being kind Is all the sad world needs. Ella Wheeler Wilcox It is much easier to show compassion to animals. They are never wicked. Haile Selassie   Of all the creatures, man is the most detestable. Of the entire brood, he is the only one that possesses malice. He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain. The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot. Mark Twain I believe in God, only I spell it Nature. Frank Lloyd Wright Now I can look at you in peace; I don't eat you any more. Franz Kafka, Poor animals! How jealously they guard their pathetic bodies . . . that which to us is merely an evening's meal, but to them is life itself.          J. H. Kellogg It ill becomes us to invoke in our daily prayers the blessings of God, the Compassionate, if we in turn will not practice elementary compassion towards our fellow creatures. George Bernard Shaw There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest. Martin Luther King Jr. It is certainly not lions and wolves that we eat out of self-defence; on the contrary, we ignore these and slaughter harmless, tame creatures without stings or teeth to harm us, creatures that, I swear, Nature appears to have produced for the sake of their beauty and grace. But nothing abashed us, not the flower-like like tinting of the flesh, not the persuasiveness of the harmonious voice, not the cleanliness of their habits or the unusual intelligence that may be found in the poor wretches. No, for the sake of a little flesh we deprive them of sun, of light, of the duration of life to which they are entitled by birth and being. Plutarch It is certainly not lions and wolves that we eat out of self-defence; on the contrary, we ignore these and slaughter harmless, tame creatures without stings or teeth to harm us, creatures that, I swear, Nature appears to have produced for the sake of their beauty and grace. Plutarch 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 The animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren; they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth. Henry Beston, The Outermost House Life is as dear to a mute creature as it is to man. Just as one wants happiness and fears pain, just as one wants to live and not die, so do other creatures. The Dalai Lama Beneath this spot are deposited the remains of a being who is possessed of beauty without vanity, strength without insolence, courage without ferocity, and all the virtues of man without his vices. -Epitaph on the grave of Lord Byron's dog If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain; If I can ease one life the aching, or cool one pain, Or help one fainting robin, Unto his nest again, I shall not live in vain. Emily Dickinson A man is truly ethical only when he obeys the compulsion to help all life he is able to assist and shrinks from injuring anything that lives. Albert Schweitzer Because the heart beats under a covering of hair, of fur, feathers, or wings, it is, for that reason, to be of no account? Jean Paul Richter   There is nothing in which the birds differ more from man than the way in which they can build and yet leave a landscape as it was before. Robert Lynd, The Blue Lion and Other Essays This is what you should do: love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men...re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss what insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem. Walt Whitman Deer hunting would be fine sport, if only the deer had guns. William S. Gilbert