Quotes — general

When people ask how I can risk human life to protect a whale, I cite the fact that we do not think it is unnatural or unethical to risk our lives and to kill over property like land and oil. And we accept dying and killing for ridiculous religious beliefs. I think fighting for endangered species and threatened habitats to be much nobler. — Paul Watson, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society


* 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. — C.S. Lewis


* I don't want to be accused of being a lunatic, but I believe animals are the aliens that everyone expects to arrive in a flying saucer. We're all talking about what would happen if we met another creature who might have a different kind of intelligence, who might look very different, but who nonetheless does have a body structure and a spinal cord and who does feel things and can communicate with others of its own kind. — Mary Tyler Moore (source: as quoted in Dan Mathews' "Committed")


* 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 creatures that cannot.  — Mark Twain, "What Is Man," 1906


* It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions.  — Mark Twain


* 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, "The Philosophy of Civilization"

 
* There is no fundamental difference between man and the higher mammals in their mental faculties. ... The difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind. The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man. We have seen that the senses and intuitions, the various emotions and faculties, such as love, memory, attention and curiosity, imitation, reason, etc., of which man boasts, may be found in an incipient, or even sometimes a well-developed condition, in the lower animals. — Charles Darwin

* The earth affords a lavish supply of riches, of innocent foods, and offers you banquets that involve no bloodshed or slaughter; only beasts satisfy their hunger with flesh, and not even all of those, because horses, cattle, and sheep live on grass. As long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seeds of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love. — Pythagoras