mute

We pride ourself on our uniquely human ability to make ethical judgements and take moral responsibility for our actions. To protect the weak and gentle from the homicide aggressions of the strong and ruthless, we establish laws decreeing that one who wantonly murders another be severely punished for his evil deed, and this often involves the sacrifice of his own life. In human relationships we disavow, or like to believe we disavow, the morality of might makes right. But where non-humans are concerned, especially those whose flesh or skins we covet, or on whose bodies we wish to conduct lethal experiments, we oppress, and exploit them freely, justifying our harsh treatment on the ground that since they are beings of inferior intelligence, with no sense of right and wrong, they have no rights. If the value of a life, human or non-human, is to be judged by that beings intelligence,Then like the Nazis ought to put to death senile and mentally retarded human beings , for many animals are better able to interact with their own species than, say, a mentally retarded adult.
Philip Kapleau

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
(Traité sur la tolerance)

Porphyry regards other animals as our brothers, because they are endowed with life as we are, because they have the same principles of life, the same feelings, the same ideas, memory, industry - as we. Human speech alone is wanting in them. If they had it should we dare to kill and eat them? Should we dare to commit these fratricides?
Voltaire

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)

If man is not to stifle his human feelings, he must practise kindness towards animals, for 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

What is it that should trace the insuperable line?.The question s not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?
Jeremy Bentham

There is no fundamental difference between man and the higher animals in their mental faculties.The lower animals, like man, manifestly feel pleasure and pain, happiness, and misery.
Charles Darwin

All beings tremble before violence. All fear death , all love life. See yourself in others.
Then whom can you hurt? What harm can you do?
Gautama Buddha

Because one species is more clever than another, does it give it the right to imprison or torture the less clever species? Does one exceptionally clever individual have a right to exploit the less clever individuals of his own species? To say that he does is to say with the Fascists that the strong have a right to abuse and exploit the weak - might is right, and the strong and ruthless shall inherit the earth.
Richard Ryder

Suppose that tomorrow 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 they have the right to treat you as you treat the animals you breed, keep and kill for food?
John Harris

Until we have the courage to recognize cruelty for what it is.whether its victim is human or animal.we cannot expect things to be much better in this world. We cannot have peace among men whose hearts delight in killing any living creature. By every act that glorifies or even tolerates such moronic delight in killing we set back the progress of humanity.
Rachel Carson

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

When a man wantonly destroys one of the works of man, we call him a vandal.When he wantonly destroys one of the works of God, we call him a sportsman.
Joseph Wood Krutch

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

Nothing will benefit human health or increase the chances for survival of life on earth as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.
Albert Einstein

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

Flesh-eating. is unprovoked murder.
Benjamin Franklin

Just because there are so many of them being wrong doesn’t mean they’re right.
Coluche

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

I care not much for a man's religion whose dog or cat are not the better for it.
Abraham Lincoln

He that killeth an ox is as if he slew a man.
Isaiah 66: 3

The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lamb and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young one's shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the suckling child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice's den. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain.
Isaiah 11: 6-9

There will come a time.when civilised people will look back in horror on our generation and the ones that preceded it: the idea that we should eat other living things running around on four legs, that we should raise them just for the purpose of killing them! The people of the future will say "meat-eaters!" in disgust and regard us in the same way we regard cannibals and cannibalism.
Dennis Weaver

The day should come when all of the forms of life will stand before the court, the pileated woodpecker as well as the coyote and bear, the lemmings as well as the trout in the streams.
William O. Douglas
(late U.S. Supreme Court Justice)

"The idea that it is funny to see wild animals
coerced into acting like clumsy humans, or
thrilling to see powerful beasts reduced to
cringing cowards by a whipcracking trainer
is primitive and medieval. It stems from the
old idea that we are superior to other species
and have the right to hold dominion over them."

Dr. Desmond Morris, anthropologist,
animal behaviorist