Quotes About Animals

Ask the experimenters why they experiment on animals, and the answer is: "Because the animals are like us." Ask the experimenters why it is morally okay to experiment on animals, and the answer is: "Because the animals are not like us." Animal experimentation rests on a logical contradiction. ~Charles R. Magel

Thoreau, Henry David (1817-1862) - No humane being, past the thoughtless age of boyhood, will wantonly murder any creature which holds it's life by the same tenure that he does.

It should not be believed that all beings exist for the sake of the existence of man. On the contrary, all the other beings too have been intended for their own sakes and not for the sake of anything else. Maimonides - Moshe ben Maimon (1135-1204)

"To insult someone we call him "bestial." For deliberate cruelty and nature, "human" might be the greater insult." Isaac Asimov

“Near this spot are deposited the remains of one who possessed Beauty without Vanity, Strength without Insolence, Courage without Ferocity, and all the Virtues of Man, without his Vices. This Praise, which would be unmeaning Flattery if inscribed over human ashes, is but a just tribute to the Memory of Boatswain, a Dog." Lord Byron

"I often prefer the company of dogs over people because I would rather be around wagging tails than wagging tongues" - Gina Faulkner

"What kind of world will my children inherit? How much more can the earth endure? If there is any way to save this fragile, blue-green ark, it will be by coming to recognize that we are not the captains of the boat, but rather fellow passengers with all that lives." Reverend Gary Kowalski

"When you believe there is no love in the world, just gaze into the eyes of the cat in your lap or the dog on your hearth." Traditional Welsh Poem

As often as Herman had witnessed the slaughter of animals and fish, he always had the same thought: in their behaviour toward creatures, all men were Nazis. The smugness with which man could do with other species as he pleased exemplified the most extreme racist theories, the principle that might is right. ~Isaac Bashevis Singer

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. ~Ellen DeGeneres

Animals give me more pleasure through the viewfinder of a camera than they ever did in the crosshairs of a gunsight. And after I've finished "shooting," my unharmed victims are still around for others to enjoy. I have developed a deep respect for animals. I consider them fellow living creatures with certain rights that should not be violated any more than those of humans. ~Jimmy Stewart

Why should man expect his prayer for mercy to be heard by What is above him when he shows no mercy to what is under him? ~Pierre Troubetzkoy

The animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with extension 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, 1928

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? ~Attributed to George Bernard Shaw

Teaching a child not to step on a caterpillar is as valuable to the child as it is to the caterpillar. ~Bradley Millar

I had bought two male chimps from a primate colony in Holland. They lived next to each other in separate cages for several months before I used one as a [heart] donor. When we put him to sleep in his cage in preparation for the operation, he chattered and cried incessantly. We attached no significance to this, but it must have made a great impression on his companion, for when we removed the body to the operating room, the other chimp wept bitterly and was inconsolable for days. The incident made a deep impression on me. I vowed never again to experiment with such sensitive creatures. ~Christian Barnard, surgeon

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. - Alice Walker

Cruelty is one fashion statement we can all do without. ~Rue McClanahan

Ever occur to you why some of us can be this much concerned with animals suffering? Because government is not. Why not? Animals don't vote. ~Paul Harvey

If any kid ever realized what was involved in factory farming they would never touch meat again. I was so moved by the intelligence, sense of fun and personalities of the animals I worked with on Babe that by the end of the film I was a vegetarian. - James Cromwell

I don't believe in the concept of hell, but if I did I would think of it as filled with people who were cruel to animals. - Gary Larson

"There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face." Ben Williams

Beecher, Henry Ward (abolitionist) - For fidelity, devotion, love, many a two-legged animal (man) is below the dog and the horse. Happy would it be for thousands of people if they could stand at last before the Judgment Seat and say I have loved as truly and I have lived as decently as my dog. And yet we call them only animals

Bhagavad Gita - One is dearest to God who has no enemies among the living beings, who is nonviolent to all creatures. (Sanskrit word ahimsa means nonharm to all life).

Carson, Rachel - Until we have the courage to recognize cruelty for what it is whether it's 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

Day, Doris - Killing an animal to make a coat is a sin. It wasn't meant to be and we have no right to do it. A woman gains status when she refuses to see anything killed to be put on her back. Then she's truly beautiful!

Leonardo da Vinci. “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.”

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur - Compassion for animals is intimately connected with goodness of character and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man.

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. Arthur Schopenhauer(1788-1860).

I know of no more beautiful prayer than that which the Hindus of old used in closing: May all that have life be delivered from suffering. - Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

For those of you who read my old blog, yes, this is a post from 2005, but since that website is now gone I moved a few postings over here.

I'll Begin With Something Old: Favorite Quotes From A Favorite Author

Elie Wiesel
Nobel Peace Prize winner and Boston University Professor Elie Wiesel has worked on behalf of oppressed people for much of his adult life. His personal experience of the Holocaust has led him to use his talents as an author, teacher and storyteller to defend human rights and peace throughout the world.
Wiesel's efforts have earned him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States Congressional Gold Medal and the Medal of Liberty Award, the rank of Grand Officer in the French Legion of Honor, and in 1986, the Nobel Peace Prize. He has received more than ninety honorary degrees from institutions of higher learning.
His more than forty books have won numerous awards, including the Prix Medics for A Beggar in Jerusalem, the Prix Livre Inter for The Testament and the Grand Prize for Literature from the City of Paris for The Fifth Son. The first volume of Wiesel's memoirs, All Rivers Run to the Sea, was published in New York (Knopf) in December 1995. The second volume, Et la mer n'est pas remplie, published in Paris (Le Seuil) in 1996, was published in English, And the sea is never full, in New York (Knopf) in late 1999.
A native of Sighet, Transylvania (Romania), Wiesel and his family were deported by the Nazis to Auschwitz when he was fifteen years old. His mother and younger sister perished there, la two older sisters waived. Wiesel and his father were later transported to Buchenwald, where his father died.
After the war, Wiesel studied in Paris and later became a journalist in that city, yet he remained silent about what he had endured as an inmate in the death camps. During an interview with the French writer Francios Mauriac, Wiesel was persuaded to end that silence. He subsequently wrote La Nuit (Night). Since its publication in 1958, La Nuit has been translated into twenty-five languages and millions of copies have been sold.
A devoted supporter of Israel Wiesel has also defended the cause of Soviet Jews, Nicaragua's Miskito Indians, Argentina's "disappeared," Cambodian refugees, the Kurds, South African apartheid victims, famine victims in Africa, and more recently the victims and prisoners in the former Yugoslavia.
Three months after he received the Nobel Peace Prize, Marion and Elie Wiesel established The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity. Its mission is to advance the cause of human rights and peace throughout the world by creating a new forum for the discussion of urgent ethical issues confronting humanity.
A selection of my favorite quotes of Elie Wiesel:
"There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest."
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A destruction, an annihilation that only man can provoke, only man can prevent.
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I have not lost faith in God. I have moments of anger and protest. Sometimes I've been closer to him for that reason.
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I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.
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I write to understand as much as to be understood.
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Indifference, to me, is the epitome of evil.
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Our obligation is to give meaning to life and in doing so to overcome the passive, indifferent life.
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The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.
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Just as despair can come to one only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings.
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Mankind must remember that peace is not God's gift to his creatures; peace is our gift to each other.
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I do not recall a Jewish home without a book on the table.
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An immoral society betrays humanity because it betrays the basis for humanity, which is memory. An immoral society deals with memory as some politicians deal with politics. 'A moral society is committed to memory: I believe in memory. The Greek word alethia means Truth, Things that cannot be forgotten. I believe in those things that cannot be forgotten and because of that so much in my work deals with memory... What do all my books have in common? A commitment to memory.
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I rarely speak about God. To God, yes. I protest against Him. I shout at Him. But to open a discourse about the qualities of God, about the problems that God imposes, theodicy, no. And yet He is there, in silence, in filigree.
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Terrorism must be outlawed by all civilized nations — not explained or rationalized, but fought and eradicated. Nothing can, nothing will justify the murder of innocent people and helpless children.
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After the war we reassured ourselves that it would be enough to relate a single night in Treblinka, to tell of the cruelty, the senselessness of murder, and the outrage born of indifference: it would be enough to find the right word and the propitious moment to say it, to shake humanity out of its indifference and keep the torturer from torturing ever again. We thought it would be enough to tell of the tidal wave of hatred which broke over the Jewish people for men everywhere to decide once and for all to put an end to hatred of anyone who is "different" — whether black or white, Jew or Arab, Christian or Moslem — anyone whose orientation differs politically, philosophically, sexually.
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If someone had told us in 1945 that in our lifetime religious wars would rage on virtually every continent, that thousands of children would once again be dying of starvation, we would not have believed it. Or that racism and fanaticism would flourish once again, we would not have believed it.