Man is a religious animal. He is the only religious animal. He is the only animal that has the 'True Religion' - several of them! He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself but cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven...The higher animals have no religion. And we are told that they are going to be left out in the Hereafter. I wonder why? It seems questionable taste...
Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it...
It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions...
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...
I am not interested to know whether experimentation 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...
In studying the traits and dispositions of the so-called lower animals, and contrasting them with man's, I find the result humiliating to me.
Mark Twain (1835-1910).

When a man has pity on all living creatures then only is he noble.
The Buddha (6th cent BCE).

There will come a day when such men as myself will view the slaughter of innocent creatures as horrible a crime as the murder of his fellow man - 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 (1879-1955).

Not to hurt our humble brethren (the animals) is our first duty to them, but to stop there is not enough. We have a higher mission - to be of service to them whenever they require it...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.
Francis of Assisi (1182-1226).

It were much better that a sentient being should never have existed, than that it should have existed only to endure unmitigated misery...
I wish no living thing to suffer pain.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822).

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident...
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...
Boundless compassion for all living things is the surest and most certain guarantee of pure moral conduct. Whoever is filled with it will assuredly injure no one...
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.
Artur Schopenhauer (1788-1860).

Out of 135 criminals, including robbers and rapists, 118 admitted that when they were children they burned, hanged and stabbed domestic animals.
Ogonyok (1979).

Animal experimentation is the blackest of all the black crimes that a man is at present committing...
I abhor experimentation with my whole soul. All the scientific discoveries stained with innocent blood I count as of no consequence...
The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.
Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948).

It is ridiculous to expect that an experimenter who commits acts of diabolical cruelty for the sake of what he calls science can be trusted to tell the truth about the results...any fool can vivisect and gain kudos by writing a paper describing what happened: the laboratories are infested with kudos hunters who have nothing to tell...Vivisectors crowd humane research workers out of the schools and discredit them, they use up all the available endowments and bequests, leaving nothing for serious research.
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?...
Atrocities are no less atrocities when they occur in laboratories and are called medical research...
[O]nce grant the ethics of the vivisectionists and you not only sanction the experiment on the human subject, but make it the first duty of the vivisector. If a guinea pig may be sacrificed for the sake of the very little that can learnt from it, shall not a man be sacrificed for the sake of the great deal that can be learnt from him?...
You do not settle whether an experiment is justified or not by merely showing that it is of some use. The distinction is not between useful and useless experiments, but between barbarous and civilized behavior. Vivisection is a social evil because if it advances human knowledge, it does so at the expense of human character.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950).

Truly man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds them. We live by the death of others. We are burial places...
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.
Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519).

During my medical education at the University of Basel I found [animal] experimentation horrible, barbarous, and above all unnecessary.
Carl G. Jung (1875-1961).

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...
Now I take it that when we understand a thing analytically and then dominate and use it for our own convenience we reduce it to the level of 'Nature' in the sense that we suspend our judgements of value about it, ignore its final cause (if any), and treat it in terms of quantity...something has to be overcome before we can cut up a dead man or a live animal in a dissecting room...
It is not the greatest of modern scientists who feel most sure that the object, stripped of its qualitative properties and reduced to mere quantity, is wholly real. Little scientists, and little unscientific followers of science may think so. The great minds know very well that the object, so treated, is an artificial abstraction, that something of its reality has been lost.
(C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (New York: Macmillan, 1947), pp.81,82).

It is the rarest thing in the world to hear a rational discussion of vivisection. Those who disapprove of it are commonly accused of 'sentimentality', and very often their arguments justify the accusation. They paint pictures of pretty little dogs on dissecting tables. But the other side lie open to exactly the same charge. They also often defend the practice by drawing pictures of suffering women and children whose pain can be relieved (we are assured) only by the fruits of vivisection...
Now vivisection can only be defended by showing it to be right that one species should suffer in order that another species should be happier...
The victory of vivisection marks a great advance in the triumph of ruthless, non-moral utilitarianism over the old world of ethical law; a triumph in which we, as well as animals, are already the victims, and of which Dachau and Hiroshima mark the more recent achievements...
You will notice I have spent no time in discussing what actually goes on in the laboratories. We shall be told, of course, that there is surprisingly little cruelty. That is a question with which, at present, I have nothing to do. We must first decide what should be allowed: after that it is for the police to discover what is already being done.
C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) , 'Vivisection', God in the Dock, ed. Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1970), pp.224,225,228.

For as long as man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings, he will never know health or peace. For 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 (ca. 580-520 BCE).

Let none count themselves wise who have not with the nerves of their imagination felt the pain of the vivisected.
John Cowper Powys (1872-1963).

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.
Thousands of animals are butchered every day without a shadow of remorse. It cries vengeance upon all the human race.
Romain Rolland (1866-1944).

At present scientists do not look for alternatives simply because they do not care enough about the animals they are using.
Peter Singer (1946- ).

Liberty is given by nature even to mute animals.
Tacitus (55-117 CE).

No humane being, past the thoughtless age of boyhood, will wantonly murder any creature which holds its life by the same tenure that he does.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-62).

True benevolence, or compassion, extends itself through the whole of existence and sympathises with the distress of every creature capable of sensation.
Joseph Addison.

This wild blood-lust, starting with animal vivisection and proceeding to human mutilation, stamps 'modern medicine' as the most primitive religion ever known to mankind.
Professor Robert Mendelsohn (foreword to Slaughter of the Innocents).

The awful wrongs and sufferings forced upon the innocent, faithful animal race, form the blackest chapter in the whole world's history.
Edward Augustus Freeman.

The necessity for these experiments I dispute. Man has no right to gratify an idle and purposeless curiosity through the practice of cruelty.
Charles Dickens (1812-1870).

Forbid the day when vivisection shall be practiced in every college and school, and when the man of science, looking forth over a world which will then own no other sway than his, shall exult in the thought that he had made of this fair earth, if not a heaven for man, at least a hell for animals. Lewis Carroll (1832-1898).

I am of the opinion that not one of those experiments on animals was justified or necessary...I witnessed many harsh sights, but I think the saddest was when the dogs were brought up from the cellar to the laboratory. Instead of appearing pleased with the change from darkness to light, they seemed seized with horror as soon as they smelt the air of the place, apparently divining their approaching fate...
Hundreds of times I have seen when an animal writhed in pain, it would receive a slap, and an angry order to be quiet and behave itself...To this recital I need hardly add that, having drunk the cup to the dregs, I cry off, and am prepared to see not only science, but even mankind, perish rather than have recourse to such means of saving it.
Dr. George Hoggan (assistant to vivisector Claude Bernard).

Their very weakness and inability to protest demands that man should refrain from torturing animals for the mere possibility of obtaining some knowledge.
Luther Burbank (1849-1926).

Judge the behavior of a dog who has lost his master, who has searched for him in the road barking miserably, who has come back to the house, restless and anxious, who has run upstairs and down, from room to room, and who has found the beloved master at last in his study, and then shown his joy by barks, bounds and caresses.
There are some barbarians who will take this dog, that so greatly excels man in capacity for friendship, who will nail him to a table, and dissect him alive. And what you discover in him are the same organs of sensation you have in yourself.
Voltaire (1694-1778).

I am not basically a conservationist. When the last great whale is slaughtered, as it surely will be, the whales' suffering will be over. This is not the whales' loss, but humanity's. I am not concerned about the wiping out of a species - this is man's folly - I have only one concern, the suffering which we deliberately inflict upon animals whilst they live.
Clive Hollands.

An individual animal doesn't care if its species is facing extinction - it cares if it is feeling pain.
Ronnie Lee.

The brute animals have all the same sensations of pain as human beings, and consequently endure as much pain when their body is hurt; but in their case the cruelty of torment is greater, because they have no mind to bear them up against their sufferings and no hope to look forward to when enduring the last extreme pain.
Thomas Chalmers.

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 for their cruelty... Man by violating his own feelings becomes cruel. And how deeply seated in the human heart is the injunction not to take life.
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910).

We must develop a better sense of responsibilty towards our total environment...this better sense cannot any longer exclude from revision the staples of our diet. The case against vivisection is the same as that against war and all other forms of cruelty - that violence does not produce long-term solutions...the only argument against vivisection that will be seen to have lasting power - that we do not improve human society by means that debase human character.
Jon Wynne-Tyson (1924- ).

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.
James A. Froude (1818-1894).

If one person is unkind to an animal it is considered to be cruelty, but where a lot of people are unkind to animals, especially in the name of commerce, the cruelty is condoned and, once large sums of money are at stake, will be defended to the last by otherwise intelligent people.
Ruth Harrison (Animal Machines).

They administered beatings to dogs with perfect indifference, and made fun of those who pitied the creatures as if they felt pain. They said the animals were [like] clocks; that the cries they made when struck, were only the noise of a string pulled, and the whole body was without feeling. They nailed poor animals up to boards by their four paws to vivisect them.
Nicholas Fontaine Memoirs pour servir a l'histoire de Port- Royal, 1738.

Institutional cruelty does everything it can to conceal the fact that it is destroying its victims, and in doing this it keeps its spectators from feeling disgust and from being confused by the paradox of trying to justify the unjustifiable, of trying to praise the smashing of the weak.
Philip P. Hallie, Cruelty.

At one time the benevolent affections embrace merely the family, soon the circle expanding includes first a class, then a nation, then a coalition of nations, then all humanity; and finally its influence is felt in the dealing of [humans] with the animal world. In each of these cases, a standard is formed, different from that of the preceding stage, but in each case, the same tendency is recognized as a virtue.
Lecky, European Morals.

I think the rapidly growing tendency to regard animals as born for nothing except slavery to so-called humanity absolutely disgusting.
Sir Victor Gollancz. The Unlived Life.

[Animals are] those unfortunate slaves and victims of the most brutal part of mankind.
John Stuart Mill. 1868.

I despise and abhor the pleas on behalf of that infamous practice, experimentation...I would rather submit to the worst of deaths, so far as pain goes, than have a single dog or cat tortured to death on the pretence of sparing me a twinge or two.
Robert Browning (1812-1889).

First it was necessary to civilize man in relation to man. Now it is necessary to civilize man in relation to nature and the animals.
Victor Hugo (1802-1885).

Animal experiments have an extremely important role in underpinning, facilitating and justifying the machinery of progress with which we are working on our own annihilation.
Rudolf Bahro, Building the Green Movement (Philadelphia: NSP, 1986), p.202.

Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace. It is man's sympathy with all creatures that first makes him truly a man.
At the same time the man who has become a thinking being feels a compulsion to give to every will-to-live the same reverence for life that he gives to his own. He experiences that other life in his own. He accepts as being good: to preserve life, to promote life, to raise to its highest value life which is capable of development; and as being evil: to destroy life, to injure life, to repress life which is capable of development. This is the absolute, fundamental principle of the moral, and it is a necessity of thought.
Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965).

I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865).

Ultimately, the desecrator of animal life ends up desecrating all life...In the end he has amassed crushing amounts of information, but has grown not at all in knowledge or understanding.
Andree Collard, Rape of the Wild (Indiana: IUP, 1989).

For too long we have occupied ourselves with responding to the consequences of cruelty and abuse and have neglected the important task of building up an ethical system in which justice for animals is regarded as the norm rather than the exception. Our only hope is to put our focus on the education of the young.
John Hoyt (1932-).

The well-taught philosophic mind to all compassion gives; casts round the world an equal eye and feels for all that lives.
Anna Barbauld (1743-1825).

If [man] is not to stifle human feelings, he must practice kindness toward animals, for he who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of man by his treatment of animals.
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804).

Man is an animal easily conditioned by almost anything. We must not allow our finer sensibilities to become blunted regarding animal suffering.
Pamela Hansford Johnson.

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.
Saint Francis of Assisi (1181-1226) (quoted in Life by St. Bonaventura).

'Do not kick him', said Pythagoras to a man abusing a puppy. 'In his body is the soul of a friend of mine. I recognized the voice when he cried out'.
E.S. Turner (1909-).

Nothing living should ever be treated with contempt. Whatever is it that lives, a man, a tree, or a bird, should be touched gently, because the time is short.
Elizabeth Goudge (1900-1984).

To us it seems incredible that the Greek philosophers should have scanned so deeply into right and wrong and yet never noticed the immorality of slavery. Perhaps 3000 years from now it will seem incredible that we do not notice the immorality of our own oppression of animals....
'Sentimentalist' is the abuse with which people counter the accusation that they are cruel, thereby implying that to be sentimental is worse than to be cruel, which it isn't...
I don`t hold animals superior or even equal to humans. The whole case for behaving decently to animals rests on the fact that we are the superior species. We are the species uniquely capable of imagination, rationality, and moral choice - and that is precisely why we are under an obligation to recognize and respect the rights of animals.
Brigid Brophy (1929-).

Charity is indivisible. If a man resents practical sympathy being bestowed on animals on the ground that all ought to be reserved for the species to which he himself happens to belong, he must have a mind the size of a pin's head.
C.W. Hume (1886-1981).

Nothing cruel is useful or expedient.
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BCE).

All breathing, existing, living, sentient creatures should not be slain or treated with violence, nor abused, nor tormented, nor driven away. This is the pure unchangeable law.
Mahavira (ca. 599-527 BCE).

Cruelty to animals is one of the most significant vices of a low and ignoble people. Whenever one notices them, they constitute a sure sign of ignorance and brutality which cannot be painted over by all the evidences of wealth and luxury. Cruelty to animals cannot exist together with true education and true learning.
Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859).

Man by violating his own feelings becomes cruel. And how deeply seated in the human heart is the injunction not to take life.
Tolstoy (1828-1910).

In their behavior toward creatures, all men are Nazis. Human beings see oppression vividly when they're the victims. Otherwise they victimize blindly and without a thought...
As long as human beings go on shedding the blood of animals, there will never be any peace.
Isaac Bashevis Singer.

Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.
Thomas Jefferson, 3rd U.S. President.

[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.

Is there any reason why we should be allowed to torment the