"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
"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
"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."
Isaac Bashevis
Singer, author, Nobel Prize 1978
"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."
"Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances of
survival for life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet."
Albert Einstein,
physicist, Nobel Prize 1921
"I am in favor of animal rights as well as human
rights. That is the way of a whole human being."
Abraham Lincoln,
16th U.S. President
"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
"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
"People always tell me that it's useless to be a
vegetarian. But, if I can save a single cow during my entire life, I'll be happy."
Bruna Angotti,
student
And, last but not least, rather than extracting a single quote from Dalai Lama's writings, I strongly suggest the reading of the book Ethics for the New Millenium, 1999 by the Dalai Lama. Although he is a religious leader, the great thing about this book it is that it is not about religion but about Ethics.