animals quotes


	Home Videos Photos Press Articles Animals Writing Classes Bellydance Pilates Yoga Contact	Animal Quotes Over the years I've gathered various quotes with regard to animals. Out of respect to those who have said or written the following, I've been as diligent as I can with citing sources. However, if you notice that I've made a mistake, do let me know. (Oh, and the spelling oscillates between UK and US English depending on where the quote originally came from.) The quotes are by a variety of people - from actors to politicians, from poets to scientists. I've divided them into sections, so that there are quotes on: Compassion Towards All Living Beings Animal Farming And Ethics Animal Farming And Health Animal Farming And The Planet Experimenting On Animals (Vivisection) Hunting Animals Using Animals In Circuses Using Animals In Zoos Wearing Animals NOTE: feel free to copy and paste anything from this page, but please respect the person who said or wrote the quote and cite them as the source. No time to read about it? Well, watch it instead: the film Earthlings by Shaun Monson is an excellent way to get an overview of the current situation of the animals on our planet. "And I am my brother's keeper And I will fight his fight, And speak the word for beast and bird, Till the world shall set things right." - Ella Wheeler Wilcox (author, poet). The World Peace Diet is easily one of the most important texts about animals ever to be written. Read it and LIVE it. Compassion Towards All Living Beings "Animals exist with us in the world and are more like us than unlike us, yet we devour their corpses by the billions for a momentary palate sensation, we steal their fur and skin from them for vanity and we drive them insane and injure them in laboratories to 'test' another toothpaste - or simply to find out what will happen when we hurt them." - Bruce Friedrich (animal activist). "Any society which does not insist upon respect for all life must necessarily decay." - Albert Einstein (scientist, inventor). “Are you not ashamed to mingle domestic crops with blood and gore? You call serpents and panthers and lions savage, but you yourselves, by your own foul slaughters, leave them no room to outdo you in cruelty; for their slaughter is their living, yours is a mere appetizer.” - Plutarch (historian, biographer, essayist). “As custodians of the planet, it is our responsibility to deal with all species with kindness.” - Richard Gere (actor). “As long as people will shed the blood of innocent creatures there can be no peace, no liberty, and no harmony between people. Slaughter and justice cannot dwell together.” - Isaac Bashevis Singer (writer, Nobel Prize winner). “As long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seeds of murder and pain cannot reap the joy of love.”- Pythagoras (mathematician and philosopher). "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..." - Arthur Schopenhauer (philosopher). "Compassion for the suffering of others is not weakness. Acting from compassion when those around you do not takes more courage and strength of character than going along with everyone else's cruelty." - Norm Phelps (author, director of Fund For Animals). "He asks his father to bring food for the bird, and the father doesn't want to feed a mere bird, so he kills it. And the legend says the man killed the bird, and with the bird he killed the son, and with the song, himself." - Joseph Campbell (mythologist, writer, lecturer) recounting a pygmy legend. "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 (Nobel Prize winner). "If a man aspires towards a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from injury to animals." - Albert Einstein (scientist, inventor). "For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seeds of murder and pain cannot reap the joy of love." - Pythagoras (mathematician and philosopher). "Human liberation will begin when we understand that our evolution and fulfilment are contingent on the recognition of animal rights and on a compassionate and responsible stewardship of nature." - Michael W Fox (vet, author, head of Humane Society). “I am increasingly convinced that one of humankind's most grievous sins in our anthropocentrism. By cutting ourselves off from the rest of creation, we are left bereft of awe and wonder and therefore of reverence and gratitude. We violate our very beings, and we have nothing but trivia to teach our young.” - Matthew Fox (actor). "I do feel that spiritual progress does demand at some stage that we should cease to kill our fellow creatures for the satisfaction of our bodily wants." - Mahatma Gandhi (statesman and philosopher). “I expect to pass through this world but once; any good thing therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now; let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.” - anonymous. "I hold that, the more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of man." - Mahatma Gandhi (statesman, philosopher). "I must interpret the life about me as I interpret the life that is my own. My life is full of meaning to me. The life around me must be full of significance to itself. If I am to expect others to respect my life, then I must respect the other life I see, however strange it may be to mine... We need a boundless ethics which will include the animals also." - Dr Albert Schwetzer (theologian, philosopher, musician, physician, Nobel Prize winner). “Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test...consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals." - Milan Kundera (writer). “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 (scientist, inventor). "The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated." - Mahatma Gandhi, (statesman and philosopher). "The highest realms of thought are impossible to reach without first attaining an understanding of compassion." - Socrates (philosopher). “The world, we are told, was made especially for man - a presumption not supported by all the facts. Why should man value himself as more than a small part of the one great unit of creation?” - John Muir (naturalist, explorer). "Respect and compassion for animals are essential to a humane and just society and must begin at an early age. Much of the cruelty in the world is caused by an inability to care for those unable to fend for themselves." - Clover Moore (politician). "To help reach full development, the good person is a friend of all living things" - Albert Achweitzer (Nobel Peace Prize winner). "To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being" - Mahatma Gandhi (statesman, philosopher). "Until he extends the circle of compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace." - Albert Schweitzer (Nobel Peace Prize winner). "Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened." - Anatole France (writer, Nobel Prize winner). "We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals." - Immanual Kant (philosopher). "We can't stop all suffering, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't stop any. Our wish is for all people to act wisely and mercifully toward animals. We support compassion for all animals, even the most curious, smallest, and least sympathetic ones. We hope that everyone will take inspiration from Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Albert Schweitzer, who believed that even insects were deserving of compassion and who would stop to move a worm from hot pavement to cool earth. Aware of the problems and responsibilities that go along with an expanded ethical code, Schweitzer said that we each must 'live daily from judgment to judgment, deciding each case as it arises, as wisely and mercifully as we can.' " - from a blog by the organisation PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). "We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feather so badly that, beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the devil in human form." - William Ralph Inge (author, priest). "We have today to learn to get back into accord with the wisdom of nature and realize again our brotherhood with the animals and with the water and the sea." - Joseph Campbell (mythologist, writer, lecturer). "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 (painter). "A hundred and fifty years ago, Americans would have thought you were absurd if you advocated for the end of slavery. A hundred years ago, they would have laughed at you for suggesting that women should have the right to vote. Fifty years ago, they would have loudly objected to the idea of African Americans receiving equal rights under the law. They laugh at us now for suggesting that animal slavery be ended. Some day they won't be laughing." - Gretchen King Littlefield (animal activist). IMPORTANT NOTE: The word 'vegetarian' originally indicated a diet without any animal flesh or secretions. However, it has come to mean a diet in which a person avoids flesh but eats dairy, eggs and honey - all of which are cruel to animals. The term 'vegan' was then coined to indicate a pure vegetarian diet - ie. no flesh, dairy, eggs, honey. A vegan diet is cruelty-free, a vegetarian diet is not. So when the word 'vegetarian' appears in a quote, I've written it as 'VEGetariAN' to indicate the pure vegetarian (ie. vegan) diet. Animal Farming And Ethics “Africans eating gorillas, Australians eating kangaroos, Chinese and Koreans eating dogs and cats, Europeans eating horses, Japanese eating whales and dolphins, Canadians eating seals, Americans eating tortured pigs, cows and chickens. Is there any hope for our world to become compassionate and civilized?” - Shirley Wilkes-Johnson (vegan chef, cooking instructor). "Alas, what wickedness to swallow flesh into our own flesh, to fatten our greedy bodies by cramming in other bodies, to have one living creature fed by the death of another!” - Pythagoras (mathematician, philosopher). "Almost all of us agree that we should treat dogs and cats humanely. There are few opponents, for instance, of current anti-cruelty laws aimed at protecting pets from abuse, neglect, or sport fighting. And therein lies a bizarre contradiction. For if these anti-cruelty laws applied to animals in factory farms or laboratories, the ways in which these animals are treated would be illegal throughout North America and Europe. Do we believe dogs and cats are so different from apes, pigs, cows, chickens, and rabbits that one group of animals - 'pets' - deserve legal protection from human abuse, while the other group - animals in factory farms and in labs - deserve to have their abuse institutionalised? We cannot justify this contradiction by claiming that the abuse of famed animals, for example, serves a purpose, whereas the abuse of pets does not. Arguably, the satisfaction enjoyed by someone who fights or otherwise abuses dogs and cats is just as great as that enjoyed by someone who eats meat." - Gaverick Matheny (university professor, developer of faux meats). "[Animal] farming and its inherent cruelty must be abolished. Until legalisation catches up with consumers, we each have the power to end up complicity in the suffering, mutilations, and deaths of increasing numbers of animals each year. With every bite we take, we can choose compassion over killing by choosing the VEGetariAN option. And we can take to heart that the animals would thank us if they could." - Miyun Park (animal activist). "Animals are my friends... and I don't eat my friends. We all love animals, so why do we call some ‘pets’ and others ‘dinner’?" - George Bernard Shaw (Nobel Prize winner). “Are you not ashamed to mingle domestic crops with blood and gore? You call serpents and panthers and lions savage, but you yourselves, by your own foul slaughters, leave them no room to outdo you in cruelty; for their slaughter is their living, yours is a mere appetizer.” – Plutarch (historian, biographer, essayist). “Auschwitz begins whenever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they are only animals.” - Theodor Adorno (philosopher, sociologist, and musicologist). "But for the sake of some little mouthful of flesh we deprive a soul of the sun and light, and of that proportion of life and time it had been born into the world to enjoy." - Plutarch (historian, biographer, essayist). “Can you really ask what reason Pythagoras had for abstaining from flesh? For my part I rather wonder both by what accident and in what state of soul or mind the first man did so, touched his mouth to gore and brought his lips to the flesh of a dead creature, he who set forth tables of dead, stale bodies and ventured to call food and nourishment the parts that had a little before bellowed and cried, moved and lived. How could his eyes endure the slaughter when throats were slit and hides flayed and limbs torn from limb? How could his nose endure the stench? How was it that the pollution did not turn away his taste, which made contact with the sores of others and sucked juices and serums from mortal wounds?…It is certainly not lions and wolves that we eat out of self-defense; on the contrary, we ignore these and slaughter harmless, tame creatures without stings or teeth to harm us, creatures that, I swear, Nature appears to have produced for the sake of their beauty and grace. But nothing abashed us, not the flower-like tinting of the flesh, not the persuasiveness of the harmonious voice, not the cleanliness of their habits or the unusual intelligence that may be found in the poor wretches. No, for the sake of a little flesh we deprive them of sun, of light, of the duration of life to which they are entitled by birth and being.” - Plutarch (historian, biographer, essayist). "Compassion is an essential ingredient of 'ahimsa' [non-violence]. Through compassion you begin to see yourself in other beings. This helps you refrain from causing harm to them. Developing compassion does something else, however, which is of special interest to the yogi. It trains the mind to see past outer differences of form. You begin to catch glimpses of the inner essence of other beings, which is happiness. You begin to see that every single creature desires happiness." - Sharon Gannon and David Life (yogis, authors). "Few of us would wish to visit an abattoir. They are hellish places. The stench of death, the blood-slicked floors, the noise of machinery, chain-saws tearing flesh and bone, the report of the captive bolt pistols that stun animals before they have their throats cut and, above all, the noises of fear and distress as animals are led to their deaths; all contribute to make a slaughterhouse a hell on earth." - Bodhipaksa (author, Buddhist monk). "Eating animals is obviously very cruel, and you either want to avoid inflicting pain on another living being, or else you don't care much. If you eat animals, you surely hate them. If you respect or love animals, you could never eat them. It's that simple." - Morrissey (musician). “Every time we sit down to eat, we make a choice: Please choose VEGetariANism. Do it for animals. Do it for the environment and do it for your health.” - Alec Baldwin (actor). "Few people are aware what happens to animals reared for slaughter, or what death in an abattoir is like. Few of us have had any real contact with farms other than seeing animals grazing in the fields as we travel past. This isn't surprising. Much of what happens on modern farms…is deeply unpleasant. Because of this farmers tend to be defensive and even secretive about what they do. A friend of mine who was involved in making documentary films told me she found it easier to get access to nuclear power stations than to farms." - Bodhipaksa (author, Buddhist monk). "Flesh eating is unprovoked murder." - Benjamin Franklin (one of the USA's founding fathers, author, printer, satirist, political theorist, politician, scientist, inventor, civil activist, statesman, soldier, diplomat). "For many of us, eating meat is very pleasurable, and changing our diet may be a sacrifice we are reluctant to make. However, once we are truly aware of the consequences of our actions, we are in a dilemma. Our deeper, more ethical response is one of compassion for the animals that are harmed in order for us to have meat. This sense of compassion is in conflict with our habits and our desire to keep on doing what seems pleasurable." - Bodhipaksa (author, Buddhist monk). "If any kid ever realised what was involved in [animal] 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 (actor). "If man wants freedom why keep birds and animals in cages? Truly man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds them. We live by the death of others. We are burial places! I have learned from an early age to abjure 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." - Leonardo Da Vinci (painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, botanist, writer). "If we are beginning to become aware of the suffering involved in the meat trade, but still eat meat, then we have a problem. We have a source of conflict in our lives. We have to decide what to do with that awareness of the suffering inherent in meat-eating. It's all too tempting to push the awareness away so that we can carry on acting as before. We may even recall having done this in the past with this very issue. Another, and more creative, response would be to face up to and explore the conflict so that we can learn and grow from the insights this might reveal." - Bodhipaksa (author and Buddhist monk). “If you could see or feel the suffering, you would think twice. Give back life, don't eat meat.” - Kim Basinger (actor). "If you eat animals, you don't love animals. Who could ever make an argument that you love an animal that you pay someone to inhumanely confine, torture, and kill so you can eat it when you don't need it to survive? This culture is so backwards and the norm is so deeply ingrained that few people take the time to consider the irrationality of it all." - Andrew Kirschner (animal activist). "If you knew how meat was made, you'd probably lose your lunch." - k.d. lang (musician). "If you love animals, don't eat them. If you eat them, you don't love them; you love to eat them." - Andrew Kirschner (animal activist). "If you think that being vegan is difficult, imagine how difficult it is for the animals that you are not vegan." - Gary L. Francione (legal scholar, animal rights activist, pioneer of the abolitionist theory of animal rights). “Imagine living in a cage in the dark, unable to move, day after day. The suffering of today's farm animals is almost beyond belief. They don't have a choice, but you do, and their lives depend on it.” - Casey Affleck (actor). "Like the victims of the holocaust, animals are rounded up, trucked hundreds of miles to the kill floor and slaughtered. Comparisons to the holocaust are not only appropriate but inescapable." - Isaac Bashevis Singer (writer, Nobel Prize winner). “Nothing more strongly arouses our disgust than cannibalism, yet we make the same impression on…VEGetariANs, for we feed on babies, though not our own.” - Robert Louis Stevenson (novelist, poet, essayist, travel writer). "Often it is a question of 'out of sight, out of mind.' We don't know, and frankly, we'd often rather not know, what goes on in order to feed us. We'd rather not feel connected with the results of our actions…But now, perhaps, we have more awareness of the consequences of our actions when we eat meat. When we are more aware that our appetites can lead to real suffering we may even feel an urge to change. That urge may be strong enough to make us give up meat at one - for ever. On the other hand we may just have a niggling doubt and find ourselves with an uneasy conscience." - Bodhipaksa (author, Buddhist monk). "Our grandchildren will ask us one day: Where were you during the holocaust of the animals? What did you do against these horrifying crimes? We won't be able to offer the same excuse the second time, that we didn't know." - Helmut Kaplan (author). “People get offended by animal rights campaigns. It's ludicrous. It's not as bad as mass animal death in a slaughterhouse.” - Richard Gere (actor). "People often say that humans have always eaten animals, as if this is a justification for continuing the practice. According to this logic, we should not try to prevent people from murdering other people, since this has also been done since the earliest of times." - Isaac Bashevis Singer (writer, Nobel Prize winner). "Some people say, 'Just because I eat meat, it doesn’t mean I’m not a peaceful or compassionate person.' But a peaceful life cannot be built on a foundation of violence. And nothing ‘compassionate’ ever came from a slaughterhouse." - Jo Tyler (artist, animal advocate). "The animals you eat are not those who devour others; you do not eat the carnivorous beasts, you take them as your pattern. You only hunger for the sweet and gentle creatures which harm no one, which follow you, serve you, and are devoured by you as the reward of their service..." - Jean-Jacques Rousseau (philosopher). "...the lack of...legislation protecting farmed animals allows...farmers to legally abuse the animals we call food in ways that would warrant cruelty charges if perpetrated against those cats and dogs we call companions." - Miyun Park (animal activist). “The most violent weapon on earth is the table fork.” - Mahatma Gandhi (statesman, philosopher). "There are remarkably few contemporary defenses of our traditional treatment of animals. This may suggest that the principal obstacles to improving the treatment of animals are not philosophical uncertainties about their proper treatment but, rather, our ignorance about their current abuse and our reluctance to change deeply ingrained habits. Even the most reasonable among us is not invulnerable to the pressures of habit. Many moral philosophers who believe that eating animals is unethcial continue to eat meat. This reflects the limits of reasoned argument in changing behaviour. While I can't overcome those limits here, I encourage you, as you read this book, to replace in your mind the animals being discussed with an animal familiar to you, such as a dog or cat, or, better yet, a human infant. If you do this, you are taking to heart the principle of equal consideration of interests and giving animals the consideration they deserve." - Gaverick Matheny (university professor, developer of faux meats). "Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight." - Albert Schweitzer (Nobel Peace Prize winner). "This is what the dairy cow look like after years of forced pregnancy and having her milk sucked out of her. Now she is useless and ready for slaughter. You get ice cream and she gets a life in hell." - anonymous. "To put it bluntly, we enslave and murder animals because it is in our self-interest to do so and we have the power to get away with it." - Norm Phelps (writer, animal activist). "To those who defend the modern-day holocaust on animals by saying the animals are slaughtered for food and give us sustenance, I ask: If the victims of the Holocaust had been eaten, would that have justified the abuse and murder? Did the fact that lampshades, soaps and other 'useful' products were made from their bodies excuse the Holocaust? No. Pain is pain." - Isaac Bashevis Singer (writer, Nobel Prize winner). "VEGetariAN food leaves a deep impression on our nature. If the whole world adopts VEGetariANism, it can change the destiny of humankind." - Albert Einstein (scientist, inventor). "We can do no greater harm than to kill another sentient being. Killing is the ultimate expression of indifference to the well-being of others. All, except in the most extreme of circumstances, cherish life. In the contemporary hell of the modern slaughterhouse animals cry out and cower in terror when they realise that their life is nearing a premature end. All beings, except in the most desperate circumstances, try to escape death." - Bodhipaksa (author, Buddhist monk). "We consume the carcasses of creatures of like appetites, passions and organs as our own, and fill the slaughterhouses daily with screams of pain and fear." - Robert Louis Stevenson (novelist, poet, essayist, travel writer). "We often wish to deny the inescapable fact that meat-eating requires killing to take place. In order for meat to appear on a plate an animal must die. Our appetites are part of a complex chain of events resulting in suffering and death. Meat-eating inevitably entails the violence of the slaughterhouse and farm. Most of us have been brought up eating meat and we have not been encouraged to think much about this. And few of us will have seen farm animals suffering. If we actually saw an animal in terror in front of us, about to be killed, we might feel compassion and wish the animal to go free, but the 'nasty business' is usually conveniently hidden away." - Bodhipaksa (author, Buddhist monk). "What separates pets from the animals we abuse in factory farms and in labs is physical proximity. Our disregard for 'food' or 'lab' animals persists because we don't see them. Few people are aware of the ways in which they are mistreated and even fewer actually see the abuse. When people become aware, they are typically appalled - not because they have adopted a new ethical theory, but because they believe animals feel pain and they believe morally decent people should want to prevent pain whenever possible." - Gaverick Matheny (university professor, developer of faux meats). “When a human kills animal for food, he is neglecting his own hunger for justice. Man prays for mercy, but is unwilling to extend it to others.” - Isaac Bashevis Singer (writer, Nobel Prize winner). "When you recognise that cows and chickens want happiness, just as you do, you recognise kindred souls. The distinction between you and other beings wears thin, as awareness begins to dawn." - Sharon Gannon and David Life (yogis, authors). "Who told you to eat the corpses of dismembered animals and reduce your body to a walking graveyard? Who stole your compassion, your empathy and your conscience? Who lied to you? Why do you embrace such meaningless violence and then make inane rationalisations about the suffering of innocent creatures? If every meat-eater logically and compassionately reevaluated their beliefs, they would understand why veganism is the only ethical and acceptable way to live on this planet." - Gary Yourofsky (animal activist). “You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson (essayist, philosopher, poet). Animal Farming And Health "A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking life merely for the sake of his appetite." - Leo Tolstoy (writer). “Excessive animal protein is at the core of many chronic diseases.” - Dr T. Colin Campbell (author, professor of Nutritional Biochemistry) "I gave up meat when I was twelve. One day I was cutting up a chicken for my mom, and I hit a tumor with the knife. There was [pus] and blood all over the place. That was enough for me." - Josh Harnett (actor). “If you declare that you are naturally designed for such a diet, then first kill for yourself what you want to eat. Do it, however, only through your own resources, unaided by cleaver or cudgel or any kind of axe. Rather, just as wolves and bears and lions themselves slay what they eat, so you are to fell an ox with your fangs or a boar with your jaws, or tear a lamb or hare in bits. Fall upon it and eat it still living, as animals do. But if you wait for what you eat to be dead, if you have qualms about enjoying the flesh while life is still present, why do you continue, contrary to nature, to eat what possesses life?” - Plutarch (historian, biographer, essayist). "If you step back and look at the data, the optimum amount of red meat you eat should be zero." - Dr Walter Willett (physician, director of a study that found a close correlation between red meat consumption and colon cancer). “I'll never have to worry about my weight ever again. I don't have to worry now because the food I'm putting in my mouth is really healthy and good for me. I've begun to sleep solidly through the night because my food digests more smoothly, my energy levels have suddenly gone whoosh, and I've noticed it's made my hair and skin really shine.” - Alicia Silverstone (actor). “Isn’t man an amazing animal? He kills wildlife by the millions in order to protect his domestic animals and their feed. Then he kills domestic animals by the billions and eats them. This in turn kills man by the millions, because eating all those animals leads to degenerative - and fatal - health conditions like heart disease, kidney disease, and cancer. So then man tortures and kills millions more animals to look for cures for these diseases. Elsewhere, millions of other human beings are being killed by hunger and malnutrition because food they could eat is being used to fatten domestic animals. Meanwhile, some people are dying of sad laughter at the absurdity of man, who kills so easily and so violently, and once a year sends out cards praying for 'Peace on Earth'." - C. David Coates (businessman, radical). “It is nothing less than a form of violence to attempt to win children over to the toxic poisons, the coarse flavour and the unsympathetic texture of animal flesh.” - Jon Wynne-Tyson (author, publisher, activist, pacifist). "Milk, butter, ice cream and cheese are a great source of nutrition - if you want to pack on weight, feed allergies and autoimmune diseases, and grow fatal tumors." - Dr John McDougall (physician, nutrition expert). "My refusing to eat flesh occasioned an inconveniency, and I was frequently chided for my singularity, but, with this lighter repast, I made the greater progress, for greater clearness of head and quicker comprehension." - Benjamin Franklin (one of the USA's founding fathers, author, printer, satirist, political theorist, politician, scientist, inventor, civil activist, statesman, soldier, and diplomat). “Nothing's changed my life more. I feel better about myself as a person, being conscious and responsible for my actions and I lost weight and my skin cleared up and I got bright eyes and I just became stronger and healthier and happier. Can't think of anything better in the world to be but be vegan.” - Alicia Silverstone (actor). "One farmer says to me, "You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make the bones with." and so he religiously devotes a part of his day supplying himself with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle." - Henry David Thoreau (author, poet, abolitionist, historian, philosopher). "The beef industry has contributed to more American deaths than all the wars of this century, all natural disasters, and all automobile accidents combined. If beef is your idea of 'real food for real people', you'd better live real close to a real good hospital." - Dr Neal D. Barnard (physician, president of Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine). "When we kill the animals to eat them, they end up killing us because their flesh, which contains cholesterol and saturated fat, was never intended for human beings." - Dr William C. Roberts (physician, editor of The American Journal of Cardiology). Animal Farming And The Planet "Giving up [meat, dairy and eggs] means that fewer animals will die, and fewer animals will be reared in the appalling conditions...Just by changing your diet you will ensure that there is less suffering in the world. However, the benefits of becoming VEGetariAN go much further than that. In adopting a VEGetariAN diet you will have a real impact on the planet in many ways." - Bodhipaksa (author, Buddhist monk). "Only when we walk in peace and love on this Earth will the Earth and nature respond peacefully to us." - a twitter by Loving Hut Vegan Restaurants. "The benefits of VEGetariANism for our world are far-reaching. Every meal we eat has some say as to which direction our world moves in - towards the ever-accelerating degradation of the planet or towards increasing harmony with nature and a sustainable future for our species. These choices are, truly, on our menu. Which will we have?" - Bodhipaksa (author, Buddhist monk). "The tragedy of a non-VEGetariAN lifestyle is that it causes needless, cruel victimisation…not only of the animals' deaths, but also of the devastating environmental impact of meat eating: the pollution of water and air by slaughterhouses and farms and the razing of forests to create pastures. Due to the greed of the meat-eating majority, much of the world starves while the grains that could feed them are fed to cattle. Don't fall into the trap of believing that your good life is separate from the suffering of animals who are abused or killed to maintain that good life." - Sharon Gannon and David Life (yogis, authors). "The way that we breed animals for food is a threat to the planet. It pollutes our environment while consuming huge amounts of water, grain, petroleum, pesticides and drugs. The results are disastrous." - Dr. David Brubaker (physician at Johns Hopkins University's Center for a Liveable Future). "We should adopt a vegan diet, a diet that saves lives, a diet of peace. Only peace energy will beget peace for our planet." - a twitter by Loving Hut Vegan Restaurant. "With fewer people eating meat these pressures will lessen and the effects may even be reversed. With more of the population becoming VEGetariAN we may be able to allow land presently under cultivation to return to wilderness…With more farmland being freed up there is enormous potential for cultivating biomass fuels - plants grown for fuel - which make a zero net contribution to global warming. By adopting a VEGetariAN diet we will help support a more sustainable world for future generations." - Bodhipaksa (author, Buddhist monk). Experimenting On Animals (Vivisection) "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’." - Charles R. Magel (professor of philosophy). "Atrocities are not less atrocities when they occur in laboratories and are called medical research." - George Bernard Shaw (Nobel Prize winner). “Because of their highly sensitive nervous systems and outstanding physical endurance, cats are the preferred animals for particularly painful and long-lasting neurological experiments...devised by plainly unbalanced minds!” - Hans Ruesch (racing driver, novelist, medical historian). "Doctors who speak out in favour of vivisection do not deserve any recognition in society, all the more so since their brutality is apparent not only during such experiments, but also in their practical medical lives. They are mostly men who stop at nothing in order to satisfy their ruthless and unfeeling lust for honours and gain." - Dr Hugo Knecht (ear, nose, throat and chest Specialist). “During the last 80 years, scientists experimenting on trillions of animals, came up with 900 ways of causing cancer in a mouse…but no cure to humans!” - Dr J.F. Brailsford (radiologist). "Giving cancer to laboratory animals has not and will not help us to understand the disease or to treat those persons suffering from it." - Albert Sabin (medical researcher). "I abhor vivisection with my whole soul. All the scientific discoveries stained with innocent blood I count as of no consequence."- Mahatma Gandhi (statesman, 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). "I despise and abhor the pleas on behalf of that infamous practice, vivisection... 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 pretense of sparing me a twinge or two." - Robert Browning (poet). "It seems to me of great importance to teach children respect for life. Towards this end, experiments on living animals in classrooms should be stopped. To encourage cruelty in the name of science can only destroy the finer emotions of affection and sympathy, and breed an unfeeling callousness in the young towards suffering in all living creatures." - Eleanor Roosevelt (author, speaker, politician, activist). "Much cruel violence is perpetrated against animals in the name of medical research, for example, because it is thought to be a necessary evil. In using animals for medical research, we rationalise the cruelty involved by declaring that the results of the research may relieve suffering for many people. But no lasting benefit can ever come from causing harm to another. When we understand the law of karma [simply: what goes around, comes around], we realise that we cannot torture animals and receive any lasting benefit. Only the foolish would be deluded otherwise." - Sharon Gannon and David Life (yogis, animal activists). "Unseen the suffer, unheard they cry, in agony they linger, in loneliness they die...The victims of vivisection." - anonymous. "Vivisection is barbaric, useless, and a hindrance to scientific progress." - Dr Werner Hartinger (chief surgeon). "Vivisection is a social evil because if it advances human knowledge, it does so at the expense of human character." - George Bernard Shaw (Nobel Prize winner). “We have cured mice of cancer for decades and it simply didn't work in humans.” - Dr Richard Klausner (physician, member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Institute of Cancer). "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." - Leo Tolstoy (writer). "[With regard to experimenting on animals] the question is not, 'Can they reason?' nor, 'Can they talk?' but rather 'Can they suffer?'" - Jeremy Bentham (philosopher, activist). Hunting Animals "Deer hunting would be fine sport, if only the deer had guns." - William S. Gilbert (dramatist, librettist, poet, illustrator). "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 (comedienne). "The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest." - Henry David Thoreau (author, poet, abolitionist, historian, philosopher). "When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when the tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity." - George Bernard Shaw (Nobel Prize winner). "When I was twelve, I went hunting with my father and we shot a bird. He was laying there and something struck me. Why do we call this fun to kill this creature [who] was as happy as I was when I woke up this morning." - Marv Levy (football coach). "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 (actor). Using Animals In Circuses "Hurt 'em...Make 'em scream...Sink that hook into 'em...When you hear that screaming, then you know you got their attention." - Tim Frisco (Carson & Barnes elephant trainer). Using Animals In Zoos "The zoo is a prison for animals who have been sentenced without trial." - Russell Hoban (writer). "We cannot glimpse the essential life of a caged animal, only the shadow of its former beauty." - Julia Allen Field (environmental activist, writer). "The saddest thing about zoos is the way they drive animals mad. Much of the behaviour we take for granted in zoo animals - repetitive padding up and down, head banging, obsessive paw swinging, or just plain moping - is actually psychotic, the sort of thing humans get driven to when they are kept in solitary confinement." - Bill Travers (actor, screenwriter, director, animal activist). Wearing Animals "Fur used to turn heads, now it turns stomachs." - Rue McClanahan (actor). "Get a feel for fur: slam your fingers in a car door." - anonymous (referring to the use of steel traps to capture fur-bearing animals). “In some roles I have to wear fur, and I always make sure it's fake, like in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. Faux fur is great because it shows people that faux can look fabulous.” - Kristen Johnston (actor). "No one in the world needs a mink coat but a mink." - Murray Banks (blogger). "People are more violently opposed to fur than leather because it's safer to harass rich women than motorcycle gangs." - anonymous.

Out of respect to those who have said or written the following, I've been as diligent as I can with citing sources. However, if you notice that I've made a mistake, do let me know. (Oh, and the spelling oscillates between UK and US English depending on where the quote originally came from.)

The quotes are by a variety of people - from actors to politicians, from poets to scientists. I've divided them into sections, so that there are quotes on:

NOTE: feel free to copy and paste anything from this page, but please respect the person who said or wrote the quote and cite them as the source.

No time to read about it? Well, watch it instead: the film Earthlings by Shaun Monson is an excellent way to get an overview of the current situation of the animals on our planet.

"And I am my brother's keeper
And I will fight his fight,
And speak the word for beast and bird,
Till the world shall set things right."
- Ella Wheeler Wilcox (author, poet).

The World Peace Diet is easily one of the most important texts about animals ever to be written. Read it and LIVE it.

"Animals exist with us in the world and are more like us than unlike us, yet we devour their corpses by the billions for a momentary palate sensation, we steal their fur and skin from them for vanity and we drive them insane and injure them in laboratories to 'test' another toothpaste - or simply to find out what will happen when we hurt them." - Bruce Friedrich (animal activist).

"Any society which does not insist upon respect for all life must necessarily decay." - Albert Einstein (scientist, inventor).

“Are you not ashamed to mingle domestic crops with blood and gore? You call serpents and panthers and lions savage, but you yourselves, by your own foul slaughters, leave them no room to outdo you in cruelty; for their slaughter is their living, yours is a mere appetizer.” - Plutarch (historian, biographer, essayist).

“As custodians of the planet, it is our responsibility to deal with all species with kindness.” - Richard Gere (actor).

“As long as people will shed the blood of innocent creatures there can be no peace, no liberty, and no harmony between people. Slaughter and justice cannot dwell together.” - Isaac Bashevis Singer (writer, Nobel Prize winner).

“As long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seeds of murder and pain cannot reap the joy of love.”- Pythagoras (mathematician and philosopher).

"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..." - Arthur Schopenhauer (philosopher).

"Compassion for the suffering of others is not weakness. Acting from compassion when those around you do not takes more courage and strength of character than going along with everyone else's cruelty." - Norm Phelps (author, director of Fund For Animals).

"He asks his father to bring food for the bird, and the father doesn't want to feed a mere bird, so he kills it. And the legend says the man killed the bird, and with the bird he killed the son, and with the song, himself." - Joseph Campbell (mythologist, writer, lecturer) recounting a pygmy legend.

"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 (Nobel Prize winner).

"If a man aspires towards a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from injury to animals." - Albert Einstein (scientist, inventor).

"For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seeds of murder and pain cannot reap the joy of love." - Pythagoras (mathematician and philosopher).

"Human liberation will begin when we understand that our evolution and fulfilment are contingent on the recognition of animal rights and on a compassionate and responsible stewardship of nature." - Michael W Fox (vet, author, head of Humane Society).

“I am increasingly convinced that one of humankind's most grievous sins in our anthropocentrism. By cutting ourselves off from the rest of creation, we are left bereft of awe and wonder and therefore of reverence and gratitude. We violate our very beings, and we have nothing but trivia to teach our young.” - Matthew Fox (actor).

"I do feel that spiritual progress does demand at some stage that we should cease to kill our fellow creatures for the satisfaction of our bodily wants." - Mahatma Gandhi (statesman and philosopher).

“I expect to pass through this world but once; any good thing therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now; let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.” - anonymous.

"I hold that, the more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of man." - Mahatma Gandhi (statesman, philosopher).

"I must interpret the life about me as I interpret the life that is my own. My life is full of meaning to me. The life around me must be full of significance to itself. If I am to expect others to respect my life, then I must respect the other life I see, however strange it may be to mine... We need a boundless ethics which will include the animals also." - Dr Albert Schwetzer (theologian, philosopher, musician, physician, Nobel Prize winner).

“Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test...consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals." - Milan Kundera (writer).

“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 (scientist, inventor).

"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated." - Mahatma Gandhi, (statesman and philosopher).

"The highest realms of thought are impossible to reach without first attaining an understanding of compassion." - Socrates (philosopher).

“The world, we are told, was made especially for man - a presumption not supported by all the facts. Why should man value himself as more than a small part of the one great unit of creation?” - John Muir (naturalist, explorer).

"Respect and compassion for animals are essential to a humane and just society and must begin at an early age. Much of the cruelty in the world is caused by an inability to care for those unable to fend for themselves." - Clover Moore (politician).

"To help reach full development, the good person is a friend of all living things" - Albert Achweitzer (Nobel Peace Prize winner).

"To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being" - Mahatma Gandhi (statesman, philosopher).

"Until he extends the circle of compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace." - Albert Schweitzer (Nobel Peace Prize winner).

"Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened." - Anatole France (writer, Nobel Prize winner).

"We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals." - Immanual Kant (philosopher).

"We can't stop all suffering, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't stop any. Our wish is for all people to act wisely and mercifully toward animals. We support compassion for all animals, even the most curious, smallest, and least sympathetic ones. We hope that everyone will take inspiration from Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Albert Schweitzer, who believed that even insects were deserving of compassion and who would stop to move a worm from hot pavement to cool earth. Aware of the problems and responsibilities that go along with an expanded ethical code, Schweitzer said that we each must 'live daily from judgment to judgment, deciding each case as it arises, as wisely and mercifully as we can.' " - from a blog by the organisation PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals).

"We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feather so badly that, beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the devil in human form." - William Ralph Inge (author, priest).

"We have today to learn to get back into accord with the wisdom of nature and realize again our brotherhood with the animals and with the water and the sea." - Joseph Campbell (mythologist, writer, lecturer).

"A hundred and fifty years ago, Americans would have thought you were absurd if you advocated for the end of slavery. A hundred years ago, they would have laughed at you for suggesting that women should have the right to vote. Fifty years ago, they would have loudly objected to the idea of African Americans receiving equal rights under the law. They laugh at us now for suggesting that animal slavery be ended. Some day they won't be laughing." - Gretchen King Littlefield (animal activist).

IMPORTANT NOTE:

The word 'vegetarian' originally indicated a diet
without any animal flesh or secretions.

However, it has come to mean a diet in which a
person avoids flesh but eats dairy, eggs and
honey - all of which are cruel to animals.

The term 'vegan' was then coined to indicate a pure vegetarian diet - ie. no flesh, dairy, eggs, honey.

A vegan diet is cruelty-free, a vegetarian diet is not.
So when the word 'vegetarian' appears in a quote,
I've written it as 'VEGetariAN' to indicate the
pure vegetarian (ie. vegan) diet.

“Africans eating gorillas, Australians eating kangaroos, Chinese and Koreans eating dogs and cats, Europeans eating horses, Japanese eating whales and dolphins, Canadians eating seals, Americans eating tortured pigs, cows and chickens. Is there any hope for our world to become compassionate and civilized?” - Shirley Wilkes-Johnson (vegan chef, cooking instructor).

"Alas, what wickedness to swallow flesh into our own flesh, to fatten our greedy bodies by cramming in other bodies, to have one living creature fed by the death of another!” - Pythagoras (mathematician, philosopher).

"Almost all of us agree that we should treat dogs and cats humanely. There are few opponents, for instance, of current anti-cruelty laws aimed at protecting pets from abuse, neglect, or sport fighting. And therein lies a bizarre contradiction. For if these anti-cruelty laws applied to animals in factory farms or laboratories, the ways in which these animals are treated would be illegal throughout North America and Europe. Do we believe dogs and cats are so different from apes, pigs, cows, chickens, and rabbits that one group of animals - 'pets' - deserve legal protection from human abuse, while the other group - animals in factory farms and in labs - deserve to have their abuse institutionalised? We cannot justify this contradiction by claiming that the abuse of famed animals, for example, serves a purpose, whereas the abuse of pets does not. Arguably, the satisfaction enjoyed by someone who fights or otherwise abuses dogs and cats is just as great as that enjoyed by someone who eats meat." - Gaverick Matheny (university professor, developer of faux meats).

"[Animal] farming and its inherent cruelty must be abolished. Until legalisation catches up with consumers, we each have the power to end up complicity in the suffering, mutilations, and deaths of increasing numbers of animals each year. With every bite we take, we can choose compassion over killing by choosing the VEGetariAN option. And we can take to heart that the animals would thank us if they could." - Miyun Park (animal activist).

"Animals are my friends... and I don't eat my friends. We all love animals, so why do we call some ‘pets’ and others ‘dinner’?" - George Bernard Shaw (Nobel Prize winner).

“Auschwitz begins whenever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they are only animals.” - Theodor Adorno (philosopher, sociologist, and musicologist).

"But for the sake of some little mouthful of flesh we deprive a soul of the sun and light, and of that proportion of life and time it had been born into the world to enjoy." - Plutarch (historian, biographer, essayist).

“Can you really ask what reason Pythagoras had for abstaining from flesh? For my part I rather wonder both by what accident and in what state of soul or mind the first man did so, touched his mouth to gore and brought his lips to the flesh of a dead creature, he who set forth tables of dead, stale bodies and ventured to call food and nourishment the parts that had a little before bellowed and cried, moved and lived. How could his eyes endure the slaughter when throats were slit and hides flayed and limbs torn from limb? How could his nose endure the stench? How was it that the pollution did not turn away his taste, which made contact with the sores of others and sucked juices and serums from mortal wounds?…It is certainly not lions and wolves that we eat out of self-defense; on the contrary, we ignore these and slaughter harmless, tame creatures without stings or teeth to harm us, creatures that, I swear, Nature appears to have produced for the sake of their beauty and grace. But nothing abashed us, not the flower-like tinting of the flesh, not the persuasiveness of the harmonious voice, not the cleanliness of their habits or the unusual intelligence that may be found in the poor wretches. No, for the sake of a little flesh we deprive them of sun, of light, of the duration of life to which they are entitled by birth and being.” - Plutarch (historian, biographer, essayist).

"Compassion is an essential ingredient of 'ahimsa' [non-violence]. Through compassion you begin to see yourself in other beings. This helps you refrain from causing harm to them. Developing compassion does something else, however, which is of special interest to the yogi. It trains the mind to see past outer differences of form. You begin to catch glimpses of the inner essence of other beings, which is happiness. You begin to see that every single creature desires happiness." - Sharon Gannon and David Life (yogis, authors).

"Few of us would wish to visit an abattoir. They are hellish places. The stench of death, the blood-slicked floors, the noise of machinery, chain-saws tearing flesh and bone, the report of the captive bolt pistols that stun animals before they have their throats cut and, above all, the noises of fear and distress as animals are led to their deaths; all contribute to make a slaughterhouse a hell on earth." - Bodhipaksa (author, Buddhist monk).

"Eating animals is obviously very cruel, and you either want to avoid inflicting pain on another living being, or else you don't care much. If you eat animals, you surely hate them. If you respect or love animals, you could never eat them. It's that simple." - Morrissey (musician).

“Every time we sit down to eat, we make a choice: Please choose VEGetariANism. Do it for animals. Do it for the environment and do it for your health.” - Alec Baldwin (actor).

"Few people are aware what happens to animals reared for slaughter, or what death in an abattoir is like. Few of us have had any real contact with farms other than seeing animals grazing in the fields as we travel past. This isn't surprising. Much of what happens on modern farms…is deeply unpleasant. Because of this farmers tend to be defensive and even secretive about what they do. A friend of mine who was involved in making documentary films told me she found it easier to get access to nuclear power stations than to farms." - Bodhipaksa (author, Buddhist monk).

"Flesh eating is unprovoked murder." - Benjamin Franklin (one of the USA's founding fathers, author, printer, satirist, political theorist, politician, scientist, inventor, civil activist, statesman, soldier, diplomat).

"For many of us, eating meat is very pleasurable, and changing our diet may be a sacrifice we are reluctant to make. However, once we are truly aware of the consequences of our actions, we are in a dilemma. Our deeper, more ethical response is one of compassion for the animals that are harmed in order for us to have meat. This sense of compassion is in conflict with our habits and our desire to keep on doing what seems pleasurable." - Bodhipaksa (author, Buddhist monk).

"If any kid ever realised what was involved in [animal] 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 (actor).

"If man wants freedom why keep birds and animals in cages? Truly man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds them. We live by the death of others. We are burial places! I have learned from an early age to abjure 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." - Leonardo Da Vinci (painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, botanist, writer).

"If we are beginning to become aware of the suffering involved in the meat trade, but still eat meat, then we have a problem. We have a source of conflict in our lives. We have to decide what to do with that awareness of the suffering inherent in meat-eating. It's all too tempting to push the awareness away so that we can carry on acting as before. We may even recall having done this in the past with this very issue. Another, and more creative, response would be to face up to and explore the conflict so that we can learn and grow from the insights this might reveal." - Bodhipaksa (author and Buddhist monk).

“If you could see or feel the suffering, you would think twice. Give back life, don't eat meat.” - Kim Basinger (actor).

"If you eat animals, you don't love animals. Who could ever make an argument that you love an animal that you pay someone to inhumanely confine, torture, and kill so you can eat it when you don't need it to survive? This culture is so backwards and the norm is so deeply ingrained that few people take the time to consider the irrationality of it all." - Andrew Kirschner (animal activist).

"If you knew how meat was made, you'd probably lose your lunch." - k.d. lang (musician).

"If you love animals, don't eat them. If you eat them, you don't love them; you love to eat them." - Andrew Kirschner (animal activist).

"If you think that being vegan is difficult, imagine how difficult it is for the animals that you are not vegan." - Gary L. Francione (legal scholar, animal rights activist, pioneer of the abolitionist theory of animal rights).

“Imagine living in a cage in the dark, unable to move, day after day. The suffering of today's farm animals is almost beyond belief. They don't have a choice, but you do, and their lives depend on it.” - Casey Affleck (actor).

"Like the victims of the holocaust, animals are rounded up, trucked hundreds of miles to the kill floor and slaughtered. Comparisons to the holocaust are not only appropriate but inescapable." - Isaac Bashevis Singer (writer, Nobel Prize winner).

“Nothing more strongly arouses our disgust than cannibalism, yet we make the same impression on…VEGetariANs, for we feed on babies, though not our own.” - Robert Louis Stevenson (novelist, poet, essayist, travel writer).

"Often it is a question of 'out of sight, out of mind.' We don't know, and frankly, we'd often rather not know, what goes on in order to feed us. We'd rather not feel connected with the results of our actions…But now, perhaps, we have more awareness of the consequences of our actions when we eat meat. When we are more aware that our appetites can lead to real suffering we may even feel an urge to change. That urge may be strong enough to make us give up meat at one - for ever. On the other hand we may just have a niggling doubt and find ourselves with an uneasy conscience." - Bodhipaksa (author, Buddhist monk).

"Our grandchildren will ask us one day: Where were you during the holocaust of the animals? What did you do against these horrifying crimes? We won't be able to offer the same excuse the second time, that we didn't know." - Helmut Kaplan (author).

“People get offended by animal rights campaigns. It's ludicrous. It's not as bad as mass animal death in a slaughterhouse.” - Richard Gere (actor).

"People often say that humans have always eaten animals, as if this is a justification for continuing the practice. According to this logic, we should not try to prevent people from murdering other people, since this has also been done since the earliest of times." - Isaac Bashevis Singer (writer, Nobel Prize winner).

"Some people say, 'Just because I eat meat, it doesn’t mean I’m not a peaceful or compassionate person.' But a peaceful life cannot be built on a foundation of violence. And nothing ‘compassionate’ ever came from a slaughterhouse." - Jo Tyler (artist, animal advocate).

"The animals you eat are not those who devour others; you do not eat the carnivorous beasts, you take them as your pattern. You only hunger for the sweet and gentle creatures which harm no one, which follow you, serve you, and are devoured by you as the reward of their service..." - Jean-Jacques Rousseau (philosopher).

"...the lack of...legislation protecting farmed animals allows...farmers to legally abuse the animals we call food in ways that would warrant cruelty charges if perpetrated against those cats and dogs we call companions." - Miyun Park (animal activist).

“The most violent weapon on earth is the table fork.” - Mahatma Gandhi (statesman, philosopher).

"There are remarkably few contemporary defenses of our traditional treatment of animals. This may suggest that the principal obstacles to improving the treatment of animals are not philosophical uncertainties about their proper treatment but, rather, our ignorance about their current abuse and our reluctance to change deeply ingrained habits. Even the most reasonable among us is not invulnerable to the pressures of habit. Many moral philosophers who believe that eating animals is unethcial continue to eat meat. This reflects the limits of reasoned argument in changing behaviour. While I can't overcome those limits here, I encourage you, as you read this book, to replace in your mind the animals being discussed with an animal familiar to you, such as a dog or cat, or, better yet, a human infant. If you do this, you are taking to heart the principle of equal consideration of interests and giving animals the consideration they deserve." - Gaverick Matheny (university professor, developer of faux meats).

"Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight." - Albert Schweitzer (Nobel Peace Prize winner).

"This is what the dairy cow look like after years of forced pregnancy and having her milk sucked out of her. Now she is useless and ready for slaughter. You get ice cream and she gets a life in hell." - anonymous.

"To put it bluntly, we enslave and murder animals because it is in our self-interest to do so and we have the power to get away with it." - Norm Phelps (writer, animal activist).

"To those who defend the modern-day holocaust on animals by saying the animals are slaughtered for food and give us sustenance, I ask: If the victims of the Holocaust had been eaten, would that have justified the abuse and murder? Did the fact that lampshades, soaps and other 'useful' products were made from their bodies excuse the Holocaust? No. Pain is pain." - Isaac Bashevis Singer (writer, Nobel Prize winner).

"VEGetariAN food leaves a deep impression on our nature. If the whole world adopts VEGetariANism, it can change the destiny of humankind." - Albert Einstein (scientist, inventor).

"We can do no greater harm than to kill another sentient being. Killing is the ultimate expression of indifference to the well-being of others. All, except in the most extreme of circumstances, cherish life. In the contemporary hell of the modern slaughterhouse animals cry out and cower in terror when they realise that their life is nearing a premature end. All beings, except in the most desperate circumstances, try to escape death." - Bodhipaksa (author, Buddhist monk).

"We consume the carcasses of creatures of like appetites, passions and organs as our own, and fill the slaughterhouses daily with screams of pain and fear." - Robert Louis Stevenson (novelist, poet, essayist, travel writer).

"We often wish to deny the inescapable fact that meat-eating requires killing to take place. In order for meat to appear on a plate an animal must die. Our appetites are part of a complex chain of events resulting in suffering and death. Meat-eating inevitably entails the violence of the slaughterhouse and farm. Most of us have been brought up eating meat and we have not been encouraged to think much about this. And few of us will have seen farm animals suffering. If we actually saw an animal in terror in front of us, about to be killed, we might feel compassion and wish the animal to go free, but the 'nasty business' is usually conveniently hidden away." - Bodhipaksa (author, Buddhist monk).

"What separates pets from the animals we abuse in factory farms and in labs is physical proximity. Our disregard for 'food' or 'lab' animals persists because we don't see them. Few people are aware of the ways in which they are mistreated and even fewer actually see the abuse. When people become aware, they are typically appalled - not because they have adopted a new ethical theory, but because they believe animals feel pain and they believe morally decent people should want to prevent pain whenever possible." - Gaverick Matheny (university professor, developer of faux meats).

“When a human kills animal for food, he is neglecting his own hunger for justice. Man prays for mercy, but is unwilling to extend it to others.” - Isaac Bashevis Singer (writer, Nobel Prize winner).

"When you recognise that cows and chickens want happiness, just as you do, you recognise kindred souls. The distinction between you and other beings wears thin, as awareness begins to dawn." - Sharon Gannon and David Life (yogis, authors).

"Who told you to eat the corpses of dismembered animals and reduce your body to a walking graveyard? Who stole your compassion, your empathy and your conscience? Who lied to you? Why do you embrace such meaningless violence and then make inane rationalisations about the suffering of innocent creatures? If every meat-eater logically and compassionately reevaluated their beliefs, they would understand why veganism is the only ethical and acceptable way to live on this planet." - Gary Yourofsky (animal activist).

“You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson (essayist, philosopher, poet).

"A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking life merely for the sake of his appetite." - Leo Tolstoy (writer).

“Excessive animal protein is at the core of many chronic diseases.” - Dr T. Colin Campbell (author, professor of Nutritional Biochemistry)

"I gave up meat when I was twelve. One day I was cutting up a chicken for my mom, and I hit a tumor with the knife. There was [pus] and blood all over the place. That was enough for me." - Josh Harnett (actor).

“If you declare that you are naturally designed for such a diet, then first kill for yourself what you want to eat. Do it, however, only through your own resources, unaided by cleaver or cudgel or any kind of axe. Rather, just as wolves and bears and lions themselves slay what they eat, so you are to fell an ox with your fangs or a boar with your jaws, or tear a lamb or hare in bits. Fall upon it and eat it still living, as animals do. But if you wait for what you eat to be dead, if you have qualms about enjoying the flesh while life is still present, why do you continue, contrary to nature, to eat what possesses life?” - Plutarch (historian, biographer, essayist).

"If you step back and look at the data, the optimum amount of red meat you eat should be zero." - Dr Walter Willett (physician, director of a study that found a close correlation between red meat consumption and colon cancer).

“I'll never have to worry about my weight ever again. I don't have to worry now because the food I'm putting in my mouth is really healthy and good for me. I've begun to sleep solidly through the night because my food digests more smoothly, my energy levels have suddenly gone whoosh, and I've noticed it's made my hair and skin really shine.” - Alicia Silverstone (actor).

“Isn’t man an amazing animal? He kills wildlife by the millions in order to protect his domestic animals and their feed. Then he kills domestic animals by the billions and eats them. This in turn kills man by the millions, because eating all those animals leads to degenerative - and fatal - health conditions like heart disease, kidney disease, and cancer. So then man tortures and kills millions more animals to look for cures for these diseases. Elsewhere, millions of other human beings are being killed by hunger and malnutrition because food they could eat is being used to fatten domestic animals. Meanwhile, some people are dying of sad laughter at the absurdity of man, who kills so easily and so violently, and once a year sends out cards praying for 'Peace on Earth'." - C. David Coates (businessman, radical).

“It is nothing less than a form of violence to attempt to win children over to the toxic poisons, the coarse flavour and the unsympathetic texture of animal flesh.” - Jon Wynne-Tyson (author, publisher, activist, pacifist).

"Milk, butter, ice cream and cheese are a great source of nutrition - if you want to pack on weight, feed allergies and autoimmune diseases, and grow fatal tumors." - Dr John McDougall (physician, nutrition expert).

"My refusing to eat flesh occasioned an inconveniency, and I was frequently chided for my singularity, but, with this lighter repast, I made the greater progress, for greater clearness of head and quicker comprehension." - Benjamin Franklin (one of the USA's founding fathers, author, printer, satirist, political theorist, politician, scientist, inventor, civil activist, statesman, soldier, and diplomat).

“Nothing's changed my life more. I feel better about myself as a person, being conscious and responsible for my actions and I lost weight and my skin cleared up and I got bright eyes and I just became stronger and healthier and happier. Can't think of anything better in the world to be but be vegan.” - Alicia Silverstone (actor).

"One farmer says to me, "You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make the bones with." and so he religiously devotes a part of his day supplying himself with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle." - Henry David Thoreau (author, poet, abolitionist, historian, philosopher).

"The beef industry has contributed to more American deaths than all the wars of this century, all natural disasters, and all automobile accidents combined. If beef is your idea of 'real food for real people', you'd better live real close to a real good hospital." - Dr Neal D. Barnard (physician, president of Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine).

"When we kill the animals to eat them, they end up killing us because their flesh, which contains cholesterol and saturated fat, was never intended for human beings." - Dr William C. Roberts (physician, editor of The American Journal of Cardiology).

"Giving up [meat, dairy and eggs] means that fewer animals will die, and fewer animals will be reared in the appalling conditions...Just by changing your diet you will ensure that there is less suffering in the world. However, the benefits of becoming VEGetariAN go much further than that. In adopting a VEGetariAN diet you will have a real impact on the planet in many ways." - Bodhipaksa (author, Buddhist monk).

"Only when we walk in peace and love on this Earth will the Earth and nature respond peacefully to us." - a twitter by Loving Hut Vegan Restaurants.

"The benefits of VEGetariANism for our world are far-reaching. Every meal we eat has some say as to which direction our world moves in - towards the ever-accelerating degradation of the planet or towards increasing harmony with nature and a sustainable future for our species. These choices are, truly, on our menu. Which will we have?" - Bodhipaksa (author, Buddhist monk).

"The tragedy of a non-VEGetariAN lifestyle is that it causes needless, cruel victimisation…not only of the animals' deaths, but also of the devastating environmental impact of meat eating: the pollution of water and air by slaughterhouses and farms and the razing of forests to create pastures. Due to the greed of the meat-eating majority, much of the world starves while the grains that could feed them are fed to cattle. Don't fall into the trap of believing that your good life is separate from the suffering of animals who are abused or killed to maintain that good life." - Sharon Gannon and David Life (yogis, authors).

"The way that we breed animals for food is a threat to the planet. It pollutes our environment while consuming huge amounts of water, grain, petroleum, pesticides and drugs. The results are disastrous." - Dr. David Brubaker (physician at Johns Hopkins University's Center for a Liveable Future).

"We should adopt a vegan diet, a diet that saves lives, a diet of peace. Only peace energy will beget peace for our planet." - a twitter by Loving Hut Vegan Restaurant.

"With fewer people eating meat these pressures will lessen and the effects may even be reversed. With more of the population becoming VEGetariAN we may be able to allow land presently under cultivation to return to wilderness…With more farmland being freed up there is enormous potential for cultivating biomass fuels - plants grown for fuel - which make a zero net contribution to global warming. By adopting a VEGetariAN diet we will help support a more sustainable world for future generations." - Bodhipaksa (author, Buddhist monk).

"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’." - Charles R. Magel (professor of philosophy).

"Atrocities are not less atrocities when they occur in laboratories and are called medical research." - George Bernard Shaw (Nobel Prize winner).

“Because of their highly sensitive nervous systems and outstanding physical endurance, cats are the preferred animals for particularly painful and long-lasting neurological experiments...devised by plainly unbalanced minds!” - Hans Ruesch (racing driver, novelist, medical historian).

"Doctors who speak out in favour of vivisection do not deserve any recognition in society, all the more so since their brutality is apparent not only during such experiments, but also in their practical medical lives. They are mostly men who stop at nothing in order to satisfy their ruthless and unfeeling lust for honours and gain." - Dr Hugo Knecht (ear, nose, throat and chest Specialist).

“During the last 80 years, scientists experimenting on trillions of animals, came up with 900 ways of causing cancer in a mouse…but no cure to humans!” - Dr J.F. Brailsford (radiologist).

"Giving cancer to laboratory animals has not and will not help us to understand the disease or to treat those persons suffering from it." - Albert Sabin (medical researcher).

"I abhor vivisection with my whole soul. All the scientific discoveries stained with innocent blood I count as of no consequence."- Mahatma Gandhi (statesman, 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).

"I despise and abhor the pleas on behalf of that infamous practice, vivisection... 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 pretense of sparing me a twinge or two." - Robert Browning (poet).

"It seems to me of great importance to teach children respect for life. Towards this end, experiments on living animals in classrooms should be stopped. To encourage cruelty in the name of science can only destroy the finer emotions of affection and sympathy, and breed an unfeeling callousness in the young towards suffering in all living creatures." - Eleanor Roosevelt (author, speaker, politician, activist).

"Much cruel violence is perpetrated against animals in the name of medical research, for example, because it is thought to be a necessary evil. In using animals for medical research, we rationalise the cruelty involved by declaring that the results of the research may relieve suffering for many people. But no lasting benefit can ever come from causing harm to another. When we understand the law of karma [simply: what goes around, comes around], we realise that we cannot torture animals and receive any lasting benefit. Only the foolish would be deluded otherwise." - Sharon Gannon and David Life (yogis, animal activists).

"Unseen the suffer, unheard they cry, in agony they linger, in loneliness they die...The victims of vivisection." - anonymous.

"Vivisection is barbaric, useless, and a hindrance to scientific progress." - Dr Werner Hartinger (chief surgeon).

"Vivisection is a social evil because if it advances human knowledge, it does so at the expense of human character." - George Bernard Shaw (Nobel Prize winner).

“We have cured mice of cancer for decades and it simply didn't work in humans.” - Dr Richard Klausner (physician, member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Institute of Cancer).

"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." - Leo Tolstoy (writer).

"[With regard to experimenting on animals] the question is not, 'Can they reason?' nor, 'Can they talk?' but rather 'Can they suffer?'" - Jeremy Bentham (philosopher, activist).

"Deer hunting would be fine sport, if only the deer had guns." - William S. Gilbert (dramatist, librettist, poet, illustrator).

"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 (comedienne).

"The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest." - Henry David Thoreau (author, poet, abolitionist, historian, philosopher).

"When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when the tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity." - George Bernard Shaw (Nobel Prize winner).

"When I was twelve, I went hunting with my father and we shot a bird. He was laying there and something struck me. Why do we call this fun to kill this creature [who] was as happy as I was when I woke up this morning." - Marv Levy (football coach).

"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 (actor).

"Hurt 'em...Make 'em scream...Sink that hook into 'em...When you hear that screaming, then you know you got their attention." - Tim Frisco (Carson & Barnes elephant trainer).

"The zoo is a prison for animals who have been sentenced without trial." - Russell Hoban (writer).

"We cannot glimpse the essential life of a caged animal, only the shadow of its former beauty." - Julia Allen Field (environmental activist, writer).

"The saddest thing about zoos is the way they drive animals mad. Much of the behaviour we take for granted in zoo animals - repetitive padding up and down, head banging, obsessive paw swinging, or just plain moping - is actually psychotic, the sort of thing humans get driven to when they are kept in solitary confinement." - Bill Travers (actor, screenwriter, director, animal activist).

"Get a feel for fur: slam your fingers in a car door." - anonymous (referring to the use of steel traps to capture fur-bearing animals).

“In some roles I have to wear fur, and I always make sure it's fake, like in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. Faux fur is great because it shows people that faux can look fabulous.” - Kristen Johnston (actor).

"People are more violently opposed to fur than leather because it's safer to harass rich women than motorcycle gangs." - anonymous.