In Honor Of Cecil The Lion: 70 Powerful Quotes About Animal Rights

By Lorenzo Jensen III,
YouTube / Paula French
YouTube / Paula French

1.

There’s a special place in hell for people who mistreat animals.
—Tara Sue Me

2.

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

3.

One day the absurdity of the almost universal human belief in the slavery of other animals will be palpable. We shall then have discovered our souls and become worthier of sharing this planet with them.
—Martin Luther King Jr.

4.

I abhor vivisection with my whole soul. All the scientific discoveries stained with innocent blood I count as of no consequence.
—Mahatma Gandhi

5.

May all that have life be delivered from suffering.
—Buddha

6.

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

7.

The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but Can they suffer?
—Jeremy Bentham

8.

Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.
—Thomas Jefferson

9.

Killing animals for sport, for pleasure, for adventure, and for hides and furs is a phenomena which is at once disgusting and distressing. There is no justification in indulging is such acts of brutality.
—The Dalai Lama

10.

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

11.

If a man aspires towards a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from injury to animals.
—Albert Einstein

12.

‘During my medical education at the University of Basle I found vivisection horrible, barbarous and above all unnecessary’
—C. G. Jung

13.

A good deed done to an animal is as meritorious as a good deed done to a human being, while an act of cruelty to an animal is a bad as an act of cruelty to a human being.
—Prophet Muhammad

14.

I would look at a dog and when our eyes met, I realized that the dog and all creatures are my family. They’re like you and me.
—Ziggy Marley

15.

What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, man would die from a great loneliness of the spirit. For whatever happens to the beasts, soon happens to man. All things are connected.?
—Chief Seattle

16.

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

17.

As custodians of the planet it is our responsibility to deal with all species with kindness, love and compassion. That these animals suffer through human cruelty is beyond understanding. Please help to stop this madness.
—Richard Gere

18.

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.
—St. Francis of Assisi

19.

Many years ago, I was in a Broadway show and I had to wear a fox fur around my shoulders. One day my hand touched one of the fox’s legs. It seemed to be in two pieces. Then it dawned on me…. her leg had probally been snapped in two by the steel trap that had caught it.
—Bea Arthur

20.

Dear intelligent people of the world, don’t get shampoo in your eyes. It really stings. There. Done. Now fucking stop torturing animals.
—Ricky Gervais

21.

It’s really important to me to show the interconnectedness of things. I always try to illustrate how environmentalism, humanitarianism, animal rights — all those things—are one and the same.
—Daryl Hannah

22.

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

23.

Because the heart beats under a covering of hair, of fur, feathers, or wings, it is, for that reason, to be of no account?
—Jean Paul Richter

24.

If you want to test cosmetics, why do it on some poor animal who hasn’t done anything? They should use prisoners who have been convicted of murder or rape instead. So, rather than seeing if perfume irritates a bunny rabbit’s eyes, they should throw it in Charles Manson’s eyes and ask him if it hurts.
—Ellen DeGeneres

25.

I have always felt that the way we treat animals is a pretty good indicator of the compassion we are capable of for the human race.
—Ali McGraw

26.

Every year tens of thousands of animals suffer and die in laboratory tests of cosmetics and household products…despite the fact that the test results do not help prevent or treat accidental or purposeful misuse of the products. Please join me in using your voice for those whose cries are forever sealed behind the laboratory doors.
—Woody Harrelson

27.

God loved the birds and invented trees. Man loved the birds and invented cages.
—Jacques Deval

28.

If you eat animals, you don’t love animals; you love to eat them.
—Andrew Kirschner

29.

No one in the world needs a mink coat but a mink.
—Murray Banks

30.

The assumption that animals are without rights and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.
—Arthur Schopenhauer

31.

Never wear anything that panics the cat.
—P.J. O’Rourke

32.

If modern civilised man had to keep the animals he eats, the number of vegetarians would rise astronomically.
—Christian Morgenstern

33.

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

34.

The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest.
—Henry David Thoreau

35.

As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields.
—Leo Tolstoy

36.

I’m an animal rights activist because I believe we won’t have a planet if we continue to behave toward other species the way we do.
—James Cromwell

37.

I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men.
—Leonardo da Vinci

38.

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 Anthony Froude

39.

Nobody can possibly be so hungry that they need to take a life in order to feel satisfied – they don’t after all, take a human life, so why take the life of an animal?
—Morrissey

40.

He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.
—Immanuel Kant

41.

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

42.

It is inexcusable for scientists to torture animals; let them make their experiments on journalists and politicians.
—Henrik Ibsen

43.

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

44.

If you want to know where you would have stood on slavery before the Civil War, don’t look at where you stand on slavery today. Look at where you stand on animal rights.
—Paul Watson

45.

Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals.
—George Orwell

46.

Humans hunt and kill maneaters.
What if animals hunted animal eaters?!
—Manoj Vaz

47.

Auschwitz begins wherever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they’re only animals.
—Theodor W. Adorno

48.

Our treatment of animals, in every department, is deeply and systematically immoral. Becoming a vegetarian is only the most minimal ethical response to the magnitude of the evil.
—Colin McGinn

49.

Just how destructive does a culinary preference have to be before we decide to eat something else? If contributing to the suffering of billions of animals that live miserable lives and (quite often) die in horrific ways isn’t motivating, what would be? If being the number one contributor to the most serious threat facing the planet (global warming) isn’t enough, what is? And if you are tempted to put off these questions of conscience, to say not now, then when?
—Jonathan Safran Foer

50.

If intelligence and capability are not criteria for the possession of rights, why would animals—who have the capacity to feel fear and pain—be excluded from our moral consideration?
—Jack Norris

51.

I made the choice to be vegan because I will not eat (or wear, or use) anything that could have an emotional response to its death or captivity. I can well imagine what that must feel like for our non-human friends – the fear, the terror, the pain—and I will not cause such suffering to a fellow living being.
—Rai Aren

52.

Some folks insist that believing in animal rights is like a religion.
But religion asks followers to believe in things nobody can see, while animal rights advocates ask followers to see things nobody can believe.
—Craig Burton

53.

Bad is that often wildlife trafficking is described as a victimless crime. Nothing could be further from the truth. Many of the trafficked items come from murdered animals; Rhinoceros Horn, Ivory and Tiger skins; and hundreds of thousands of birds and animals die in transit in the most horrible circumstances imaginable. Just because they cannot communicate with us does not mean they are not victims. They feel, fear and die, just like humans.
—Christopher Gérard

54.

If slaughterhouses had glass walls, we would all be vegetarian.
—Paul McCartney

55.

We must fight against the spirit of unconscious cruelty with which we treat the animals. Animals suffer as much as we do. True humanity does not allow us to impose such sufferings on them. It is our duty to make the whole world recognize it. Until we extend our circle of compassion to all living things, humanity will not find peace.
—Albert Schweitzer

56.

I became a vegetarian after realizing that animals feel afraid, cold, hungry and unhappy like we do. I feel very deeply about vegetarianism and the animal kingdom. It was my dog Boycott who led me to question the right of humans to eat other sentient beings.
—César Chávez

57.

The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men.
—Leonardo da Vinci

58.

If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reasons.
—C.S. Lewis

59.

Humanity’s true moral test, its fundamental test…consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals.
—Milan Kundera

60.

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.
—Romain Rolland

61.

Human beings are a part of the animal kingdom, not apart from it. The separation of us and them creates a false picture and is responsible for much suffering. It is part of the in-group/out-group mentality that leads to human oppression of the weak by the strong as in ethic, religious, political, and social conflicts.
—Marc Bekoff

62.

If possessing a higher degree of intelligence does not entitle one human to use another for his or her own ends, how can it entitle humans to exploit non-humans?
—Peter Singer

63.

Know that the same spark of life that is within you, is within all of our animal friends, the desire to live is the same within all of us…
—Rai Aren

64.

Poor animals, how jealously they guard their bodies, for to us is merely an evening’s meal, but to them is life itself.
—T. Casey Brennan

65.

Although other animals may be different from us, this does not make them LESS than us
—Marc Bekoff

66.

To be ‘for animals’ is not to be ‘against humanity.’ To require others to treat animals justly, as their rights require, is not to ask for anything more nor less in their case than in the case of any human to whom just treatment is due. The animal rights movement is a part of, not opposed to, the human rights movement. Attempts to dismiss it as anti human are mere rhetoric.
—Tom Regan

67.

Animals can communicate quite well. And they do. And generally speaking, they are ignored.
—Alice Walker

68.

Whether hunting is right or wrong, a spiritual experience, or an outlet for the killer instinct, one thing it is not is a sport. Sport is when individuals or teams compete against each other under equal circumstances to determine who is better at a given game or endeavor. Hunting will be a sport when deer, elk, bears, and ducks are… given 12-gauge shotguns. Bet we’d see a lot fewer drunk yahoos (live ones, anyway) in the woods if that happened.
—R. Lerner

69.

The indifference, callousness, and contempt that so many people exhibit toward animals is evil first because it results in great suffering towards animals, and second because it results in an incalculably great impoverishment of human spirit.
—Ashley Montagu

70.

The right to lead a life free of fear is a fundamental right of all living beings. But this fundamental right is being brutally violated by humans in animal testing, meat and dairy industry, circus, zoos, aquariums, and sports.
—Ama H. Vanniarachchy

About the author

Lorenzo Jensen III

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