Saturday, April 22, 2006

Quotations about Animal Rights II



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Evolutionary biology is now uttering and seeking those forces that link us with all those that have being. If we can discover the meaning in the trilling of a frog, perhaps we may understand why it is for us not merely noise but a song of poetry and emotion. ~Adrian Forsyth, A Natural History of Sex, 1986

Vivisection is a social evil because if it advances human knowledge, it does so at the expense of human character.
~George Bernard Shaw


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


The basis of all animal rights should be the Golden Rule: we should treat them as we would wish them to treat us, were any other species in our dominant position.
~Christine Stevens


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


The animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren; they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth.
~Henry Beston, The Outermost House, 1928


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


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


Terms like that, "Humane Society," are devised with people like me in mind, who don't care to dwell on what happens to the innocent.
~Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

I think animal testing is a terrible idea; they get all nervous and give the wrong answers.
~Author Unknown


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


A Robin Redbreast in a cage
Puts all Heaven in a Rage.
~William Blake, Auguries of Innocence


If a ferret bites you it is nearly always your own fault.
~Phil Drabble


The human spirit is not dead. It lives on in secret.... It has come to believe that compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind.
~Albert Schweitzer, Novel Peace Prize address, "The Problem of Peace in the World Today"


People must have renounced, it seems to me, all natural intelligence to dare to advance that animals are but animated machines.... It appears to me, besides, that [such people] can never have observed with attention the character of animals, not to have distinguished among them the different voices of need, of suffering, of joy, of pain, of love, of anger, and of all their affections. It would be very strange that they should express so well what they could not feel.
~Voltaire, Traité sur la tolerance


Heaven is by favor; if it were by merit your dog would go in and you would stay out. Of all the creatures ever made [man] is the most detestable. Of the entire brood, he is the only one... that possesses malice. He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain. ~Mark Twain

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


God loved the birds and invented trees. Man loved the birds and invented cages.
~Jacques Deval, Afin de vivre bel et bien


We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form.
~William Ralph Inge, Outspoken Essays , 1922

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