With the three means of punishment, words, thoughts and
acts, ye shall not injure living things.
Jaina Sutras (Jainism)
He who harms animals has not understood or renounced deeds
of sin ... Those whose minds are at peace and who are free from passions
do not desire to live at the expense of others.
Acharanga Sutra (Jainism)
The butcher relenteth not at the bleating of the lamb;
neither is the heart of the cruel moved with ditress. But the tears of
the compassionate are sweeter than dew-drops, falling from roses on the
bosom of spring.
Akhenaton? (c.BC 1375)
The ways are two: love and want of love. That is all.
Menchius (?732-?289 BC) (Confucian)
This is the sum of duty: do naught to others which if
done to thee, would cause thee pain.
Mahabharata (Hindu)
When a man has pity on all living creatures then only
is he noble.
Buddha (563? - 483? B.C.)
Hurt not others with that which pains yourself.
Udanavarga (Buddhist)
The Bhuddha has mercy even on the meanest thing.
Vinaya, Cullavagga Khandhaka (Buddhist)
All beings seek for happiness; so let your compassion
extend itself to all.
Mahavamsa (Buddhist)
Because he has pity on every living creature, therefore
is a man called 'holy'.
Dhammapada (Buddhist)
Cruelty is fed, not weakened by tears.
Publilius Syrus (fl. B.C. 42)
All cruelty springs from weakness.
Seneca (4 BC - AD 65)
An adulteress was forgiven, who passed by a dog at a well,
and the dog was holding out his tongue from thirst, which was near killing
him. The woman drew off her boot and tied it to the end of her veil, and
drew water for the dog, and gave him to drink, and for this she was forgiven.
Mishkat-el-Masabih (Islam)
He who abstains from anything animate ... will be much
more careful not to injure those of his own species. For he who loves the
genus will not hate any species of animals.
Porphyry (233-304)
Have a compassionate heart towards all creatures.
Attr. Ko Hung (284-363 AD) (Confucian-Taoist)
He that will not be merciful to his beast is a beast himself.
Thomas Fuller (1608-1661)
True benevolence, or compassion, extends itself through
the whole of existence and sympathises with the distress of every creature
capable of sensation.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719)
To give pain is the tyranny; to make happy, the true empire
of beauty.
Richard Steele (1672-1729)
There is something in animals beside the power of motion.
They are not machines; they feel.
Charles De Secondat Montesquieu (1689-1755)
I had rather, if cruelty has been prevented by the four
prints [The Four Stages of Cruelty], be maker of them than of the [Raphael]
cartoons.
William Hogarth (1697-1764)
The butcher knocks down the stately ox with no more compassion
than the blacksmith hammers a horse-shoe, and plunges his knife into the
throat of an innocent lamb with as little reluctance as the tailor sticks
his needle into the collar of a coat.
Soame Jenyns (1704-1787)
The more we come in contact with animals and observe their
behaviour, the more we love them, for we see how great is their care of
the young.
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
If [man] is not to stifle his human feelings, he must
practise kindness towards animals, for 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 (1724-1804)
Cruelty to dumb animals is one of the distinguishing vices
of low and base minds. Wherever it is found, it is a certain mark of ignorance
and meanness; a mark which all the external advantages of wealth, splendour,
and nobility, cannot obliterate. It is consistent neither with learning
nor true civility.
William Jones (1726-1800)
What is it that should trace the insuperable line? ...The
question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?
Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)
The habit of shedding blood, or even of seeing it shed,
corrupts all sentiment of humanity.
Compte de Volney (1757-1820)
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 (1780-1847)
I wish no living thing to suffer pain.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
For there are deeds which have no form, sufferings which
have no tongue.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
It were much better that a sentient being should never
have existed, than that it should have existed only to endure unmitigated
misery.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
Animal life, sombre mystery. All nature protests against
the barbarity of man, who misapprehends, who humiliates, who tortures his
inferior brethren.
Jules Michelet (1798-1874)
I could not have slept to-night if I had left that helpless
little creature to perish on the ground. (reply to friends who chided him
for delaying them by stopping to return a fledgling to its nest.)
attr. Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
Human dignity begins to assert itself only at the point
where man is distinguishable from the beast by pity for it.
Richard Wagner (1813-1883)
The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute
of man.
Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
My doctrine is this, that if we see cruelty or wrong that
we have the power to stop, and do nothing, we make ourselves sharers in
the guilt.
Anna Sewell (1820-1878)
The behaviour of men to the lower animals, and their behaviour
to each other, bear a constant relationship.
Herbert Spencer (1820-1903)
The awful wrongs and sufferings forced upon the innocent,
helpless, faithful animal race, form the blackest chapter in the whole
world's history.
Edward Freeman (1823-1892)
I am sometimes asked "Why do you spent so much of your
time and money talking about kindness to animals when there is so much
cruelty to men?" I answer: "I am working at the roots."
George T.Angell (1823-1909)
If a man aspires towards a righteous life, his first act
of abstinence is from injury to animals.
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)
... the cruelty that goes under the barbarous regime we
call civilisation.
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)
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 (1847-1931)
Much of the indifference, apathy, and even cruelty we
see has its origin in the false education given the young concerning the
rights of animals, and their duty towards them.
J.Todd Ferrier (1855-1943)
Cruelty is the vice most natural to dullness of mind.
H.W.Nevinson (1856-1941)
The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate
them, but to be indifferent to them, that's the essence of inhumanity.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Cruelty must be whitewashed by a moral excuse, and a pretence
of reluctance.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
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 (1860-1954)
Once admit that we have the right to inflict unnecessary
suffering and you destroy the very basis of human society.
John Galsworthy (1867-1933)
The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be
judged by the way its animals are treated.
Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948)
The things I feared were not in the sky, but in the nature
and in the touch of humanity. The cruelty of children .. the blindness
of the unpitiful - these were my terrors. But not the crash of thunder
overhead, not the bolts of fire from the clouds.
Ellen Glasgow (1874-1945)
...this rage - I have never forgotten it - contained every
anger, every revolt I had ever felt in my life - the way I felt when I
saw the black dog hunted, the way I felt when I watched old Uncle Henry
taken away to the almshouse, the way I felt whenever I had seen people
or animals hurt for the pleasure or profit of others.
Ellen Glasgow (1874-1945)
It is man's sympathy with all creatures that first makes
him truly a man.
Dr Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965)
Until he extends his circle of compassion to all living
things, man will not himself find peace.
Dr. Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965)
Our task must be to free ourselves...by widening our circle
of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and
its beauty.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
Love of animals is a universal impulse, a common ground
on which all of us may meet. By loving and understanding animals, perhaps
we humans shall come to understand each other.
Dr Louis J.Camuti (1893-1981)
Cruelty has cursed the human family for countless ages.
It is almost impossible for one to be cruel to animals and kind to humans.
If children are permitted to be cruel to their pets and other animals,
they easily learn to get the same pleasure from the misery of fellow-humans.
Such tendencies can easily lead to crime.
Fred A.McGrand (1895- )
Cruelty is the luxury of those who have nothing to do,
like drugs or racing stables.
Marguerite Vourcenar (1903- )
The indifference, callousness and contempt that so many
people exhibit toward animals is evil first because it results in an incalculably
great impoverishment of human spirit.
Ashley Montagu (1905- )
I don't think you should hurt or kill animals just to
entertain an audience. Animals should have some rights. But there are a
lot of directors, including Ingmar Bergman, who will injure animals to
further a plot. I will have none of it.
James Mason (1909-1984)
Show me the enforced laws of a state for the prevention
of cruelty to animals and I in turn will give you a correct estimate of
the refinement, enlightenment, integrity and equity of that commonwealth's
people.
L.T.Danshiell (1914- )
The heart of the matter is that some people like to cause
injury or death to living things. And many of those who do not are indifferent
to those who do.
Norman Cousins (1915 - )
I hope to make people realize how totally helpless animals
are, how dependent on us, trusting as a child must that we will be kind
and take care of their needs ...[They] are an obligation put on us, a responsibility
we have no right to neglect, nor to violate by cruelty.
James Herriot (1916- )
Who can go to a rodeo and then criticize the hunter? ...
an expertly placed bullet would be the best gift a rodeo horse could receive.
Roger Caras (1924 - )
I feel very sorry for women who continue to purchase real
fur coats. They are lacking in a woman's most important requisites, heart
and sensitivity.
Jayne Meadows (1926- )
"Sentimentalist" is the abuse with which people counter
the accusation that they are cruel, thereby implying that to be sentimental
is worse that to be cruel, which it isn't.
Brigid Brophy (1929- )
I am not basically a conservationist. When the last great
whale is slaughtered, as it surely will be, the whales' suffering will
be over. This is not the whales' loss, but man's. I am not concerned about
the wiping out of a species - this is man's folly - I have only one concern,
the suffering which we deliberately inflict upon animals whilst they live.
Clive Hollands (1929- )
I dream of a world where Man is at peace, not only with
himself, but also with all the other creatures of the Earth. I long for
a day when Man rejects the exploitation of other species for food, clothing,
health, entertainment or even companionship. – for such a day will mean
that cruelty no longer exists and it is cruelty which dominates my every
conscious moment.
John Bryant (1942- )
An individual animal doesn't care if its species is facing
extinction - it cares if it is feeling pain.
Ronnie Lee (1951- )
Out of 135 criminals, including robbers and rapists, 118
admitted that when they were children they burned, hanged and stabbed domestic
animals.
Ogonyok (1979) (Soviet anti-cruelty magazine)
The Goddess of mercy has a thousand hands - and needs them all.
