"If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons."
-- James Thurber

Life is as dear to the mute creature as it is to man. Just as one wants happiness and fears pain, just as one wants to live and not to die, so do other creatures. -- His Holiness The Dalai Lama

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

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

Hunting is not a sport. In a sport, both sides should know they're in the game. ~Paul Rodriguez

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

In an earlier stage of our development most human groups held to a tribal ethic. Members of the tribe were protected, but people of other tribes could be robbed or killed as one pleased. Gradually the circle of protection expanded, but as recently as 150 years ago we did not include blacks. So African human beings could be captured, shipped to America and sold. In Australia white settlers regarded Aborigines as a pest and hunted them down, much as kangaroos are hunted down today. Just as we have progressed beyond the blatantly racist ethic of the era of slavery and colonialism, so we must now progress beyond the speciesist ethic of the era of factory farming, of the use of animals as mere research tools, of whaling, seal hunting, kangaroo slaughter and the destruction of wilderness. We must take the final step in expanding the circle of ethics. ~Pete Singer

Get a feel for fur: Slam your fingers in a car door. ~Anonymous, on the use of steel traps to capture fur-bearing animals, cited in Audubon, November 1990

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

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

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

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

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


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