Animal Ethics Quotes

• Ethics is in its unqualified form extended responsibility with regard to everything that has life.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Respect, Responsibility, Vegetarianism

  "Civilization and Ethics".

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• 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

  Freedom, Kindness, Compassion

  Albert Schweitzer (1958). “A Selection of Writings of and about Albert Schweitzer”, Boston : [s.n.], 1958 (Boston : H.N. Sawyer Company)

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• 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

  Positive, Philosophical, Compassion

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2016). “101 Facts of life”, p.8, Publishdrive

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• We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.

  Immanuel Kant

  Dog, Heart, Animal

  "True animal instinct", www.theguardian.com. September 2, 2005.

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• 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 A. Edison

  Life, Peace, Honesty

  "Innovate Like Edison : The Five-Step System for Breakthrough Business Success". Book by Michael J. Gelb and Sarah Miller Caldicott, p. 67,

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• Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Animal, Rights, Vegetarian Diet

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• The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creatures that cannot.

  Mark Twain

  Recovery, Animal, Intelligent

  Mark Twain (2009). “Mark Twain’s Book of Animals”, p.264, Univ of California Press

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• Today it is considered as exaggeration to proclaim constant respect for every form of life as being the serious demand of a rational ethic. But the time is coming when people will be amazed that the human race existed so long before it recognized that thoughtless injury to life is incompatible with real ethics. Ethics is in its unqualified form extended responsibility to everything that has life.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Respect, Real, Responsibility

  "Philosophy of Civilisation". Book by Albert Schweitzer (1923), translated by C. T. Campion, 1949.

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• All education should be directed toward the refinement of the individual's sensibilities in relation not only to one's fellow humans everywhere, but to all living things whatsoever.

  Ashley Montagu

  Life, Education, Equality

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• By ethical conduct toward all creatures, we enter into a spiritual relationship with the universe.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Spiritual, Nature, Animal

  Albert Schweitzer (1966). “The Teaching of Reverence for Life”

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• 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

  Cousin, Animal, Rights

  Outspoken Essays: Second Series "The Idea of Progress" (1922)

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• The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Wisdom, Peace, Kindness

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  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

  Fighting, Compassion, Animal

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• A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him, that of plants and animals as that of his fellow men, and when he devotes himself helpfully to all life that is in need of help.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Life, Death, Animal

  Albert Schweitzer (2014). “A Treasury of Albert Schweitzer”, p.67, Open Road Media

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• Until we have courage to recognize cruelty for what it is - whether its victim is human or animal - we cannot expect things to be much better in the world. There can be no double standard. We cannot have peace among men whose hearts find delight in killing any living creature. By every act that glorifies or even tolerates such moronic delight in killing, we set back the progress of humanity.

  Rachel Carson

  Peace, War, Heart

  "Rachel Carson: Legacy and Challenge", ed. Lisa H. Sideris and Kathleen Dean Moore Albany: State University of New York Press, (p. 102), 2008.

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• As long as people will shed the blood of innocent creatures there can be no peace, no liberty, no harmony between people. Slaughter and justice cannot dwell together.

  Isaac Bashevis Singer

  Animal, Compassion, Vegetarianism

  "Animal life in Jewish tradition: attitudes and relationships". Book by Elijah Judah Schochet, p. 297, 1984.

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• Life is as dear to a mute creature as it is to man. Just as one wants happiness and fears pain, just as one wants to live and not die, so do other creatures.

  Dalai Lama

  Pain, Men, Compassion

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• We need a boundless ethics which will include animals also.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Philosophical, Animal, Needs

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• The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny.

  Jeremy Bentham

  Animal, Rights, Hands

  An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation ch. 17 (1789)

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• 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

  Time, Men, Compassion

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• There will be no justice as long as man will stand with a knife or with a gun and destroy those who are weaker than he is.

  Isaac Bashevis Singer

  Gun, Men, Animal

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• Truly man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds them. We live by the death of others. We are burial places.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Kings, Animal, Men

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• According to the group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, fish have feelings too. Whenever my sons go fishing they always tell me, "Dad it doesn't hurt a fish to get hooked." Well I watch and I see and I believe it's painful for the fish.

  Donald Trump

  Funny Inspirational, Hurt, Dad

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• Animal factories are one more sign of the extent to which our technological capacities have advanced faster than our ethics.

  Peter Singer

  Animal, Ethics, Vegetarian

  Jim Mason, Peter Singer (1980). “Animal Factories”, Crown

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• The indifference, callousness and contempt that so many people exhibit toward animals is evil first because it results in great suffering in animals, and second because it results in an incalculably great impoverishment of the human spirit. All education should be directed toward the refinement of the individual's sensibilities in relation not only to one's fellow humans everywhere, but to all things whatsoever.

  Ashley Montagu

  Animal, People, Evil

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