"You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is

concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity."

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way

its animals are treated."

~Mohandas Gandhi

"I abhor vivisection. It should at least be curbed. Better, it should be

abolished. I know of no achievement through vivisection, no scientific

discovery, that could not have been obtained without such barbarism and

cruelty. The whole thing is evil."

~Charles Mayo (founder of the Mayo Clinic)

"Can you really ask what reason Pythagoras had for abstaining from flesh?

For my part I rather wonder both by what accident and in what state of

soul or mind the first man did so, touched his mouth to gore and brought

his lips to the flesh of a dead creature, he who set forth tables of dead, stale

bodies and ventured to call food and nourishment the parts that had little

before bellowed and cried, moved and lived. How could his eyes endure the

slaughter when throats were slit and hides flayed and limbs torn from limb?

How could his nose endure the stench? How was it that the pollution did

not turn away his taste, which made contact with the sores of others and

sucked juices and serums from mortal wounds? It is certainly not lions and

wolves that we eat out of self-defense; on the contrary, we ignore these

and slaughter harmless,tame creatures without stings or teeth to harm us,

creatures that, I swear, Nature appears to have produced for the sake of

their beauty and grace. But nothing abashed us, not the flower-like like

tinting of the flesh, not the persuasiveness of the harmonious voice, not the

cleanliness of their habits or the unusual intelligence that may be found in

the poor wretches. No, for the sake of a little flesh we deprive them of sun,

of light, of the duration of life to which they are entitled by birth and being.

~Plutarch

"A human can be healthy without killing animals for food. Therefore if he

eats meat he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his

appetite."

~Leo Tolstoy

"One is dearest to God who has no enemies among the living beings, who is

nonviolent to all creatures."

~Bhagavad Gita

"One farmer says to me, "You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it

furnishes nothing to make the bones with;" and so he religiously devotes a

part of his day to supplying himself with the raw material of bones; walking

all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones,

jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle."

~Henry David Thoreau

"Truely man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds theirs. We live by

the death of others: we are burial places! I have from an early age abjured

the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look on the

murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men."

~Leonardo da Vinci

"Thou shalt not kill" does not apply to murder of one's own kind only, but

to all living beings; and this Commandment was inscribed in the human

breast long before it was proclaimed from Sinai.

~Leo Tolstoy

"It is only by softening and disguising dead flesh by culinary preparation

that it is rendered susceptible of mastication or digestion, and that the sight

of its bloody juices and raw horror does not excite intolerable loathing and

disgust."

~Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab Notes

"For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he

who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love."

~Pythagoras, mathematician

"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, artist and scientist

"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,author, Nobel Prize 1915

"In their behavior toward creatures, all men are Nazis. Human beings see

oppression vividly when they're the victims. Otherwise they victimize blindly

and without a thought."

~Isaac Bashevis Singer, author, Nobel Prize 1978

"I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a

whole human being."

~Abraham Lincoln, 16th U.S. President

"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, author

"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."

~ThomasEdison, inventor

"Not to hurt our humble brethren (the animals) is our first duty to them,

but to stop there is not enough. We have a higher mission--to be of service

to them whenever they require it.

~Saint Francis of Assisi (mystic and preacher)

"If a man aspires towards a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from

injury to animals."

~Albert Einstein

When a man has pity on all living creatures then only is he noble.

~Buddha (563? - 483? B.C.)

"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

"Until he extends the circle of compassion to all living things, man will not

himself find peace."

~Albert Schweitzer

"We are the living graves of murdered beasts, slaughtered to satisfy our

appetites. How can we hope in this world to attain the peace we say we are

so anxious for?"

~George Bernard Shaw (Living Graves, published 1951)

"Vivisection is the blackest of all the black crimes that a man is at present

committing against God and his fair creation. It ill becomes us to invoke in

our daily prayers the blessings of God, the Compassionate, if we in turn will

not practise elementary compassion towards our fellow creatures."

~Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948)

"During my medical education at the University of Basel I found vivisection

horrible, barbarous, and above all unnecessary."

~Carl G. Jung (psychologist)

"But for the sake of some little mouthful of flesh we deprive a soul of the

sun and light, and of that proportion of life and time it had been born into

the world to enjoy.

~Plutarch (c.AD 46-c.120)

"Now I can look at you in peace; I don't eat you anymore."

~Franz Kafka (novelist)

"Usually, the first thing a country does in the course of economic

development is to introduce a lot of livestock. Our data are showing that

this is not a very smart move and the Chinese are listening. They are

realizing that animal-based agriculture is not the way to go.... We are

basically a vegetarian species and should be eating a wide variety of plant

food and minimizing our intake of animal foods.... "Once people start

introducing animal products into their diet, that's when the mischief starts."

~T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D., of Cornell University, director of a study of 6,500

Chinese that found a close correlation between meat consumption and the

incidence of heart disease and cancer.

"The impact of countless hooves and mouths over the years has done more

to alter the type of vegetation and land forms of the West than all the water

projects, strip mines, power plants, freeways, and subdivsion developments

combined."

~Philip Fradkin in Audubon, National Audubon Society, NY

"A meat-fed world now appears a chimera. World grain production has

grown more slowly than population since 1984, and farmers lack new

methods for repeating the gains of the `green revolution.' Supporting the

world's current population of 5.4 billion people on an American-style diet

would require two-and-ahalf times as much grain as the world's farmers

produce for all purposes. A future world of 8 billion to 14 billion people

eating the American ration of 220 grams of grain-fed meat a day can be

nothing but a flight of fancy."

~Alan B. Durning and Holly Brough,Worldwatch Institute, Washington, D.C.

"There can be no question that more hunger can be alleviated with a given

quantity of grain by completely eliminating animals [from the food

production process]. About 2,000 pounds of concentrates [grains] must be

supplied to livestock in order to produce enough meat and other livestock

products to support a person for a year, whereas 400 pounds of grain

(corn, wheat, rice, soybeans, etc.) eaten directly will support a person for a

year. Thus, a given quantity of grain eaten directly will feed 5 times as many

people as it will if it is first fed to livestock and then is eaten indirectly by

humans in the form of livestock products...."

~M. E. Ensminger, Ph.D.,

internationally recognized animal agriculture specialist, former Department

of Animal Science Chairman at Washington State University, currently

President of Consultants-Agriservices, Clovis, California

"And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb-bearing seed which is

upon the face of the earth, and every tree in which is the fruit of a tree

yielding seed: to you it shall be as meat...."

~Genesis 1:29

"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

"Love animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy

untroubled. Do not trouble their joy, don't harrass them, don't deprive

them of their happiness, don't work against God's intent. Man, do not pride

yourself on superiority to animals; they are without sin, and you, with your

greatness, defile the earth by your appearance on it, and leave the traces of

your foulness after you - alas, it is true of almost every one of us!

~Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881)

"We live in a world which is full of misery and ignorance, and the plain duty

of each and all of us is to try to make the little corner he can influence

somewhat less miserable and somewhat less ignorant than it was before he

entered it."

~Thomas Huxley (1825-1895)

"The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? But rather, Can

they suffer?"

~Jeremy Bentham, 19th century Philosopher, Oxford University

Animals share with us the privilege of having a soul

~Pythagoras

"It should not be believed that all beings exist for the sake of the existence

of man. On the contrary, all the other beings too have been intended for

their own sakes and not for the sake of anything else."

~Maimonides (physician and philosopher)

"The soul is the same in all living creatures, although the body of each is

different."

~Hippocrates (philosopher)