Quotes

Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight

The fate of animals is of greater importance to me than the fear of appearing ridiculous

All the arguments to prove man's superiority cannot shatter this hard fact: in suffering the animals are our equals

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

It were much better that a sentient being should never have existed, than that it should have existed only to endure unmitigated misery

One day a man was walking along the beach when he noticed a boy picking something up and gently throwing it into the ocean. Approaching the boy, he asked, 'What are you doing?' The youth replied, 'Throwing starfish back into the ocean. The surf is up and the tide is going out. If I don’t throw them back, they’ll die.' 'Son,' the man said, 'don’t you realize there are miles and miles of beach and hundreds of starfish? You can’t make a difference!' After listening politely, the boy bent down, picked up another starfish, and threw it back into the surf. Then, smiling at the man, he said…'I made a difference for that one.'

However scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity

Awareness is bad for the meat business. Conscience is bad for the meat business. Sensitivity to life is bad for the meat business. DENIAL, however, the meat business finds indispensable

Those who, by their purchases, require animals to be killed have no right to be shielded from the slaughterhouse or any other aspect of the production of the meat they buy. If it is distasteful for humans to think about, what can it be like for the animals to experience it?

Flesh eating is simply immoral, as it involves the performance of an act, which is contrary to moral feeling: killing. By killing, man suppresses in himself, unnecessarily, the highest spiritual capacity, that of sympathy and pity towards living creatures like himself

While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth?

For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other

Teaching a child not to step on a caterpillar is as valuable to the child, as it is to the caterpillar

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us the 'Universe', a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.

Such a situation, is dreadful. Not the suffering and death of the animals, but that man suppresses in himself unnecessarily, the highest spiritual capacity - that of sympathy and pity towards living creatures - and by violating his own feelings, becomes cruel. And how deeply seated in the human heart is the injunction not to take life. But by the assertion that God ordained the slaughter of animals, and above all as a result of habit, people entirely lose their natural feeling.