“If fewer people buy puppies from pet stores that obtain animals from puppy mills, people won’t operate as many of the mills. If fewer people buy meat from animals reared on factory farms, people won’t run as many of the farms. If fewer people buy products tested on animals, there won’t be as many experiments on animals conducted in laboratories. If fewer people buy products made with ivory, poachers won’t kill as many elephants.”
– Richard Faber
“We must do more than just cry out against the suffering of animals others are causing. We must look at how we ourselves are affecting them through the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the household products we buy — the list goes on. Only then will we be immune from the criticism of others crying out against the suffering of animals others are causing.”
– John Musso
“I very much hope to live to see a time in which all individuals wear only plant-based or synthetic clothing; only alternatives to laboratory tests involving the use of animals are carried out in laboratories throughout the world; all of the food we eat comes from plants or is cultured meat; there are no more homeless cats and dogs anywhere, and people no longer hunt and kill wildlife merely for ‘sport.'”
– Janice Myers
“The fundamental problem is that people are very reluctant to make changes that would significantly improve the welfare of animals. I became a vegetarian — that was easier than I thought it would be and now I do not miss meat at all. I stopped wearing leather — that was nothing. I stopped buying products tested on animals — to find alternatives all I had to do was to conduct a quick search online. I wish that individuals knew how little sacrifice really is necessary and just how much better off animals would be.”
– Diane Adams
“There is a tragic irony to improving animal welfare — the more the changes would help, the less many people are willing to make them.”
– Daniel Girone
“Make ethical choices in what you buy, do and watch. In a consumer-driven society our individual choices, used collectively for the good of animals and nature, can change the world faster than laws.”
– Marc Bekoff
“An active minority always wins out over a passive majority. That is why testing cosmetics on animals, confinement of farm animals in cages and crates, operating puppy mills, trophy hunting, etc. are still legal even though polls have shown that most people oppose them. All folks have to do to make them illegal is to get active.”
– Robert Thompson
“The wild animals we hunt, the laboratory animals we use in experiments and the farm animals we consume are no less deserving of their lives than our pets are.”
– Diane Adams
“Why are individuals who work to end cruelty to animals commonly kept as pets lauded for their efforts but people who work to expose animal abuse on factory farms or in laboratories or prevent the killing of wildlife merely for ‘sport’ called radicals and extremists?”
– Joseph Hayes
“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
“The man who kills the animals today is the man who kills the people who get in his way tomorrow.”
– Dian Fossey
“Life is as dear to a mute creature as it is to a man. Just as one wants happiness and fears pain, just as one wants to live and not to die, so do other creatures.”
– Dalai Lama
“A sharp distinction between humans and ‘animals’ is essential if we are to bend them to our will, make them work for us, wear them, eat them — without any disquieting tinges of guilt or regret. It is unseemly of us, who often behave so unfeelingly toward other animals, to contend that only humans can suffer. The behavior of other animals renders such pretensions specious. They are just too much like us.”
– Carl Sagan
“There is little that separates humans from other sentient beings. We all feel joy, we all crave to be alive and to live freely and we all share this planet together.”
– Mahatma Gandhi
“Anyone who says that life matters less to animals than it does to us has not held in his hands an animal fighting for its life. The whole of the being of the animal is thrown into that fight without reserve.”
– J. M. Coetzee
“There is no fundamental difference between man and animals in their ability to feel pleasure and pain, and happiness and misery.”
– Charles Darwin
“The feelings we have about slavery today are the feelings people will have about our treatment of animals used in entertainment — circuses, rodeos, theme parks, etc. — tomorrow.”
– Phillip Robinson
“The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for whites or women created for men.”
– Alice Walker
“Human beings are a part of the animal kingdom — not apart from it. The separation of ‘us’ and ‘them’ creates a false picture and is responsible for much suffering.”
– Marc Bekoff
“Tradition is no excuse for trophy hunting, bullfighting or any other form of animal cruelty.”
– Alex Miller
“It is contrary to human dignity to be responsible for causing any animals to suffer or to die needlessly in any way.”
– Pope Francis
“Killing animals for sport, for pleasure, for adventures and for hides and furs is a phenomenon that is at once disgusting and distressing. There is no justification in indulging in such acts of brutality.”
– Dalai Lama
“When there are too many human beings in a given area, we make way for them. When there are too many wild — or stray — animals, we kill them.”
– Diane Adams
“When we domesticated animals — for our own benefit — we took away their ability to fend for themselves and thus took on the responsibility to care for them. When you consider the number of companion animals who are abused, neglected or euthanized each year and the way we treat farm animals, you can only conclude that we are failing to live up to our obligation.”
– P. K. Barkur
“We no longer need fur for warmth and protection. There are plenty of textiles that provide that today. It’s pure whim and vanity to choose to wear fur. It shows a level of ignorance or lack of concern that reflects poorly on the wearer.”
– Tim Gunn
“Behind every beautiful fur there is a story. It is a bloody, barbaric story.”
– Mary Tyler Moore
“Cruelty is one fashion statement we can all do without.”
– Rue McClanahan
“To examine whether something is humane first determine whether you would want it done to you.”
– Andrea Kladar
“The basis of all animal rights should be the Golden Rule — we should treat them as we would wish them to treat us were any other species in our dominant position.”
– Christine Stevens
“If you don’t like seeing pictures of violence toward animals being posted, you need to help stop the violence — not the pictures.”
– Johnny Depp
“Taxpayers in the United States directly fund the killing of wildlife at the request of farmers and ranchers, experimentation on animals and the roundup of wild horses on public lands. United States taxpayers in addition subsidize the agriculture and energy industries, both of which are leading contributors to habitat destruction and climate change. The federal government spends billions of dollars on these programs each year. I for one would prefer that my tax dollars be used to help animals rather than harm them.”
– Harold Maurizio
“Man’s inhumanity to man is only surpassed by his cruelty to animals.”
– George Bernard Shaw
“If a man aspires towards a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from injury to animals.”
– Albert Einstein
“The question is not ‘Can they reason?’ nor ‘Can they talk?’ but ‘Can they suffer?'”
– Jeremy Bentham
“Animals can communicate quite well. And they do. And generally speaking, they are ignored.”
– Alice Walker
“It is hard to overstate the role willful ignorance plays in causing animals throughout the world to suffer.”
– Milton Davidson
“One of the most fundamental animal welfare problems is that the people who have the authority to make the decisions in many if not most cases simply are not qualified to exercise it and often are more interested in harming animals than helping them.”
– Janet Lochten
“Do you remember how you felt about animals when you were a child? That is how you still feel about them. All you have to do is unbury the feelings.”
– Peter Miller
“Speciesism — like racism and sexism — is a form of what I call ‘meism’ — the more like me you are, the more empathy I will have for you and the more I will be concerned about your welfare. Is that a good basis for deciding whom to help? Shouldn’t we be focusing on those most in need — those suffering the most — regardless of who and what they are?”
– Gordon Ellis
