“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

“We stopped eating meat many years ago. During the course of a Sunday lunch we happened to look out of the kitchen window at our young lambs playing happily in the fields. Glancing down at our plates, we suddenly realised we were eating the leg of an animal who had until recently been playing in a field herself. We looked at each other and said: "Wait a minute, we love these sheep-they're such gentle creatures. So why are we eating them?" It was the last time we ever did.”
— Paul and Linda McCartney

“The medical argument for animal testing doesn't stand up. Even if it did, I don't think we should kill other species. We think we're so much better; I'm not sure we are. I tell people, We've beaten into submission every animal on the face of the Earth, so we are the clear winners of whatever battle is going on between the species. Couldn't we be generous? I really do think it's time to get nice. No need to keep beating up on them. I think we've got to show that we're kind.”
— Paul McCartney

“Compassion is the foundation of everything positive, everything good. If you carry the power of compassion to the market place and the dinner table, you can make your life really count.”
— Rue McClanahan

“Intellectually, human beings and animals may be different, but it's pretty obvious that animals have a rich emotional life and that they feel joy and pain. It's easy to forget the connection between a hamburger and the cow it came from. But I forced myself to acknowledge the fact that every time I ate a hamburger, a cow had ceased to breathe and moo and walk around.”
— Moby

“If you look at the course of western history you'll see that we're slowly granting basic rights to everyone. A long time ago only kings had rights. Then rights were extended to property-owning white men. Then all men. Then women. Then children. Then the mentally retarded. Now we're agonizing over the extension of basic rights to homosexuals and animals. We need to finally accept that all sentient creatures are deserving of basic rights. I define basic rights as this --the ability to pursue life without having someone else's will involuntarily forced upon you. Or, as the framers of the constitution put it, the ability to have "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." By what criteria can you justify denying basic rights to any living thing? Realize that by whatever criteria you employ someone could deny basic rights to you if they objected to your species, sexual preferences, color, religion, ideology etc. Would you eat your housecat, or force a mentally retarded child to ingest oven cleaner? If not, then why is it ok to eat cows and test products on sentient animals? I believe that to knowingly commit actions that cause or condone suffering is reprehensible in the extreme. I call upon you to be compassionate and treat others as you want to be treated. If you don't want to be beaten, imprisoned, mutilated, killed or tortured then you shouldn't condone such behavior towards anyone, be they human or not.”
— Moby

“A good deed done to an animal is as meritorious as a good deed done to a human being, while an act of cruelty to an animal is a bad as an act of cruelty to a human being.”
— Prophet Mohammed

“The Utopians feel that slaughtering our fellow creatures gradually destroys the sense of compassion, which is the finest sentiment of which our human nature is capable.”
— Thomas More

“The wild, cruel beast is not behind the bars of the cage. He is in front of it.”
— Axel Munth

“Recognize meat for what it really is:  the antibiotic- and pesticide-laden corpse of a tortured animal.” 
— Ingrid Newkirk

“Lobsters are fascinating. They have a long childhood and an awkward adolescence. They use complicated signals to explore and establish social relationships with others. Their communications are direct and sophisticated. They flirt. Their pregnancies last nine months. Some are right-handed, some left-handed. They've even been seen walking hand-in-hand. Some can live to be more than 150 years old, though few (1%) survive the world's most devastating predator - the species with the who lobsters share so many traits - the human being.”
— Ingrid Newkirk

“I do not like eating meat because I have seen lambs and pigs killed.  I saw and felt their pain.  They felt the approaching death.  I could not bear it.  I cried like a child.  I ran up a hill and could not breathe.  I felt that I was choking.  I felt the death of the lamb.”
— Vaslav Nijinsky

“Out of 135 criminals, including robbers and rapists, 118 admitted that when they were children they burned, hanged and stabbed domestic animals.”
— Ogonyok

“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

“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

“To be non-violent to human beings and to be a killer or enemy of poor
animals is Satan's philosophy. In this age there is always enmity against animals, and therefore the poor creatures are always anxious. The reaction of the poor animals is being forced on human society, and therefore there is always the strain of cold or hot war between men, individually, collectively or nationally...”
— Pythagoras

“The earth affords a lavish supply of riches, of innocent foods, and
offers you banquets that involve no bloodshed or slaughter; only beasts
satisfy their hunger with flesh, and not even all of those, because horses, cattle, and sheep live on grass. As long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seeds of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.”
— Pythagoras

“I will not eat anything that walks, runs, skips, hops or crawls.  God knows that I've crawled on occasion, and I'm glad that no one ate me.” 
— Alex Poulos

“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

“How can man be possessed of kindness who, to increase his own flesh,
eats the flesh of other creatures. As those possess no property who do
not take care of it, so those possess no kindness who feed on flesh."
"Like the (murderous) mind of him who carries a weapon (in his hand),
the mind of him who feasts with pleasure on the body of another
(creature), has no regard for goodness.”
— Red Indian Chief

“Man did not weave the web of life: he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. To harm the earth is to heap contempt on its creator.”  
— Red Indian Chief

“Hunting... the least honourable form of war on the weak.”
— Paul Richard

“When we kill animals to eat them they end up killing us because their flesh...was never intended for human beings, who are naturally herbivores.”
— William C. Roberts, M.D

“It is the fate of every truth to be an object of ridicule when it is first acclaimed. It was once considered foolish to suppose that black men were really human beings and ought to be treated as such. What was once foolish has now become a recognized truth. 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

“The thinking man must oppose all cruel customs no matter how deeply rooted in tradition and surrounded by a halo. When we have a choice, we must avoid bringing torment and injury into the life of another, even the lowliest creature; to do so is to renounce our manhood and shoulder a guilt which nothing justifies.”
— Albert Schweitzer

“Until he extends the circle of compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace.”
— Albert Schweitzer

“While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth?”
— George Benard Shaw

“When a man wants to murder a tiger, he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him, he calls it ferocity.”
— George Bernard Shaw

“If a group of beings from another planet were to land on Earth — beings who considered themselves as superior to you as you feel yourself to be to other animals — would you concede them the rights over you that you assume over other animals?”
— George Benard Shaw

“Atrocities are not less atrocities when they occur in laboratories and are called medical research.”
— George Bernard Shaw

“Human beings are the only animals of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid.”
— George Bernard Shaw

“Animals are my friends...and I don't eat my friends.”  
— George Bernard Shaw

“The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them. That's the essence of inhumanity.”
— George Benard Shaw

“People ask me how I look so young, I tell them I look my age. It is other people who look older, what do you expect from people who eat corpses?”
— George Benard Shaw

“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

“Once people spend time with farm animals in a loving way ... a pig or cow or a little chicken or a turkey, they might find they relate with them the same way they relate with dogs and cats. People don't really think of them that way because they're on the plate. Why should they be food when other animals are pets? I would never eat my doggies.”
— Alicia Silverstone

“Even in the worm that crawls in the earth there glows a divine spark. When you slaughter a creature, you slaughter God.”
— Isaac Bashevis Singer

“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

“When a human being kills an animal for food, he is neglecting his own hunger for justice. Man prays for mercy, but is unwilling to extend it to others. Why then should man expect mercy from God? It is unfair to expect something that you are not willing to give.”
— Isaac B. Singer

“We are all God's creatures; that we pray to God for mercy and justice while we continue to eat the flesh of animals that are slaughtered on our account is not consistent.”
— Isaac Bashevis Singer

“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

“There will never be any peace in the world as long as we eat animals.”   
— Isaac Bashevis Singer

“People often say that humans have always eaten animals, as if this is a justification for continuing the practice. According to this logic, we should not try to prevent people from murdering other people, since this has also been done since the earliest of times.”
— Isaac Singer

“Animal factories are one more sign of the extent to which our technological capacities have advanced faster than our ethics.”
— Peter Singer

“All the arguments to prove man's superiority cannot shatter this hard fact: in suffering the animals are our equals.”
— Peter Singer

“A veteran USDA meat inspector from Texas describes what he has seen:  "Cattle dragged and choked... knocking 'em four, five, ten times.  Every now and then when they're stunned they come back to life, and they're up there agonizing.  They're supposed to be re-stunned but sometimes they aren't and they'll go through the skinning process alive.  I've worked in four large [slaughterhouses] and a bunch of small ones.  They're all the same.  If people were to see this, they'd probably feel really bad about it.  But in a packing house everybody gets so used to it that it doesn't mean anything.” 
— Slaughterhouse 1997

“Animal liberation is also human liberation. Animal liberationists care about the quality of life for all. We recognize our kinship with all feeling beings. We identify with the powerless and the vulnerable – the victims, all those dominated, oppressed and exploited. And it is the non-human animals whose suffering is the most intense, widespread, expanding, systematic and socially sanctioned of all.”
— Henry Spira

“We consume the carcasses of creatures of like appetites, passions and organs with our own, and fill the slaughterhouses daily with screams of pain and fear.”
— Robert Louis Stevenson

“I cannot fish without falling a little in self-respect... always when I have done I feel it would have been better if I had not fished.”
— Henry David Thoreau

“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

“I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals.”
— Henry David Thoreau

“No humane being, past the thoughtless age of boyhood, will wantonly murder any creature which holds its life by the same tenure that he does.”
— Henry David Thoreau

“Think of me tonite For that which you savor Did it give you something real,
or could you taste the pain of my death in its flavor?”
— Wayne K. Tolson

“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 Nikolaevich Tolstoy

“If he be really and seriously seeking to live a good life, the first thing from which he will abstain will always be the use of animal food, because ...its use is simply immoral, as it involves the performance of an act which is contrary to the moral feeling -- killing.”
— Leo Tolstoy

“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

“As long as there are slaughter houses, there will be battle fields.”
— Leo Tolstoy

“If a man earnestly seeks a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from animal food.”
— Leo Tolstoy

“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 and by violating his own feelings becomes cruel.” 
— Leo Tolstoy

“Refrain at all times from such foods as cannot be procured without violence and oppression.”
— Thomas Tryon

“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

“Of all the creatures ever made he (man) is the most detestable. He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain.”
— Mark Twain

“I think there's something odd about eating another living anything.”
— Shania Twain

“The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than blacks were made for whites, or women for men.”
— Alice Walker

“If experiments on animals were abandoned on grounds of compassion, mankind would have made a fundamental advance.”
— Richard Wagner

“I think there will come a time, and this is down the road a great many years, when civilized people will look back in horror on our generation and the ones that have preceded it: the idea that we should eat other living things running around on four legs, that we should raise them just for the purpose of killing them! The people of the future will say, meat-eaters in disgust and regard us in the same way that we regard cannibals and cannibalism.”
— Dennis Weaver

“In all the round world of Utopia there is no meat. There used to be, but now we cannot stand the thought of slaughterhouses. And it is impossible to find anyone who will hew a dead ox or pig. I can still remember as a boy the rejoicings over the closing of the last slaughterhouse.”
— H G Wells

“In their capacity to feel pain and fear, a pig is a dog is a bear is a boy.”
— Philip Wollen

“The fate of animals is of greater importance to me than the fear of appearing ridiculous; it is indissolubly connected with the fate of men.”
— Emile Zola