Animal Ethics Quotes

We cannot have two hearts, one for the animals and one for men. In cruelty towards the former and cruelty to the latter there is no difference but in the victim. ~ Alphonse De Lamartine

Men will be just to men when they are kind to animals. ~ Henry Bergh

We shall all have to be judged according to our works, whether they be towards man or towards beast. ~ Anna Sewell

Animals who are exploited for "organic" foods are raised, maintained, transported, and slaughtered just like their nonorganic" counterparts: They are debeaked, dehorned, detoed, castrated, and/or branded, and they are kept, transported, and slaughtered in the same deplorable conditions. ~ Lisa Kemmerer

If you must give me a label, then label me a human being. I have no pride in being a human, though, because I have nothing to do with my becoming one.
But, whereas animals don't have a rational code of ethics, I like to think I do. Which is where I am partisan. Moral partisanship is the reason for my "anger." And if I don't protest what needed to be protested, I might just as well be an animal. ~ Paul Krassner

It is nothing short of a miracle to be in the presence of a farm animal who has managed to reach old age. Most of their kin die before they are six months old. ~ Isa Leshko

Many animals flourish not in spite of the fact that they are "animals" but because they are "animals" - or even more precisely, perhaps, because they are felt to be members of our families and our communities, regardless of their species. And yet, at the very same moment, billions of animals in factory farms, many of whom are very near to or indeed exceed cats and dogs and other companion animals in the capacities we take to be relevant to standing (the ability to experience pain and suffering, anticipatory dread, emotional bonds and complex social interactions, and so on), have as horrible a life as one could imagine, also because they are "animals."

Clearly, then, the question here is not simply of the "animal" as the abjected other of the "human" tout court, but rather something like a distinction between bios and zoe that obtains within the domain of domesticated animals itself. ~ Cary Wolfe

The small family living unit lacks space, Earth, other animals, seasons, natural temperatures, and so on. The pet is either sterilized or sexually isolated, extremely limited in his exercise, deprived of almost all other animal contact, and fed with artificial foods. This is the material process which lies behind the truism the pets come to resemble their masters or mistresses. They are creatures of their owners way of life. ~ John Berger

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

In justifying cruelty to animals we put ourselves also on the animal level. We choose the jungle and must abide by our choice. ~ C.S. Lewis

We must never allow the voice of humanity within us to be silenced. It is humanity's sympathy with all creatures that first makes us truly human. ~ Albert Schweitzer

The abuse of a harmless thing is the essence of sin. ~ Aiden Wilson Tozer

In the relations of humans with the animals, with the flowers, with all the objects of creation, there is a whole great ethic scarcely seen as yet. ~ Victor Hugo

Anyone who says that life matters less to an animal 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. When you say that the fight lacks a dimension of intellectual or imaginative horror, I agree. It is not the mode of being animals to have an intellectual horror: their whole being is in the living flesh ... I urge you to walk, flank to flank, beside the beast that is prodded down the chute to his executioner. ~ J.M. Coetzee

Gaia giveth even as she taketh away.

The warming of the global climate over the past century had melted permafrost and glaciers, shifted rainfall patterns, altered animal migratory routes, disrupted agriculture, drowned cities, and similarly necessitated a thousand thousand adjustments, recalibrations and hasty retreats. But humanity's unintentional experiment with the biosphere had also brought some benefits.

Now we could grow oysters in New England.

Six hundred years ago, oysters flourished as far north as the Hudson. Native Americans had accumulated vast middens of shells on the shores of what would become Manhattan. Then, prior to the industrial age, there was a small climate shift, and oysters vanished from those waters.

Now, however, the tasty bivalves were back, their range extending almost to Maine.

The commercial beds of the Cape Cod Archipelago produced shellfish as good as any from the heyday of Chesapeake Bay. Several large wikis maintained, regulated and harvested these beds, constituting a large share of the local economy.

But as anyone might have predicted, wherever a natural resource existed, sprawling and hard of defense, poachers would be found. ~ Paul Di Filippo

My nurture mother never would have reset me. And I was never a kit. Or a 'female.' I might be a non-human, but I'm not an animal. I'm a girl. ~ Karen Sandler

A garden without cats, it will be generally agreed, can scarcely deserve to be called a garden at all ... much of the magic of the heather beds would vanish if, as we bent over them, there was no chance that we might hear a faint rustle among the blossoms, and find ourselves staring into a pair of sleepy green eyes. ~ Beverley Nichols

A human body in no way resembles those that were born for ravenousness; it hath no hawk's bill, no sharp talon, no roughness of teeth, no such strength of stomach or heat of digestion, as can be sufficient to convert or alter such heavy and fleshy fare. But if you will contend that you were born to an inclination to such food as you have now a mind to eat, do you then yourself kill what you would eat. But do it yourself, without the help of a chopping-knife, mallet or axe, as wolves, bears, and lions do, who kill and eat at once. Rend an ox with thy teeth, worry a hog with thy mouth, tear a lamb or a hare in pieces, and fall on and eat it alive as they do. But if thou had rather stay until what thou eat is to become dead, and if thou art loath to force a soul out of its body, why then dost thou against nature eat an animate thing? There is nobody that is willing to eat even a lifeless and a dead thing even as it is; so they boil it, and roast it, and alter it by fire and medicines, as it were, changing and quenching the slaughtered gore with thousands of sweet sauces, that the palate being thereby deceived may admit of such uncouth fare. ~ Plutarch

Alasdair MacIntyre is one of the world's most influential living moral philosophers. He has written 30 books on ethics and held a variety of professorial chairs over the past four decades in North America. ~ John Cornwell

We have vexed and bothered every plant and every animal on every continent. ~ Diane Ackerman

'Secretariat' was such a magnificent animal, unbelievably beautiful and powerful. It's always nice to see something that close to perfection, a reason to celebrate. ~ John Malkovich

Grant knew that people could not imagine geological time. Human life was lived on another scale of time entirely. An apple turned brown in a few minutes. Silverware turned black in a few days. A compost heap decayed in a season. A child grew up in a decade. None of these everyday human experiences prepared people to be able to imagine the meaning of eighty million years - the length of time that had passed since this little animal had died. ~ Michael Crichton

The higher animals are in a sense drawn into Man when he loves them and makes them (as he does) much more nearly human than they would otherwise be. ~ C.S. Lewis

Every being has its own important and unique place in the cosmic dance. ~ Laurence Overmire

The golden mean in ethics, as in physics, is the centre of the system and that about which all revolve, and though to a distant and plodding planet it be an uttermost extreme, yet one day, when that planet's year is completed, it will be found to be central. ~ Henry David Thoreau

God is the creator of all things, right? He is the force that dictates the laws of the universe, and is therefore the ultimate source of ethics. He is absolute morality ...
We claim to be doing good. But the Lord Ruler - as God - defines what is good. So by opposing him we're actually evil. But since he's doing the wrong thing, does evil actually count as good in this case? ~ Brandon Sanderson

Compassion is the basis of all truthful relationship: it means being present with love-for ourselves and for all life, including animals, fish, birds, and trees. Compassion is bringing our deepest truth into our actions, no matter how much the world seems to resist, because that is ultimately what we have to give this world and one another. ~ Ram Dass

Or did a Martian sit within each, ruling, directing, using, much as a man's brain sits and rules in his body? I began to compare the things to human machines, to ask myself for the first time in my life how an ironclad or a steam engine would seem to an intelligent lower animal. ~ H.G.Wells

Women have an important role in agriculture. We need to introduce technology, which will help us harness the potential of women in agriculture. We need to divide the agriculture sector into three parts- regular farming, farming of trees and animal husbandry. If we are able to do this, the contribution of our women will increase even more. ~ Narendra Modi

I was a vegan for about a year, and it was a great experience. And I became vegan not because of animal rights. I became vegan for a year for health purposes ... It was just kind of a detox that I was going through. ~ Tia Mowry

Dolphins have one of the highest ratios of brain size to body mass in the animal kingdom. Measured in this way, a dolphin's brain is second in size only to that of a human's, and well above that of our closest genetic relative, the chimpanzee. A large brain-to-body size ratio is often considered a hallmark of intelligence, although it's not the only factor. But it is something we humans celebrate in ourselves and regard as key to the flowering of human intelligence. ~ Virginia Morell

It seems only fair," Matthew continued. "A bit of karma, if you will." He twirled the stake again. "Shall we see how long you scream?"
"Are you ever going to shut up?" I snapped, fear and irritation filling me in equal measures. "This isn't your monologue, Hamlet. It's the battle scene, in case you've forgotten."
His eyes narrowed so fast they nearly sparked. They were the color of honey on fire. One of the others growled like an animal, low in his throat. It made all the hairs on my arms stand straight up.
I was going to die for making fun of Shakespeare.
My English Lit professor would be so proud. ~ Alyxandra Harvey

Historically, all ethics undoubtedly begin with religion; but I do not now deal with historical questions. I do not ask who was the first lawgiver. I only maintain that it is we, and we alone, who are responsible for adopting or rejecting some suggested moral laws; it is we who must distinguish between the true prophets and the false prophets. All kinds of norms have been claimed to be God-given. If you accept 'Christian' ethics of equality and toleration and freedom of conscience only because of its claim to rest upon divine authority, then you build on a weak basis; for it has been only too often claimed that inequality is willed by God, and that we must not be tolerant with unbelievers. If, however, you accept the Christian ethics not because you are commanded to do so but because of your conviction that it is the right decision to take, then it is you who have decided. ~ Karl Popper

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

The evolution of the human race will not be accomplished in the ten thousand years of tame animals, but in the million years of wild animals, because man is, and always will be, a wild animal. ~ Charles Galton Darwin

Adam was told to name the animals. Adam studied each kind and gave them a name based on his observations. Every animal "kind" has some behavior or characteristic that is unique to that animal type. When you know the Hebrew name for an animal, you get a peek at how a perfect man, speaking a perfect language, understood that perfect animal. ~ Michael Ben Zehabe

He, on the other hand, had the look of royalty, from his angular face and regal posture down to the modern yet tailored fit of his mint colored button down shirt and khaki pants. Not many men could wear pastels and still manage to look like they could hunt down some predatory animal, cook it up for dinner, and then use its hide to make you a purse. ~ Leia Shaw

Although homosexual behavior is very common in the animal world, it seems to be very uncommon that individual animals have a long-lasting predisposition to engage in such behavior to the exclusion of heterosexual activities. Thus, a homosexual orientation, if one can speak of such thing in animals, seems to be a rarity. ~ Simon LeVay

I trudge toward the porch, entertaining the idea of running the other way. But technically, I shouldn't be in any trouble. It wasn't my car. I'm not the one who got a ticket. Samantha Forza did. And the picture on Samantha Forza's driver's license looks a lot like Rayna. She told Officer Downing that she swerved to keep from hitting a camel, which Officer Downing graciously interpreted as a deer after she described it as "a hairy animal with four legs and a horn."
Since no one formed a search party to look for either a camel or a unicorn, I figured we were in the clear. But from Mom's expression, I'm miles from clear.
"Hi," I say as I reach the steps.
"We'll see about that," she says, grabbing my face and shining a pen light in my eyes.
I slap it away. "Really? You're checking my pupils? Really?"
"Hal said you looked hazy," she says, clipping the pen back on the neckline of her scrubs.
"Hal? Who's Hal?"
"Hal is the paramedic who took your signature when you declined medical treatment. He radioed in to the hospital after he left you."
"Oh. Well, then Hal would have noticed I was just in an accident, so I might have been a little out of it. Doesn't mean I was high." So it wasn't small-town gossip, it was small-county gossip. Good ole Hal's probably transported hundreds of patients to my mom in the ER two towns over.
She scowls. "Why didn't you call me? Who is Samantha?"
I sigh and push past her. There's no reason to have this co ~ Anna Banks

[Man] is the only animal who lives outside of himself, whose drive is in external things - property, houses, money, concepts of power. He lives in his cities and his factories, in his business and job and art. But having projected himself into these external complexities, he is them. His house, his automobile are a part of him and a large part of him. This is beautifully demonstrated by a thing doctors know - that when a man loses his possessions a very common result is sexual impotence. ~ John Steinbeck

How can we expect wild animals to survive if we give them nowhere in the wild to live? ~ Anthony Douglas Williams

If you think humans are meat-eaters then try eating the animal raw like every other meat-eater on the planet. If something is not palatable in its raw state then you probably shouldn't be eating it. ~ David Wolfe

I love animals and feel very strongly that people should not be allowed to buy a pet if they are not able to look after it. ~ Kirsty Gallacher

I am an on-and-off vegetarian. Sometimes on, mostly off. I think it is better to be a vegetarian but occasionally, the call of the hot dog overpowers my ethics. ~ Jonathan Safran Foer

Time doesn't move at all, I thought in irritation. Like a domestics animal, time doesn't move without human beings' strict supervision. Like a horse or a sheep, time won't move a step without grown ups' orders. We are a steady state in the stagnation of time. ~ Kenzaburo Oe