| |
"Treat
Others As You Would Like To Be Treated."
(The Golden Rule)
Many
of the most
important, famous, respectable and intelligent people today
and in the past, have been and are vegetarians!
Pythagoras
, Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein, Mahatma Gandhi
-- are only a few of them.
|
"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
Bernard Shaw,
playwright, Nobel Prize 1925
|
The
golden rule of treating others, as you would like to be treated, should
not only apply to men but to every species, every creature.
If
you don't want to suffer because you are not as smart or strong, you
also shouldn't harm anything just because you are superior.
But there are also other reasons
to be vegetarian!
The Economic reason
The
simple fact is that to
produce 1 lb of meat, it requires over 16 lbs of grain and many gallons
of water. Millions of animals are breed for meat production, if they
were not breed and the vegetation was used to feed people. There would
be no hunger in the World.
Which would you choose; 1 lb
of meat, which involves killing and maybe disease (cancer, heart or mad
cow). Or 16 lbs of grain, many gallons of water with no killing and
good health?
The world's natural resources
are being rapidly depleted as a result of meat-eating.
Raising livestock for their meat is a very inefficient way of
generating food. Pound for pound, far more resources must be expended
to produce meat than to produce grains, fruits and vegetables. For
example, more than half of all water used for all purposes in the U.S.
is consumed in livestock production. The amount of water used in
production of the average cow is sufficient to float a destroyer (a
large naval ship). While 25 gallons of water are needed to produce a
pound of wheat, 5,000 gallons are needed to produce a pound of
California beef. That same 5,000 gallons of water can produce 200
pounds of wheat. If this water cost were not subsidized by the
government, the cheapest hamburger meat would cost more than $35 per
pound.
Meat-eating is devouring oil reserves at an alarming rate. It takes
nearly 78 calories of fossil fuel (oil, natural gas, etc.) energy to
produce one calory of beef protein and only 2 calories of fossil fuel
energy to produce one calory of soybean. If every human ate a
meat-centered diet, the world's known oil reserves would last a mere 13
years. They would last 260 years if humans stopped eating meat
altogether. That is 20 times longer, giving humanity ample time to
develop alternative energy sources.
Thirty-three percent of all raw materials (base products of farming,
forestry and mining, including fossil fuels) consumed by the U.S. are
devoted to the production of livestock, as compared with 2% to produce
a complete vegetarian diet.
Help in ending World Hunger.
"If
everyone adopted a vegetarian diet and no food were wasted, current
[food] production would theoretically feed 10 billion people [56
percent more people than alive today], more than the projected
population for the year 2050."
"Producing a pound of animal
protein requires about 100 times as much water as producing a pound of
vegetable protein."
Much of the world's massive
hunger problems could be solved by the
reduction or elimination of meat-eating. The reasons: 1) livestock
pasture needs cut drastically into land which could otherwise be used
to grow food; 2) vast quantities of food which could feed humans is fed
to livestock raised to produce meat.
This year alone, twenty million people worldwide will die as a result
of malnutrition. One child dies of malnutrition every 2.3 seconds. One
hundred million people could be adequately fed using the land freed if
Americans reduced their intake of meat by a mere 10%.
Twenty percent of the corn grown in the U.S. is eaten by people. Eighty
percent of the corn and 95% of the oats grown in the U.S. is eaten by
livestock. The percentage of protein wasted by cycling grain through
livestock is calculated by experts as 90%.
One acre of land can produce 40,000 pounds of potatoes, or 250 pounds
of beef. Fifty-six percent of all U.S. farmland is devoted to beef
production, and to produce each pound of beef requires 16 pounds of
edible grain and soybeans, which could be used to feed the hungry.
Global warming
The temperature of the earth
is rising. This global warming, known as "the greenhouse effect,"
results primarily from carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil
fuels, such as oil and natural gas. Three times more fossil fuels must
be burned to produce a meat-centered diet than for a meat-free diet. If
people stopped eating meat, the threat of higher world temperatures
would be vastly diminished.
Global warming could be
controlled if we all became vegetarians and stopped eating meat.The
animals we eat emit 21% of all the carbon dioxide that can be
attributed to human activity. We could therefore slash man-made
emissions of carbon dioxide simply by abolishing all livestock.
Go here for even more reasons:
101 Reasons
Why I'm a Vegetarian
If you want to meet and
discuss with other vegetarians around the world check out this forum:
veggieboards.com
Famous
People about Vegetarianism and Animal Rights
| "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
(582 BC
– 496 BC, mathematician and philosopher, "the father of
numbers")
|
Vegetarianism
Vegetarian Animal Rights
| "I have from an early
age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I
will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder
of men."
"Truly man is the
king of beasts, for his
brutality exceeds them. We live by the death of others. We are burial
places..."
Leonardo
da Vinci
(1452 - 1519, universal genius)
|
Vegetarianism
Vegetarian Animal Rights
| "Our task must be to
free ourselves . . . by widening our circle of compassion to embrace
all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty."
"Nothing will
benefit
human health and increase chances of survival for life on earth as much
as the evolution to a vegetarian diet."
"It is my view
that
the vegetarian manner of living by its purely physical effect on the
human temperament would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind."
Albert
Einstein
(Physicist, Nobel Prize 1921)
|
| "The greatness of a
nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are
treated."
"To my mind the
life
of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being. I should be
unwilling to take the life of a lamb for the sake of the human body. I
hold that, the more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is to the
protection by man from the cruelty of man."
"To see the
universal
and all-pervading Spirit of Truth face to face one must be able to love
the meanest of creation as oneself."
Mahatma
Gandhi
(Statesman and philosopher)
|
Vegetarianism
Vegetarian Animal Rights
| "All beings tremble
before violence. All fear death, all love life. See yourself in others.
Then whom can you hurt? What harm can you do?"
"Since all
sentient
beings are equal as my only son, how can I allow my followers to eat
the flesh of my son? Eating meat to me is out of the question. I have
never allowed, I am not allowing, and I will never allow this practice
- I have strictly condemned eating meat in every way."
Buddha
(The
Enlightened One, Buddhist figure)
|
Vegetarianism
Vegetarian Animal Rights
| "The thinking man must
oppose all cruel customs no matter how deeply rooted in tradition and
surrounded by 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."
"Until he extends
the circle of his
compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace."
“Hear our
humble prayer, o God, for our friends the animals who are suffering;
for any that are hunted or lost or deserted or frightened or
hungry….We entreat for them all Thy mercy and pity, and for
those who deal with them we ask a heart of compassion and gentle hands
and kindly words. Make us, ourselves, to be true friends to animals and
so to share the blessings of the merciful.”
“Very little
of the great cruelty shown by men can really be attributed to cruel
instinct. Most of it comes from thoughtlessness or inherited habit. The
roots of cruelty therefore, are not so much strong as widespread. But
the time must come when inhumanity protected by custom and
thoughtlessness will succumb before humanity championed by thought. Let
us work that this time may come.”
Dr
Albert Schweizer
(Theologian, musician, philosopher, and physician. He received the 1952
Nobel Peace Prize.)
|
| "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?"
"When a man wants
to murder an animal, it's
called sport, when the animal wants to murder him, it is called
ferocity."
"While we
ourselves
are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal
conditions on this earth?"
"Atrocities are
not
less atrocities when they occur in laboratories and are called medical
research."
"The worst sin
towards
our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to
them, that's the essence of inhumanity."
"Animals are my
friends...and I don't eat my friends."
George
Bernard Shaw
(Playwright, Nobel Prize 1925)
|
Vegetarianism
Vegetarian Animal Rights
| "As long as there are
slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields."
"What I think
about
vivisection is that if people admit that they have the right to take or
endanger the life of living beings for the benefit of many, there will
be no limit to their cruelty."
"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."
"It may be
suggested
by some books that it is not a sin to kill an animal, but it is written
in our own hearts - more clearly than in any book - that we should take
pity on animals in the same way as we do on humans."
"A man can live
and 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.
And to act so is immoral."
"If a man aspires
towards a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from injury to
animals."
Leo
Tolstoy (Author, novelist,
reformer, and moral thinker)
|
Vegetarianism
Vegetarian Animal Rights
| "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)
|
| "What is it that
should trace the insuperable line? ...The question is not, Can they
reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?"
Jeremy
Bentham (1748 -
1832, founder of utilitarianism, an English gentleman, jurist,
philosopher, eccentric and legal and social reformer.)
|
Vegetarianism
Vegetarian Animal Rights
| "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."
From
the book
Enemies: A Love Story:
"As often as Herman had witnessed the slaughter of animals and fish, he
always had the same thought: in their behaviour towards creatures, all
men were Nazis. The smugness with which man could do with another
species as he pleased exemplified the most extreme racist theories, the
principal that might is right... for the animals, life is always
Treblinka."
"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."
“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
(Author, Nobel Prize 1978)
|
Vegetarianism
Vegetarian Animal Rights
| "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."
Thomas
Edison
(Inventor and businessman)
|
| "We consume the
carcasses of creatures of like appetites, passions and organs as our
own, and fill the slaughterhouses daily with screams of pain and fear."
"Nothing more
strongly
arouses our disgust than cannibalism, yet we make the same impression
on Buddhists and vegetarians..."
Robert
Louis Stevenson
(Novelist, poet, and travel writer.)
|
Vegetarianism
Vegetarian Animal Rights
| "Until we have the
courage to recognize cruelty for what it is - whether its victim is
human or animal - we cannot expect things to be much better in this
world... We cannot have peace among men whose hearts delight in killing
any living creature. By every act that glorifies or even tolerates such
moronic delight in killing we set back the progress of humanity."
Rachel
Carson
(Zoologist and biologist)
|
Vegetarianism
Vegetarian Animal Rights
| "True human goodness,
in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its
recipient has no power. Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test
(which lies deeply from view), consists of its attitude towards those
who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered
a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem
from it."
Milan
Kundera (Writer)
|
| "Auschwitz begins
wherever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they're only
animals."
Theodor
Adorno
(Sociologist, philosopher, musicologist and composer.)
|
Vegetarianism
Vegetarian Animal Rights
| "If [man] is not to
stifle his human feelings, he must practise kindness towards animals,
for 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
(Philosopher, generally regarded as the last major philosopher of the
early modern period and one of history's most influential thinkers.)
|
Vegetarianism
Vegetarian Animal Rights
| "Cruelty to dumb
animals is one of the distinguishing vices of low and base minds.
Wherever it is found, it is a certain mark of ignorance and meanness; a
mark which all the external advantages of wealth, splendour, and
nobility, cannot obliterate. It is consistent neither with learning nor
true civility."
William
Jones
(Philologist and mathematician)
|
| "I wish no living
thing to suffer pain."
"It were much
better that a sentient being
should never have existed, than that it should have existed only to
endure unmitigated misery."
Percy
Bysshe Shelley
(Romantic poet)
|
Vegetarianism
Vegetarian Animal Rights
| "The awful wrongs and
sufferings forced upon the innocent, helpless, faithful animal race,
form the blackest chapter in the whole world's history."
Edward
Augustus
Freeman (Historian)
|
Vegetarianism
Vegetarian Animal Rights
| "I am not basically a
conservationist. When the last great whale is slaughtered, as it surely
will be, the whales' suffering will be over. This is not the whales'
loss, but man's. I am not concerned about the wiping out of a species -
this is man's folly - I have only one concern, the suffering which we
deliberately inflict upon animals whilst they live."
Clive
Hollands
|
| "I do not see why we
should not be as just to an ant as to a human being."
"He was not
only, I
soon discovered, a water drinker, but a strict vegetarian, to which,
perhaps, he owed a great deal of the almost preternatural clearness,
volubility, and sensitiveness of mind."
Charles
Kingsley
(Novelist)
|
Vegetarianism
Vegetarian Animal Rights
| "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."
"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
(Author and philosopher)
|
Vegetarianism
Vegetarian Animal Rights
| "Now I can look at you
in peace; I don't eat you any more."
Franz
Kafka (Novelist)
|
Vegetarianism
Vegetarian Animal Rights
| "Apart from the value
of the frugivorous diet to man himself, it also brings great benefit to
our younger brothers, the sub-human creatures. When we lose our sense
of pity and compassion for the creatures, we harden our hearts to them
and also to our brother man."
Dr
Gordon Latto
(1911-1998)
|
Vegetarianism
Vegetarian Animal Rights
| "... half the world
starves. What a planet. And the eating, if you're lucky enough to do
any. Stuffing pieces of dead animals into a hole in your face. Then
munch, munch, munch. If there's anybody watching, they must be dying of
laughter."
Jean
Iris Murdoch
(1919 - 1999, an novelist and philosopher.)
|
Vegetarianism
Vegetarian Animal Rights
| "Poor animals! How
jealously they guard their pathetic bodies ... that which to us is
merely an evening's meal, but to them is life itself."
T.Casey
Brennan
(Author)
|
Vegetarianism
Vegetarian Animal Rights
| "What is so beneficial
to the people as liberty, which we see not only to be greedily sought
after by men, but also by beasts, and to be preferred to all things."
Marcus
Tullius Cicero
(January 3, 106 BC - December 7, 43 BC) was an orator and statesman of
Rome, and is generally considered the greatest Latin prose stylist.)
|
Vegetarianism
Vegetarian Animal Rights
| "You,
who are innocent, what have you done worthy of death!"
(On seeing animals being killed for food)
Richard
of Wyche,
Bishop of Chichester (1197-1253)
|
Vegetarianism
Vegetarian Animal Rights
| "For fidelity,
devotion, love, many a two-legged animal is below the dog and the
horse. Happy would it be for thousands of people if they could stand at
last before the Judgement Seat and say "I have loved as truly and I
have lived as decently as my dog." And yet we call them "only brutes"!"
Henry
Ward Beecher (A
theologically liberal American Congregationalist clergyman and
reformer, and author.)
|
Vegetarianism
Vegetarian Animal Rights
| "Until we stop harming
all other living beings, we are still savages."
Thomas
Jefferson, 3rd
U.S. President
|
Vegetarianism
Vegetarian Animal Rights
| "I am in favor of
animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human
being."
"I could not have
slept to-night if I had left that helpless little creature to perish on
the ground." (reply to friends who
chided him for
delaying them by stopping to return a fledgling to its nest.)
Abraham
Lincoln, 16th
U.S. President
|
Vegetarianism
Vegetarian Animal Rights
| "The
beef industry has
contributed to more American deaths than all the wars of this century,
all natural disasters, and all automobile accidents combined. If beef
is your idea of "real food for real people", you"d better live real
close to a real good hospital."
Dr
Neal Barnard
|
Vegetarianism
Vegetarian Animal Rights
| "As
custodians of the
planet it is our responsibility to deal with all species with kindness,
love and compassion. That these animals suffer through human cruelty is
beyond understanding. Please help to stop this madness."
Richard
Gere (Actor)
|
Vegetarianism
Vegetarian Animal Rights
| "We
have enslaved the
rest of the animal creation and have treated our distant cousins in fur
and feather so badly that, beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate
a religion, they would depict the devil in human form."
William
Ralph Inge
(Author and professor of divinity at Cambridge.)
|
Vegetarianism
Vegetarian Animal Rights
| "There
are many
noteworthy examples of ordinary evil in every culture and country
around the globe, but in terms of preventable evil I am hard pressed to
find any examples that approach those systematically perpetrated by
humans against the members of other species."
Lawrence
Pope
|
Vegetarianism
Vegetarian Animal Rights
| "The
love for all
living creatures is the most noble attribute of man."
Charles
Darwin
(1809-1882, naturalist)
|
Vegetarianism
Vegetarian Animal Rights
"Man
is a religious
animal. He is the only religious animal. He is the only animal that has
the 'True Religion' - several of them! He is the only animal that loves
his neighbor as himself but cuts his throat if his theology isn't
straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest
best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven...The higher
animals have no religion. And we are told that they are going to be
left out in the Hereafter. I wonder why? It seems questionable taste...
Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only
one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it...
It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb
because it is dumb to his dull perceptions...
The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual
superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong
proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot...
I am not interested to know whether experimentation 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...
In studying the traits and dispositions of the so-called lower animals,
and contrasting them with man's, I find the result humiliating to me."
Mark
Twain (1835-1910,
humorist, writer, lecturer, steamboat pilot, gold prospector,
and journalist)
|
Vegetarianism
Vegetarian Animal Rights
"All
truth passes
through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently
opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident...
The assumption that animals are without rights, and the illusion that
our treatment of them has no moral significance, is a positively
outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal
compassion is the only guarantee of morality...
Boundless compassion for all living things is the surest and most
certain guarantee of pure moral conduct. Whoever is filled with it will
assuredly injure no one...
Compassion for animals is intimately connected with goodness of
character; and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to
animals cannot be a good man."
Arthur
Schopenhauer
(1788-1860, philosopher)
|
Vegetarianism
Vegetarian Animal Rights
| "During
my medical
education at the University of Basel I found [animal] experimentation
horrible, barbarous, and above all unnecessary."
Carl
G. Jung
(1875-1961, psychiatrist)
|
Vegetarianism
Vegetarian Animal Rights
|
"True benevolence,
or
compassion, extends itself through the whole of existence and
sympathises with the distress of every creature capable of sensation."
Joseph
Addison
(politician and writer)
|
Vegetarianism
Vegetarian Animal Rights
"I
am of the opinion
that not one of those experiments on animals was justified or
necessary...I witnessed many harsh sights, but I think the saddest was
when the dogs were brought up from the cellar to the laboratory.
Instead of appearing pleased with the change from darkness to light,
they seemed seized with horror as soon as they smelt the air of the
place, apparently divining their approaching fate...
Hundreds of times I have seen when an animal writhed in pain, it would
receive a slap, and an angry order to be quiet and behave itself...To
this recital I need hardly add that, having drunk the cup to the dregs,
I cry off, and am prepared to see not only science, but even mankind,
perish rather than have recourse to such means of saving it."
Dr.
George Hoggan
(assistant to vivisector Claude Bernard)
|
Vegetarianism
Vegetarian Animal Rights
"Judge
the behavior of
a dog who has lost his master, who has searched for him in the road
barking miserably, who has come back to the house, restless and
anxious, who has run upstairs and down, from room to room, and who has
found the beloved master at last in his study, and then shown his joy
by barks, bounds and caresses.
There are some barbarians who will take this dog, that so greatly
excels man in capacity for friendship, who will nail him to a table,
and dissect him alive. And what you discover in him are the same organs
of sensation you have in yourself."
“People
must
have renounced, it seems to me, all natural intelligence to dare to
advance that animals are but animated machines….It appears
to
me, besides, that [such people] can never have observed with attention
the character of animals, not to have distinguished among them the
different voices of need, of suffering, of joy, of pain, of love, of
anger, and of all their affections. It would be very strange that they
should express so well what they could not feel.”
Voltaire
(1694-1778,
enlightenment writer and philosopher)
|
Vegetarianism
Vegetarian Animal Rights
| "He
who harms animals
has not understood or renounced evil...Those whose minds are at
peace...do not desire to live at the expense of others."
Acharanga
Sutra
(Jainism)
|
Vegetarianism
Vegetarian Animal Rights
| "The
indifference,
callousness and contempt that so many people exhibit toward animals is
evil first because it results in great suffering in animals, and second
because it results in an incalculably great impoverishment of the human
spirit."
Ashley
Montagu
(anthropologist and humanist)
|
Vegetarianism
Vegetarian Animal Rights
| "Because
one species
is more clever than another, does it give it the right to imprison or
torture the less clever species? Does one exceptionally clever
individual have a right to exploit the less clever individuals of his
own species? To say that he does is to say with the Fascists that the
strong have a right to abuse and exploit the weak - might is right, and
the strong and ruthless shall inherit the earth."
Richard
D. Ryder
(psychologist)
|
Vegetarianism
Vegetarian Animal Rights
| “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 a
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?”
Plutarch
(Greek historian, biographer, and essayist.)
|
Vegetarianism
Vegetarian Animal Rights
| “For hundreds of
thousands of years the stew in the pot has brewed hatred and resentment
that is difficult to stop. If you wish to know why there are disasters
of armies and weapons in the world, listen to the piteous cries from
the slaughter house at midnight.”
Ancient
Chinese verse
|
Vegetarianism
Vegetarian Animal Rights
| “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 (Russian ballet dancer and choreographer)
|
Vegetarianism
Vegetarian Animal Rights
| “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
|
Vegetarianism
Vegetarian Animal Rights
| “If
we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we
are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only
logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the
same reasons.”
C.S.
Lewis (author and scholar)
|
Vegetarianism
Vegetarian Animal Rights
| “Until
we have the courage to recognize cruelty for what it
is—whether
its victim is human or animal —we cannot expect things to be
much
better in this world. We cannot have peace among men whose hearts
delight in killing any living creature. By every act that glorifies or
even tolerates such moronic delight in killing we set back the progress
of humanity.”
Rachel
Carson (zoologist and marine biologist)
|
Vegetarianism
Vegetarian Animal Rights
| “The
assumption that animals are without rights and the illusion that our
treatment of them has no moral significance is a positively outrageous
example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the
only guarantee of morality.”
Arthur
Schopenhauer (German philosopher)
|
Vegetarianism
Vegetarian Animal Rights
| “One of the most
dangerous things that can happen to a child is to kill or torture an
animal and get away with it.”
Margaret
Mead (American cultural anthropologist.)
|
Vegetarianism
Vegetarian Animal Rights
| “In
an earlier stage of our development most human groups held to a tribal
ethic. Members of the tribe were protected, but people of other tribes
could be robbed or killed as one pleased. Gradually the circle of
protection expanded, but as recently as 150 years ago we did not
include blacks. So African human beings could be captured, shipped to
America and sold. In Australia white settlers regarded Aborigines as a
pest and hunted them down, much as kangaroos are hunted down today.
Just as we have progressed beyond the blatantly racist ethic of the era
of slavery and colonialism, so we must now progress beyond the
speciesist ethic of the era of factory farming, of the use of animals
as mere research tools, of whaling, seal hunting, kangaroo slaughter
and the destruction of wilderness. We must take the final step in
expanding the circle of ethics.”
“All
the arguments to prove man's superiority cannot shatter this hard fact:
in suffering the animals are our equals.”
Peter
Singer (Humanist and philosopher)
|
Vegetarianism
Vegetarian Animal Rights
| “Because
one species is more clever than another, does it give it the right to
imprison or torture the less clever species? Does one exceptionally
clever individual have a right to exploit the less clever individuals
of his own species? To say that he does is to say with the Fascists
that the strong have a right to abuse and exploit the
weak—might
is right, and the strong and ruthless shall inherit the
Earth.”
Richard
Ryder
|
Vegetarianism
Vegetarian Animal Rights
| “I
think there will come a time…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
|
Vegetarianism
Vegetarian Animal Rights
| “We
need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of
animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated
artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of
his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image
in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their
tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we
err, and greatly err. The animal shall not be measured by man. In a
world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and
complete, gifted with extension of the senses we have lost or never
attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren;
they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves
in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and
travail of the Earth.”
Henry
Beston
|
Vegetarianism
Vegetarian Animal Rights
| “Why
should man expect his prayer for mercy to be heard by What is above him
when he shows no mercy to what is under him?”
Pierre
Troubetzkoy
|
Vegetarianism
Vegetarian Animal Rights
| “When
I was twelve, I went hunting with my father and we shot a bird. He was
laying there and something struck me. Why do we call this fun to kill
this creature [who] was as happy as I was when I woke up this
morning.”
Marv
Levy
|
Vegetarianism
Vegetarian Animal Rights
| “I
had bought two male chimps from a primate colony in Holland. They lived
next to each other in separate cages for several months before I used
one as a [heart] donor. When we put him to sleep in his cage in
preparation for the operation, he chattered and cried incessantly. We
attached no significance to this, but it must have made a great
impression on his companion, for when we removed the body to the
operating room, the other chimp wept bitterly and was inconsolable for
days. The incident made a deep impression on me. I vowed never again to
experiment with such sensitive creatures.”
Christian
Barnard
|
|
