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Quotations about Animal Rights
I'm in favor of animal liberation. Why? Because I'm an animal. ~Edward Abbey
A good way to end a story is
The prince and the princess lived happy ever
after and the mice lived happy ever after too
~Ruth Krauss (1901–1993), Open House for Butterflies, 1960
This earth is a garden, this life a banquet, and it's time we realized that it was given to all life, animal and man, to enjoy. ~Tom Brown, Jr.
If there is a just God, how humanity would writhe in its attempt to justify its treatment of animals. ~Isaac Asimov
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, "Vivisection," God in the Dock, 1947
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. ~Mark Twain, What Is Man?
Home, love, delight, pain, life and death, are they not the same in the palace and in the tree; in the cottage and in the nest under the thistle; and one God and Father over all? ~Rev. James H. Ecob, "Instantaneous Photographs," 1895
The mad scientist was once only a creature of gothic romance; now he is everywhere, busy torturing atoms and animals in his laboratory. ~Edward Abbey
It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions. ~Mark Twain
God loved the birds and invented trees. Man loved the birds and invented cages. ~Jacques Deval (1890–1972), Afin de vivre bel et bien, 1970
In their wild state, wild creatures can generally shift for themselves; but to prison a wild bird in a cage, to chain a dog to a kennel, or even to shut him in a room... is to be guilty of a cruelty not easily to be forgiven. ~Coulson Kernahan, "A Dog in the Pulpit," 1909
A bloodless sportsman, I—
I hunt for the thoughts that throng the woods,
The dreams that haunt the sky.
The woods were made for the hunters of dreams,
The brooks for the fishers of song;
To the hunters who hunt for the gunless game
The streams and the woods belong...
~Sam Walter Foss, "The Bloodless Sportsman," c.1896
I was watching for gray squirrels in the edge of a wood bordering on a cornfield. Let me hasten to say that this was in my unregenerate days, when I could shoot so exquisite a creature as a gray squirrel. I would shoot them, then lament over them, carrying my pitiful trophies home with a shamed heart and an accusing conscience. Now, God forbid that one of his little ones, so irradiant with life and fire, of workmanship so divine, should be violated by my hand. ~Rev. James H. Ecob, "Instantaneous Photographs," 1895
Thou shalt not kill — does not apply only to the killing of human beings, but also to the killing of any living creature. This commandment was inscribed in the hearts of men before it was graven on the tablets on Mount Sinai. ~Leo Tolstoy, The Pathway of Life, translated by Archibald J. Wolfe, 1919
A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all heaven in a rage....
~William Blake (1757-1827), "Auguries of Innocence"
I believe in animal rights, and high among them is the right to the gentle stroke of a human hand. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in. ~Mark Twain
Of all the creatures that were made, man is the most detestable. Of the entire brood he is the only one—the solitary one—that possesses malice. That is the basest of all instincts, passions, vices—the most hateful. He is the only creature that has pain for sport, knowing it to be pain. Also—in all the list he is the only creature that has a nasty mind. ~Mark Twain
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 a trait that is not known to the higher animals. ~Mark Twain, "The Lowest Animal"
Little things that run and quail
And die in silence and despair;
Little things that fight and fail
And fall on sea and earth and air;
All trapped and frightened little things,
The mouse, the coney, hear our prayer,
As we forgive those done to us,
The lamb, the linnet, and the hare,
Forgive us all our trespasses,
Little creatures everywhere.
~James Stephens, "Little Things," to W.T.H. Howe, Little Things, 1924
From my work with them I have come to believe that at some time during prehistory, man and wolf were related in spirit, and traveled the forests of a younger and better world in peace. It should not be supposed, however, that a wolf can accommodate itself to life as a domestic pet. Like all wild animals, wolves are born to be free and unfettered by chains, kennels, or walls. They are too greatly influenced by heredity to accept passively the restrictions that humans impose upon their dogs and cats, themselves animals that are no longer truly natural because thousands of years of domestication and inbreeding have caused them to lose their inherent wildness and to become dependent on their owners. Such animals are, in fact, slaves, even though many are kept in pampered luxury. ~R. D. Lawrence, In Praise of Wolves, 1986
The only creature on earth whose natural habitat is a zoo is the zookeeper. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
O tragic bird! whose bleeding feet,
Whose maddened wings dizzily beat
Against your cage in agony...
~Arthur Davison Ficke, "The Birdcage"
Through nature, through the evolutionary continuum and ecological relatedness and interdependence of all things, we are as much a part of the wolf as the wolf is a part of us. And as we destroy or demean nature, wolves, or any creature, great or small, we do no less to ourselves. ~Michael W. Fox, "Wolf Communion," The Soul of the Wolf, 1980
Even a worm an inch long has a soul half-an-inch long. ~Japanese Buddhist proverb, quoted by Lafcadio Hearn, In Ghostly Japan, 1899
I believe I am not interested to know whether Vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn't. To know that the results are profitable to the race would not remove my hostility to it. The pains which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity towards it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further. It is so distinctly a matter of feeling with me, and is so strong and so deeply-rooted in my make and constitution, that I am sure I could not even see a vivisector vivisected with anything more than a sort of qualified satisfaction. I do not say I should not go and look on; I only mean that I should almost surely fail to get out of it the degree of contentment which it ought, of course, to be expected to furnish. ~Mark Twain, letter to London Anti-Vivisection Society, 1899 May 26th
The best use for a unicorn's horn is to adorn a unicorn. ~Femeref adage, "Benevolent Unicorn" card, Magic: The Gathering (Richard Garfield / Wizards of the Coast)
Henry S. Salt declares not only that human beings have rights. He declares that animals also have rights. That it is not the vivisector alone who has rights. Not the meat-eater alone. That the vivisected and the meat-eaten also have rights. I was going to say Salt was ahead of his time. That is a mistake. He is ahead of your time. ~Horace Traubel (1858–1919), "Animals' rights," in The Conservator, March 1906
If a rabbit defined intelligence the way man does, then the most intelligent animal would be a rabbit, followed by the animal most willing to obey the commands of a rabbit. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
No humane being... will wantonly murder any creature which holds its life by the same tenure that he does. ~Henry David Thoreau
Hurt no living thing:
Ladybird, nor butterfly,
Nor moth with dusty wing...
~Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830–1894)
The killing of animals for dissection continues, however. What an irony! We look at death and we believe that we are studying life!... I felt then, as I do now, that it is not possible to study life by dissection, just as it is impossible to learn anything truly worthwhile about the behavior of an organism by observing it in restricted captivity. ~R. D. Lawrence, "The Study of Life," A Shriek in the Forest Night: Wilderness Encounters, 1996
When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport: when the tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity. ~Bernard Shaw
Terms like that, "Humane Society," are devised with people like me in mind, who don't care to dwell on what happens to the innocent. ~Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams, 1990, barbarakingsolver.net
There never was a deer which was not an unalloyed thing of beauty alive — there never was a deer dead which was not a reproach to the brutality of some man. To lie in ambush, and under the protection of hiding send an unseen bullet into a harmless inoffensive creature is not sport — it is simple and plain butchering — all it lacks is the stench of the slaughter-house. ~William Ellis, 1899
To kill for mere sport is a very different matter: it lies outside the realm of struggle for existence. Too often there is not even the justification of fair play.... He has the advantage of long-range weapons. There is no combat.... The guns discharge.... There is a shout of victory. Surely, man is the king of beasts! ~Liberty Hyde Bailey, "The New Hunting," Country Life in America: A Magazine for the Home-maker, the Vacation-seeker, the Gardener, the Farmer, the Nature-teacher, the Naturalist, April 1902
Killing for sport, for fur, or to increase a hunter's success by slaughtering predators is totally abhorrent to me. I deem such behavior to be barbaric, a symptom of the social sickness that causes our species to make war against itself at regular intervals with weapons whose killing capacities have increased horrendously since man first made use of the club — weapons that today are continuing to be "improved." ~R. D. Lawrence, In Praise of Wolves, 1986
A true sportsman is a hunter lost in the woods and out of ammo. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
Was it generally true that creatures well adapted to survive lived lives that were mainly pleasant? Foxfield, sitting like a biological judge, ruled that it was. Of course the life of many quite well adapted species was a life of massacre, but that did not mean that it was unpleasant. Consider the frog. Thousands of tadpoles were killed for every one that dropped its tail and got out of the water, and the little frogs suffered a similar slaughter before the few survivors grew up, but they lived cheerfully enough until the blow fell. It was just their careless gaiety got them killed. Being killed, he said, wasn't unhappiness unless you thought about if beforehand. Did any creature do that but man?
What are the chief factors of unhappiness? Present pain, fear, grief, but that passes, disappointment and frustration...
'Is anything more unhappy than a chained dog?' he asked.
'Or a caged bird?' I contributed.
'Worse than vivisection. People overrate the agonies of vivisection and underrate cages and chains and the dismal lives of pets dragging through their days with every instinct suppressed…'
Dear intelligent people of the world, don't get shampoo in your eyes. It really stings. There. Done. Now fucking stop torturing animals. ~Ricky Gervais, @rickygervais, tweet, 2012
Even the smallest of creatures carries a sun in its eyes. ~Antonio Porchia (1886–1968), Voces, 1943–1966, translated from the Spanish by W.S. Merwin (1927–2019), c.1968
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published 1999 Feb 16
revised 2021 Mar 17
last saved 2025 Jan 19
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