Animal Welfare Quotes

“If you want to test cosmetics, why do it on some poor animal who hasn't done anything? They should use prisoners who have been convicted of murder or rape instead. So, rather than seeing if perfume irritates a bunny rabbit's eyes, they should throw it in Charles Manson's eyes and ask him if it hurts.”
― Ellen DeGeneres, My Point... And I Do Have One

“Humanity's true moral test, its fundamental test…consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals.”
― Milan Kundera

“Men are the devils of the earth, and the animals are the tormented souls.

- On Religion”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, The Horrors and Absurdities of Religion

“If you don't like pictures of animal cruelty being posted on social media, you need to help stop the cruelty, not the pictures. You should be bothered that its happening, not that you saw it.”
― Marie Sarantakis

“When you start with a necessary evil, and then over time the necessity passes away, what's left?”
― Matthew Scully, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy

“Forests and meat animals compete for the same land. The prodigious appetite of the affluent nations for meat means that agribusiness can pay more than those who want to preserve or restore the forest. We are, quite literally, gambling with the future of our planet – for the sake of hamburgers”
― Peter Singer, Animal Liberation

“One saw a bird dying, shot by a man. It was flying with rhythmic beat and beautifully, with such freedom and lack of fear. And the gun shattered it; it fell to the earth and all the life had gone out of it. A dog fetched it, and the man collected other dead birds. He was chattering with his friend and seemed so utterly indifferent. All that he was concerned with was bringing down so many birds, and it was over as far as he was concerned. They are killing all over the world. Those marvellous, great animals of the sea, the whales, are killed by the million, and the tiger and so many other animals are now becoming endangered species. Man is the only animal that is to be dreaded.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, Krishnamurti to Himself: His Last Journal

“People may hope that the meat they buy came from an animal who died without pain, but they do not really want to know about it. Yet those who, by their purchases, require animals to be killed do not deserve to be shielded from this or any other aspect of the production of the meat they buy.”
― Peter Singer, Animal Liberation

“Be a good boy, remember; and be kind to animals and birds, and read all you can.”
― Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure

“The animals of the planet are in desperate peril... Without free animal life I believe we will lose the spiritual equivalent of oxygen.”
― Alice Walker

“If you really care about animals, then stop trying to figure out how to exploit them 'compassionately'. Just stop exploiting them.”
― Gary L. Francione

“A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all heaven in a rage.”
― William Blake

“I'm sorry, my child, I just find it hard to whip up an interest in the subject. It's admirable, what you do, what she does, but to me animal-welfare people are a bit like Christians of a certain kind. Everyone is so cheerful and well-intentioned that after a while you itch to go off and do some raping and pillaging. Or to kick a cat.”
― J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace

“Some animal rights activists are demanding vegetarianism, even veganism now, or nothing. But since only 4 or 5 percent of Americans claim to be vegetarians, 'nothing' is the far more likely outcome. I ask these activists to weigh the horrors of Bladen County's industrial farms and the Tar Heel slaughterhouse against the consequences of doing nothing to alleviate the hour-to-hour sufferings of its victims. Is not a life lived off the factory farm and a death humanely inflicted superior to the terrible lives we know they lead and the horrible deaths we know they suffer in Bladen County today?”
― Steven Wise, An American Trilogy: Death, Slavery, and Dominion on the Banks of the Cape Fear River

“There can be no question that parrots have more intellect than any other kind of bird, and it is this that makes them such favourite pets and brings upon them so many sorrows. ...Men will buy them ... and carry them off to all quarters of the native town, intending, I doubt not, to treat them kindly; but "the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel", and confinement in a solitary cell, the discipline with which we reform hardened criminals, is misery enough to a bird with an active mind, without the superadded horrors of ... life in a tin case, hung from a nail in the wall of a dark shop... Why does the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals never look into the woes of parrots?
...
However happy you make her captivity, imagination will carry her at times to the green field and blue sky, and she fancies herself somewhere near the sun, heading a long file of exultant companions in swift career through the whistling air. Then she opens her mouth and rings out a wild salute to all parrots in the far world below her.”
― E.H. Aitken

“47 days: average slaughter age of broiler chickens in the United States. In the European Union it is 42 days. Depending on the breed, the natural lifespan of a chicken is up to 11 years.”
― Jo-Anne McArthur, Hidden: Animals in the Anthropocene

“What sensitive, sane soul can stand in the presence of such insanity and do nothing? Yet to expose the slaughter of seals in Canada is to deliver oneself into the hands of a bureaucratic inquisition. To witness the killing of a seal is a crime. To film or photograph the slaughter is a felony. To oppose the massacre is to subject oneself to jail time, beatings, heavy fines, and officially sanctioned harassment. - Paul Watson”
― Paul Watson

“He [Ray] was working in a tool-and-die factory in Brooklyn, but before that had drifted around, had been employed at the Studebaker plant in South Bend and also at an Omaha slaughterhouse on the kill floor. Once I asked him what that was like. "You ever heard of Auschwitz?”
― Bob Dylan, Chronicles, Volume One

“Even today’s highly overbred domestic pigs still possess the behavioural repertoire of their free-roaming cousins. So, what would happen if the borders fell down? Sows would lay down in comfort to feed their young. They would create nests for them in small, leafy ditches, and wouldn’t have to push their noses into sad imitations over a blank, slatted floor. A sow spends the first days after birth alone with her young before gradually introducing them to the family. Free-roaming pigs also follow the kindergarten principle: if a sow needs to go and look for food, another will look after the little ones. ~ Hilal Sezgin”
― Hartmut Kiewert, Animal Utopia: Perspektiven eines neuen Mensch-Tier-Verhältnisses = Perspectives of a New Human-Animal Relationship

“During the 1980s it was estimated that an animal died in a British laboratory every six seconds.”
― Emma Hopley, Campaigning Against Cruelty: The Hundred Year History of the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection

“For Kant, human freedom was at the centre of his Metaphysics of Morals. As a result, moral behaviour in the West prioritises respecting the autonomy of others in as far as is possible. Kant's ethical conception is therefore not oriented around minimising human suffering, in contrast to the general attitude in animal welfare, which is to minimise animal suffering. The autonomous decision is to be respected even when this means increased suffering. And stealing from or murdering a person in order to help many others is in principle excluded, even if that was to serve the overall good. This morality is anchored firmly in the law as basic rights, which protect humans from a utilitarian approach to our dealings with each other.”
― Martin Balluch, The Dog and his Philosopher: A Call for Autonomy and Animal Rights

“I soon felt that a bimch was rising on my knee, but speechless animal that I was, it was useless trying to make my displeased young master understand that I needed care and easing.

That is one of the hard parts of being a mere animal without voice to make a plaint or tell of suffering. Patience is the only thing that helps us, and few human beings imagine how much patience and endurance poor dumb animals have to teach themselves, in order to bear their aches and pains, and also to excuse the thoughtlessness of masters, young and old.”
― Harriet A. Cheever, The Adventures of Pony Dexter

“The sea is a mirror, a cleanse, and a gift for your soul.”
― Gigi Kingston

“Yet not content with merely depicting itself as educational, the circus menagerie has also jumped on the conservation bandwagon, claiming that its efforts in captive breeding will ultimately help save endangered species from extinction. But like all circus illusions, this one too is both tenuous and contradictory and does not bear up to further scrutiny. Indeed, wary of potential public interest in the release of their animals into the wild, circus owners and their animal trainers are the first to admit to the impracticalities of re-introduction, partly on the grounds that their animals have lost their natural instincts — though they hasten to add that the creatures retain enough of their innate wildness to be “educational” in the ring.”
― William Johnson, The Rose-Tinted Menagerie

“The Marine Mammal Protection Act regulations were very easy to ‘get around’ and still are. It’s the same with the Zoo Licensing Act in the UK. So called ‘independent inspectors’ are often those with vested interests in the industry. ~ Doug Cartlidge (former whale and dolphin trainer)”
― William Johnson, The Rose-Tinted Menagerie

“Though Conny Gasser repeated his claim to have lost only two dolphins since 1971, even newspaper reports mention three dolphins dying at Lipperswil in 1973 alone. Also, his statement in 1985 that “I have a dolphin here who’s been with me for 14 years,” seems highly implausible since his first dolphins, imported in 1971, are both dead. Flipper’s longevity for instance actually spans at least three separate individuals — a juggling of identities intended to deceive the public. Indeed, since 1971, Gasser has owned at least 36 dolphins, of which 24 have died or cannot be accounted for. It is known that two dolphins were sold to an amusement park in Holland and another two to a dolphinarium in the Far East, that four dolphins are currently held on long-term loan at Fasano, Italy, and another four at Connyland, but this still leaves unaccounted for, Lady No. 1, 2 and 3, Flipper No. 1 and 2, Didi, an unnamed dolphin which died in Manila, Skipper which apparently managed to survive the 1973 winter in Lipperswil when three others died, Bonnie and Clyde imported from Britain in 1980, and Sonny, Blacky, Poco and Chico who were reported to be ill in the summer of 1974. There is also the uncertain fate of Gasser’s orca whale which was sold to an amusement park in Argentina.

Furthermore, according to the Klinowska Report, Gasser also obtained the following dolphins from the UK: Pebbles and Sonny Boy bought from Franklin and Holloway in 1972 — both of which are reported to have died in Switzerland in 1977 — Cleo purchased from Morecambe in 1977 (perhaps the unnamed dolphin that died in Manila?) and Baby, Speedy (No. 1) and Windy purchased from Don Robinson’s Flamingo Park in 1978. Strangely enough — though anything is possible in the dolphin industry — Klinowska speculates that the already ailing animal that Gasser purchased from Windsor in 1972 with a David Taylor health certificate, and which died a year later in Surabaya, Indonesia as Lady (No. 2), was actually a male dolphin called Flipper! Last, but not least, Klinowska cites two anonymous dolphins purchased from the UK by Gasser early in 1973 which died within two months. These are just some of the dolphins once under Gasser’s care that have simply disappeared, thus earning him the title, even in far away England and America, of “Conveyor Belt Gasser” — the dolphins would be alive at one end and dead at the other.”
― William Johnson, The Rose-Tinted Menagerie

“I lay unseen, by my dam’s side,
But feel cold in the air,
And soft grass underneath,
Not knowing what life means.

And I asked my dam,
“Why are things cold?”
“True my dear,
Colder than should.”
― Kaaviya Elangkumarabahu, The Voice Of Those Who Raced: What They Would Have To Say

“And as a team, we were fantastic; we forged a bond that would allow us to dominate the planet. With canines at our side, we became masters of the universe; these new companions were our night watchmen, our GPS guides, our first-wave assault team. In the battle for existence, they gave us the crucial competitive edge that allowed us to persist while our rivals, the Neanderthals, faded to extinction.
After that, well, hell! There was no stopping us. From then on, we couldn't make enough animal alliances. We persuaded horses and elephants to carry us into battle, and hawks and ferrets to kill rabbits and drop them at our feet. Wildcats became tame and protected our grains from rodents. We learned to saddle reindeer and herd geese and yoke yaks. Animals didn't just feed and protect us, they inspired us. We studied them, drew them, revered them. Religions worshipped animals as gods; moralists looked to them for life lessons; seekers chose them as their spirit guides. We named our tribes and babies after them. Egyptian pharaohs went to the grave
with them.
Then we forgot them.
The romance that had burned for ages was snuffed in a heart-beat, historically speaking. We had animals on the brain for more than 300,000 years-and then, out of the blue, Edison and Ford came along and stole our hearts. As soon as we had electric lights and affordable cars, we moved indoors and locked the animals out, We don't need guard dogs or plow horses or fresh kill anymore; we hunt freezer aisles instead of forests, fire up the Prius when we need a ride, rely on screens when we crave companionship. Man's best friend became a major pain, an intruder who craps on our sidewalks, barks all night, and has to be confined to cages in the back bedroom and little prisons in our parks. Coco and Cuddles are now another form of trash; according to the ASPCA, more than four thousand abandoned cats and dogs are destroyed every day, just to make space for the six million that are dumped at she-ters every year.”
― Christopher McDougall

“Because wishes can be horses”
― Fran McNicol, Bare Hooves and Open Hearts: Tales From Nelipot Cottage

“The great human conceit is in thinking that it's acceptable to do to other species what we would never tolerate being done to ourselves.”
― DaShanne Stokes