Opinions

Some thoughts from some held in high esteem.

I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look on the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men.
Leonardo da Vinci

If a man aspires towards a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from injury to animals.
Albert Einstein

Very little of the great cruelty shown by men can really be attributed to cruel instinct. Most [All?] 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.
Albert Schweitzer

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

There are vibrations to every food. Meat is the densest, the most gross, the slowest, then dairy, then vegetables. Fruit vibrates closest to pure light.
Fruitarian Network

The highest realms of thought are impossible to reach without first attaining an understanding of compassion.
Socrates

Take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.
Elie Wiesel

Nothing more strongly arouses our disgust than cannibalism, yet we make the same impression on Buddhists and vegetarians, for we feed on babies, though not our own.
Robert Louis Stevenson

"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

If one person is unkind to an animal it is considered to be cruelty, but where a lot of people are unkind to animals, especially in the name of commerce, the cruelty is condoned and, once large sums of money are at stake, will be defended to the last by otherwise intelligent people.
Ruth Harrison (Animal Machines)

Whatever your work or life circumstances may be, the power to make a positive difference for others, be they two-legged or four-legged, resides within us all.
Hope Tarr

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
Krishnamurti

When a chimpanzee mother comforts her frightened infant, we say that she is behaving like a human; when a human being resorts to insane violence, we say that he is acting like an animal.
Perhaps it's the other way around....
Wayne Grady

I am sometimes asked, Why do you spend so much of your time and money talking about kindness to the animals when there is so much cruelty to men; I answer, I am working at the roots.
Georg T. Angell

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

The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny.
Jeremy Bentham, Philosopher

You put a baby in a crib with an apple and a rabbit. If it eats the rabbit and plays with the apple, I'll buy you a new car.
Harvey Diamond

Please put the ladybug outside without harming her.
Winston Churchill to his butler.

K J