Comment & Debate
George Bernard Shaw – “Vivisection is a social evil because if it advances human knowledge, it does so at the expense of human character.”[1]
Mahatma Gandhi – “I abhor vivisection with my whole soul. All the scientific discoveries stained with innocent blood I count as of no consequence.”[2]
Schopenhauer – “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.”[3]
Thomas A. Edison – “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.”[4]
Romain Rolland, Nobel Prize 1915 – “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.”[5]
William Ralph Inge – “Deliberate cruelty to our defenceless and beautiful little cousins is surely one of the meanest and most detestable vices of which a human being can be guilty.”[6]
The German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), argued in 1785, “cruelty to animals is contrary to man’s duty to himself, because it deadens in him the feeling of sympathy for their sufferings, and thus a natural tendency that is very useful to morality in relation to other human beings is weakened.”[7]
Axel Munthe (1857-1949), a famous Swedish physician and psychiatrist – “The wild, cruel animal is not behind the bars of a cage. He is in front of it.”
Charles Darwin – “The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man”[8]
Seneca – “All cruelty springs from weakness.”
George Bernard Shaw – “The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them, that’s the essence of inhumanity.”[9]
Arthur Schopenhauer, German Philosopher – “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.”[10]
Immanuel Kant, German Philosopher – “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.”[11]
Dr. Albert Schweitzer, Alsatian Theologian, Musician, and Medical Missionary – “A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him, that of plants and animals as well as that of his fellowman, and when he devotes himself helpfully to all life that is in need of help.”[12]
Jane Goodall, Author of Reason for Hope – “If only we can overcome cruelty, to human and animal, with love and compassion we shall stand at the threshold of a new era in human moral and spiritual evolution – and realize, at last, our most unique quality: humanity.”[13]
Alexander Von Humbolt, German Naturalist – “Cruelty to animals is one of the most significant vices of a low and ignoble people. Wherever one notices them, they constitute a sign of ignorance and brutality which cannot be painted over even by all the evidence of wealth and luxury.”[14]