Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace - Albert Schweitzer

The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? - Jeremy Bentham

There is no fundamental difference between man and the higher animals in their mental faculties... The lower animals, like man, manifestly feel pleasure and pain, happiness, and misery - Charles Darwin

If a man's aspiration towards a righteous life are serious, his first act of abstinence is from animal food, because it is plainly immoral as it requires an act contrary to moral feeling, ie., killing and is called forth only by greed - Tolstoy

I have from an early age abjured the use of meat and a time will come when man such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men - Leonardo Da Vinci

True benevolence or compassion, extends itself through the whole of existence and sympathises with the distress of every creature capable of sensation - Joseph Addison

I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance than I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn - Henry David Thoreau

The gods created certain kinds of beings to replenish our bodies..they are the trees, the plants and the seeds - Plato

People often say that humans have always eaten animals, as if this is a justification for continuing the practise. According to this logic, we should not try to prevent people from murdering other people, since this has also been done since the earliest times - Isaac Bashevis Singer, Nobel Laureate

The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated - Mahatma Gandhi

Vegetarianism serves as the criterion by which we know that the pursuit of moral perfection on the part of humanity is genuine and sincere - Tolstoy

Now I can look at you in peace; I don't eat you any more - Franz Kafka

Man is an animal, not a god

The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man - Charles Darwin

Ethics and Science need to shake hands - Richard Clarke Cabot

Animals are my friends..and I don't eat my friends - George Bernard Shaw

And behold joy and gladness, slaying oxen, and killing sheep, eating flesh, and drinking wine - Bible: Isaiah 22:13

Nothing can be more obvious than that all animals were created solely and exclusively for the use of man - A character in a book by Thomas Love Peacock

Vegetarians have wicked, shifty eyes, and laugh in a cold and calculating manner. They pinch little children, steal stamps, drink water, favour beards...wheeze, squeak, drawl and maunder - J. B. Morton

You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity - Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Alas, what wickedness to swallow flesh into our own flesh, to fatten our greedy bodies by cramming in other bodies, to have one living creature fed by the flesh of another - Pythagoras

No human being, however great, or powerful, was ever so free as a fish - John Ruskin

For the sake of a little flesh we deprive them of sun, of light, of the duration of life to which they are entitled by birth and being - Plutarch

I don`t hold animals superior or even equal to humans. The whole case for behaving decently to animals rests on the fact that we are the superior species. We are the species uniquely capable of imagination, rationality, and moral choice and that is precisely why we are under an obligation to recognize and respect the rights of animals - Brigid Brophy

...another man, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables - New Testament, Romans 14:2

I would not enter on my list of friends (Though graced with polish'd manners and fine sense, Yet wanting sensibility) the man who needlessly sets foot upon a worm - William Cowper

All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others - George Orwell

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 - Mahatma Gandhi

Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet - Albert Einstein