Voltaire Quotes

Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow creatures is amusing in itself.

The difference between humans and wild animals is that humans pray before they commit murder.

It’s almost impossible to imagine a society saying, “It’s all right use embryonic stem cells to save your dying dog, but it’s not okay to use them to save your dying child.”… America’s love affair with animals will slowly but inevitably undermine the religious, moral, and ethical arguments against genome-based therapies for people. Healthier cats and dogs will generate an irresistible demand for healthier children and adults.

Pain and Oblivion make mankind afraid to die; but all creatures are afraid of the one, none but mankind afraid of the other.

It is much easier to show compassion to animals. They are never wicked.

Sex is God's joke on human beings.

Ever since childhood, when I found out that the ultimate fate for all humans was death, sheer terror and morbid curiosity had been fighting for supremacy in my mind.

We keep making the same mistakes as a species, and you can usually draw it back to the fact that we are all terrified of dying. We also all think that we are going to escape it until we get to 65!

It is true that you can say that death is natural, but it is also natural to fight death. But if you stand up and say this is a big problem, we should do something about this, that makes people very uncomfortable, because they've made their peace with death.

Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals.

I never had a conscious fear of death, but I did have a conscious fear of sickness. By the time I completed medical school, that fear was gone.

Deep down, no one really believes they have a right to live. But this death sentence generally stays tucked away, hidden beneath the difficulty of living. If that difficulty is removed from time to time, death is suddenly there, unintelligibly.

There is no doubt: the study of man is just beginning, at the same time that his end is in sight.

For those who live neither with religious consolations about death nor with a sense of death (or of anything else) as natural, death is the obscene mystery, the ultimate affront, the thing that cannot be controlled. It can only be denied.

We are different beings. There is nothing in life which links us together. Our names, our clothes, our foods–they are all different; our economic life, our educational ideas, our treatment of women, our attitude towards animals .... We challenge each other at every point of the compass.

The human spirit is not dead. It lives on in secret.... It has come to believe that compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind

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

Prevent the torture and murder of our animal brothers and sisters

Having well considered the (disgusting) origin of flesh and the (cruelty of) fettering and slaying corporeal beings, let him entirely abstain from eating flesh

The sheep are happier of themselves than under the care of the wolves.

The third world is important then, because it is made up its human beings, human beings who possess the same nature we do, people who are capable of suffering and desire and, even as we suffer and desire, people who are condemned to a shabby, deprived and disease ridden existence, and these are people for whom we have a moral and religious obligation to care about.

Animal life is also sacred to the Creator. A Christian may kill animals to provide food and clothing or to protect himself from sickness and danger … But it is wrong to mistreat animals or to kill them just for sport or pleasure.

Eternity ceased gradually to serve as the measure and focus of human actions.

The Indian feels that he is related to the animal world. That all living things are related.

Calling the New York State Legislature “a circus” is inappropriate. Circus animals are very intelligent.