Desmond Tutu Quotes

I'm sure you agree that animals should not be abused - whether they're cats or dogs or chickens - and that stopping this abuse should be your number one priority.

PETA is such an important cause to me. The mistreatment of animals is something that just really gets me. I feel it's really the most important part of what I do. Don't Eat Meat! Don't Wear Fur! I mean, there are so many other options these days.

You don't have to love animals to recognize that it is immoral and unjust to exploit them. But if you do love animals, but you continue to participate in their exploitation, you need to rethink your idea of what love means.

I was always empathetic with animals. It's a terrible and self-involved point of view that we do something because someone else is exploitable.

We have to be aggressive when those we stick up for have no voice. I don't consider it radical to say cruelty is wrong and that animals should be respected. I consider it radical to eat corpses, put electrodes in animals' heads, make elephants live in chains in the circus, and poison animals we consider a nuisance.

Animals... are there merely as a means to an end. That end is man.

We do not advocate 'right to life' for animals.

As Jeremy Bentham had asked about animals well over two hundred years ago, the question was not whether they could reason or talk, but could they suffer? And yet, somehow, it seemed to take more imagination for humans to identify with animal suffering than it did to conceive of space flight or cloning or nuclear fusion. Yes, she was a fanatic in the eyes of most of the country. . .Mostly, however, she just lacked patience for people who wouldn't accept her belief that humans inflicted needless agony on the animals around them, and they did so in numbers that were absolutely staggering.

Man's highest duty is to protect animals from cruelty.

We aren't consistent in our treatment of animals.

The theory of animal rights simply is not consistent with the theory of animal welfare... Animal rights means dramatic social changes for humans and non-humans alike; if our bourgeois values prevent us from accepting those changes, then we have no right to call ourselves advocates of animal rights.

But if there were two dogs left in the universe and it were up to us as to whether they were allowed to breed so that we could continue to live with dogs, and even if we could guarantee that all dogs would have homes as loving as the one that we provide, we would not hesitate for a second to bring the whole institution of 'pet' ownership to an end.

People say, "Oh, we ought to fight for animal rights." We fought for human rights, but even if humans have rights, they can still be horribly abused and are every day. You don't have to go to some far off land, far away place; we have a lot of child abuse in our own society.

No matter whether it's someone from the political left or right, we just need a voice to stand up and defend animal rights.

I'm such an advocate for animal rights and environmental rights.

I can't remember when I wasn't an animal rights activist.

Animals don't have anyone to protect them. If we don't stand up, the people who are harming animals will never get stopped.

Animals in the streets have tough lives, so it's up to all of us to speak out if we ever witness them being abused.

If an animal has any rights at all, it's got the right not to be eaten.

Thus godlike sympathy grows and thrives and spreads far beyond the teachings of churches and schools, where too often the mean, blinding, loveless doctrine is taught that animals have no rights that we are bound to respect, and were only made for man, to be petted, spoiled, slaughtered or enslaved.

Not only are the philosophies of animal rights and animal welfare separated by irreconcilable differences... the enactment of animal welfare measures actually impedes the achievement of animal rights... Welfare reforms, by their very nature, can only serve to retard the pace at which animal rights goals are achieved.

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.

I maintain that we ought to abolish the institution and stop causing or facilitating the existence of more 'companion' animals.

We are often more merciful to our animals than we are to each other.

For once, I believe that PETA, at least on the level of logic, is correct. If the NCAA has to protect offended Native Americans ... by God, PETA ought to advocate for the protection of every organism in the animal kingdom.