Emmylou Harris Quotes

Animals are not our playthings. We are on this earth to protect them. It's our duty.

The other creatures with which we share this world have their rights too, but not speaking our language, they have no voice, no vote; it is our moral duty to take care of them.

If people were superior to animals, they'd take good care of them," said Pooh.

Pets are humanizing. They remind us we have an obligation and responsibility to preserve and nurture and care for all life.

At any rate, we can see that they are given into our care, that we cannot just do whatever we want with them. Animals, too, are God's creatures.

I believe that animals are on the planet so that we can know love and compassion.

Mankind's real moral test, a test so radical and so deep that it escapes our gaze, is probably the one of its relations with those that are the most at its mercy; the Animals.

Perhaps the time has come to formulate a moral code which would govern our relations with the great creatures of the sea as well as with those on dry land. That this will come to pass is my dear wish.

Surely it should be a matter of moral responsibility that we humans, different from other animals mainly by virtue of our more highly developed intellect and, with it, our greater capacity for understanding and compassion, ensure that medical progress slowly detaches its roots from the manure of non-human animal suffering and despair.

I think animals help us live; they've helped me live. It was only when I began to devote myself to protecting animals that I blossomed completely. Taking care of them, looking out for them, has given my life true meaning, a meaning I hope future generations can experience.

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.

What we do to animals, we do to ourselves.

As I listened, it occurred to me that interest in and affection for the animals that share the planet with us may be a more unifying force than any other.

If experiments on animals were abandoned on grounds of compassion, mankind would have made a fundamental advance.

As long as people will shed the blood of innocent creatures there can be no peace, no liberty, no harmony between people. Slaughter and justice cannot dwell together.

We are beginning to learn that each animal has a life and a place and a role in this world. If we place compassion and care in the middle of all our dealings with the animal world and honor and respect their lives, our attitudes will change.

Whether you understand they evolved over billions of years or believe that a God made them all one afternoon, please be kind to animals.

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.

The animal world being altogether external to the scheme of redemption, was regarded as beyond the range of duty, and the belief that we have any kind of obligation to its members has never been inculcated - has never, I believe, been even admitted - by Catholic theologians.

Most people think that animals are third-class citizens. Very few people really see animals as "the others" with whom we inhabit this planet. They have equal rights with us.

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.

Without the perfect sympathy with the animals around them, no gentleman's education, no Christian education, could be of any possible use.

I just love animals, and I'm an advocate for animals rights, and my family has rescued dogs from all over the world. I don't believe in animal testing. If you see me in fur, it's always fake. Sometimes you see me wearing skulls, but those are all from roadkill

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

Many times I am asked why the suffering of animals should call forth more sympathy from me than the suffering of human beings; why I work in this direction of charitable work more than toward any other. My answer is that because I believe that this work includes all the education and lines of reform which are needed to make a perfect circle of peace and goodwill about the Earth.