Henry David Thoreau Quotes

I can do no other than be reverent before everything that is called life. I can do no other than to have compassion for all that is called life. That is the beginning and the foundation of all ethics.

I have said often, and I am sure of it, that the greatest destroyer of peace in the world today is abortion. If a mother can kill her own child, what is there to stop you and me from killing each other? The only one who has the right to take life is the The One who has created it.

Do they deserve to die?" but "Do we deserve to kill them?

A man is truly ethical only when he obeys the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist, and shrinks from injuring anything that lives.

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

In life and art, there are distinctions to be made between what an act of cruelty consists of.

In movies, it's so easy to have this 'boom,' to kill, and I think that's inhumane.

Human morality is unthinkable without empathy.

There are many things worth living for, there are a few things worth dying for, but there is nothing worth killing for

Human beings can be awful cruel to one another.

We cannot have peace among men whose hearts find delight in killing any living creature.

When a human being kills an animal for food, he is neglecting his own hunger for justice.

All tremble at violence; all fear death. Putting oneself in the place of another, one should not kill nor cause another to kill.

It's hard to kill a creature once it lets you see its consciousness.

We are most like beasts when we kill. We are most like men when we judge. We are most like God when we forgive.

I believe that to knowingly commit actions that cause or condone suffering is reprehensible in the extreme. I call upon you to be compassionate and treat others as you want to be treated. If you don't want to be beaten, imprisoned, mutilated, killed or tortured then you shouldn't condone such behavior towards anyone, be they human or not.

We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.

It's obvious you shouldn't steal, kill or be cruel.

To kill, in war or in any circumstance, creates a silence. It is right that silence should surround the taking of life. After all, the life taken is not ours to take.

Respect for the fragility and importance of an individual life is still the mark of an educated man.

At the end of the day, the Golden Rule is called the Golden Rule for a reason - do unto others as you would have done to you. In terms of commandments you could probably just do that one and you would be well off. If everybody could adhere to that one, we'd be OK, as long as a masochist wasn't in charge of people.

Do not do to others what you would not have them do to you.

Ethics is nothing else than reverence for life.

Most people are not good people. In business, in art, in almost every 'world' I've been in, most people I've meet are pretty gray to black. It takes practice to be the person who is a source of compassion and honesty.

I only wish that ordinary people had an unlimited capacity for doing harm; then they might have an unlimited power for doing good.