Julian Baggini Quotes

Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it.

I wouldn't want to see any animal in pain, no matter what.

I urge you to ask yourself just how honorable it is to preside over the abuse and suffering of animals.

Fear and pain and suffering is not OK for any being to feel intentionally at the hands of us.

I don't think a living being should suffer for the sake of fashion, period. End of story. You don't have to kill an animal just because you want to be hot and fly. And I really stand by that.

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.

We ought not to treat living creatures like shoes or household belongings, which when worn with use we throw away.

You know, we all oppose animal cruelty. But sometimes we forget that animals on farms suffer and feel pain like all other animals. They, too, deserve to be protected from harm and cruelty.

There are barbarians who seize this dog, who so prodigiously surpasses man in friendship, and nail him down to a table, and dissect him alive to show you the mezaraic veins... Answer me, Machinist, has Nature really arranged all the springs of feeling in this animal to the end that he might not feel? Has he nerves that he may be incapable of suffering?

Growing up, the two things that made my blood boil were religious intolerance and animal cruelty. I’ve never understood it. I can’t stand to have an animal in pain.

We cannot have two hearts, one for the animals and one for men. In cruelty towards the former and cruelty to the latter there is no difference but in the victim.

If I hammer my own thumb while doing some DIY, it's not nice, but it's not the end of the world. To care obsessively about similar levels of discomfort in animals seems to be a case of mistaken moral priorities.

As long as man eats animals how can cruelty to animals be removed.

Brutality to an animal is cruelty to mankind - it is only the difference in the victim.

Any abuse of animals is the same as abuse of men, women, or children.

At PETA, we often say that the issue of how animals are treated isn't just about them; it's about us, how we behave.

Animals weren't put on this earth to entertain us.

I have always been against cruelty to animals and remain so.

I am not saying that factory farming is the same as the Holocaust or the slave trade, but it's clear that there is an immense amount of suffering in it, and just as we think that the Nazis were wrong to ignore the suffering of their victims, so we are wrong to ignore the sufferings of our victims.

A few years ago, the city council of Monza, Italy, barred pet owners from keeping goldfish in curved bowls... saying that it is cruel to keep a fish in a bowl with curved sides because, gazing out, the fish would have a distorted view of reality. But how do we know we have the true, undistorted picture of reality?

The way animals were and are abused appalls me to this very day.

Animals shouldn't suffer for the sake of beauty.

Animals shouldn't be mistreated.

Fur is not luxury: it is an industry of death and suffering.

The animal rights cause is something close to my heart and something I truly believe in.