Jeremy Bentham Quotes

I believe in preventing cruelty to all living beings in any form.

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.

Kindness to animals seems to me to be one of the most rudimentary lessons of all.

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

We must fight against the spirit of unconscious cruelty with which we treat the animals. Animals suffer as much as we do. True humanity does not allow us to impose such sufferings on them. It is our duty to make the whole world recognize it. Until we extend our circle of compassion to all living things, humanity will not find peace.

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

Sympathy beyond the confines of man, that is, humanity to the lower animals, seems to be one of the latest moral acquisitions.

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.

The medical argument for animal testing doesn't stand up. Even if it did, I don't think we should kill other species. We think we're so much better; I'm not sure we are. I tell people, We've beaten into submission every animal on the face of the Earth, so we are the clear winners of whatever battle is going on between the species. Couldn't we be generous? I really do think it's time to get nice. No need to keep beating up on them. I think we've got to show that we're kind.

Any glimpse into the life of an animal quickens our own and makes it so much the larger and better in every way." ... "Surely a better time must be drawing nigh when godlike human beings will become truly humane, and learn to put their animal fellow mortals in their hearts instead of on their backs or in their dinners.

No civilization is complete which does not include the dumb and defenseless of God's creatures within the sphere of charity and mercy.

To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being.

Children should from the beginning be bred up in an abhorrence of killing or tormenting any living creature; and be taught not to spoil or destroy any thing, unless it be for the preservation or advantage of some other that is nobler.

It may be suggested by some books that it is not a sin to kill an animal, but it is written in our own hearts - more clearly than in any book - that we should take pity on animals in the same way as we do on humans.

The assumption that animals are without rights, and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance, is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.

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.

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.

It takes nothing away from a human to be kind to an animal.

Humanity's true moral test, its fundamental test…consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals.

What is it that should trace the insuperable line? ...The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?

I was very concerned about helping animals improve their situations. But that was out of love. It wasn't political or out of a belief that animals had rights.

Animal protection is education to the humanity.

Respecting and honoring the pigness of the pig is a foundation for societal health.

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.