How To Treat Animals Quotes & Sayings

It is not an act of kindness to treat animals respectfully. It is an act of justice. — Tom Regan

Volumes can be and have been written about
the issue of freedom versus dictatorship,
but, in essence, it comes down to a single question:
do you consider it moral to treat men as sacrificial animals
and to rule them by physical force? — Ayn Rand

Speaking of these attitudes turned Temple's mind to a parallel: "I find a very high correlation," she said, "between the way animals are treated and the handicapped. ... Georgia is a snake pit - they treat [handicapped people] worse than animals. ... Capital-punishment states are the worst animal states and the worst for the handicapped. — Oliver Sacks

If you treat animals how you want to be treated, you're a lot better off. — Bindi Irwin

Businessmen have a different set of delusions from politicians; and need, therefore, different handling. They are, however, much milder than politicians, at the same time allured and terrified by the glare of publicity ... You could do anything you like with them, if you would treat them (even the big ones) not as wolves and tigers, but as domestic animals by nature, even though they have been badly brought up and not trained as you would wish. — John Maynard Keynes

I ate and drank slowly as one should (cook fast, eat slowly) and without distractions such as (thank heavens) conversation or reading. Indeed eating is so pleasant one should even try to suppress thought. Of course reading and thinking are important but, my God, food is important too. How fortunate we are to be food-consuming animals. Every meal should be a treat and one ought to bless every day which brings with it a good digestion and the precious gift of hunger. — Iris Murdoch

I'm not a vegetarian. Now, don't get me wrong - I like animals. And I don't think it's just fine to industrialize their production and to churn them out like they were wrenches. But there's no way to treat animals well when you're killing 10 billion of them a year. Kindness might just be a bit of a red herring. Let's get the numbers of animals we're killing for eating down, and then we'll worry about being nice to the ones that are left. — Mark Bittman

When you meet the farmers and go to the farms, you see that they treat their animals like they're family. It makes a big difference. — David Chang

Fear is like a little garden spider that makes us jump back or the poor lost bee on the steering wheel that we blame for our automobile wreck. The problem in fear is our response - the way we treat animals or insects that frighten us ... Fear is also the universal scapegoat we blame when we take flight from intimacy or shrink up inside ourselves in a thousand little ways. — Dan Millman

I'm not sure I'd like to be burned. I think I might like to be fed to zoo animals. It would be both environmentally friendly and a lovely treat for the larger carnivores. Could you request that? — Gail Honeyman

The basis of all animal rights should be the Golden Rule: we should treat them as we would wish them to treat us, were any other species in our dominant position — Christine Stevens

I'm always pushing for human responsibility. Given that chimpanzees and many other animals are sentient and sapient, then we should treat them with respect. — Jane Goodall

What the meat industry figured out is that you don't need healthy animals to make a profit. Sick animals are more profitable ...
Factory farms calculate how close to death they can keep animals without killing them. That's the business model. How quickly they can be made to grow, how tightly they can be packed, how much or how little can they eat, how sick they can get without dying ... We live in a world in which it's conventional to treat an animal like a block of wood. — Jonathan Safran Foer

I've seen people that don't treat their animals well and yet their animals are still just as loving to them even though they're not treated that well. It's very hard to find that kind of loyalty and love and affection in human beings. — Dick Van Patten

People always joke that 'dog' spells 'god' backwards. They should consider that it might be the higher power coming down to see just how well they do, what kind of people they are. The animals are right here, right in front of us. And how we treat these companions is a test. — Linda Blair

Humans treat animals as things that exist as means to human ends. That's morally wrong. Sexism promotes the idea that women are things that exist as means to the ends of men. That's morally wrong. We need to stop treating all persons - whether human or nonhuman - as things. — Gary L. Francione

Nanabozho also had the task to learn how to live from his elder brothers and sisters. When he needed food, he noticed what the animals were eating and copied them. Heron taught him to gather wild rice. One night by the creek, he saw a little ring-tailed animal carefully washing his food with delicate hands. He thought, "Ahh, I am supposed to put only clean food in my body."
Nanabozho was counseled by many plants too, who shared gifts, and learned to treat them always with the greatest respect. After all, plants were here first on the earth and have had a long time to figure things out. Together, all the beings, both plants and animals, taught him what he needed to know. The Creator had told him it would be this way. — Robin Wall Kimmerer

The way we treat animals is the root cause of all the human suffering in the world, from poverty, starvation, disease, and war to lack of clean air and water, not to mention all the varied forms of human emotional and spiritual suffering. — Sharon Gannon

Sometimes, those who put up the biggest shields are those who are protecting the biggest hearts. My Gram used to always say, if you want to know the size of a person's heart, look at how they treat animals or those that can offer them nothing in return. — Penelope Ward

How you treat an animal often shows your true color. — Debasish Mridha

My father quoted Shakespeare to me often and when I lay a book down with splayed pages he told me better to be cruel to animals, children even, but never so cruelly treat a book. — Christine Wade

Adolescents have a very rocky insecure time. Grown-ups treat them like children and yet expect them to act like adults. They give them orders like little animals, then expect them to react like mature, and always rational, self-assured persons of legal stature. — Beatrice Sparks

An old tradition holds that at the Last Judgment, the non-human creatures of the earth will be called by God to "give evidence" against each human being. The idea pops up in books and stories about the Creation, deemed a myth, but a persistent, imposing, even haunting one: We will be judged by the very creatures so dependent on us.
So I treat, and will continue to treat, my animals - the dogs, cats, sheep, donkeys, chickens, and cows - with that in mind.
They will give evidence. What would I want them to say? — Jon Katz

The measure of a society can be how well its people treat its animals — Mahatma Gandhi

We talk of humans behaving indistinguishably from animals; this view is an insult to animals, as they would not treat other creatures of their own kind the way we at times behave towards each other. — George Korankye

Animals are more than ever a test of our character, of mankind's capacity for empathy and for decent, honorable conduct and faithful stewardship. We are called to treat them with kindness, not because they have rights or power or some claim to equality, but in a sense because they don't; because they all stand unequal and powerless before us. — Matthew Scully

In the case of Switzerland, a whole country is concerned with the species-appropriate treatment of all things green. The constitution reads, in part, that "account [is] to be taken of the dignity of creation when handling animals, plants and other organisms." So it's probably not a good idea to decapitate flowers along the highway in Switzerland without good reason. Although this point of view has elicited a lot of head shaking in the international community, I, for one, welcome breaking down the moral barriers between animals and plants. When the capabilities of vegetative beings become known, and their emotional lives and needs are recognized, then the way we treat plants will gradually change, as well. Forests are not first and foremost lumber factories and warehouses for raw material, and only secondarily complex habitats for thousands of species, which is the way modern forestry currently treats them. Completely the opposite, in fact. — Peter Wohlleben

In the debate over the use of antibiotics in agriculture, a distinction is usually made between their clinical and nonclinical uses. Public health advocates don't object to treating sick animals with antibiotics; they just don't want to see the drugs lose their effectiveness because factory farms are feeding them to healthy animals to promote growth. But the use of antibiotics in feedlot cattle confounds this distinction. Here the drugs are plainly being used to treat sick animals, yet the animals probably wouldn't be sick if not for the diet of grain we feed them. — Michael Pollan

Our humanity isn't measured by how we treat other people, our humanity is measured by how we treat animals. — Chuck Palahniuk

Nearly all of us have a deep rooted wish for peace-peace on earth; but we shall never attain the true peace-the peace of love, and not the uneasy equilibrium of fear-until we recognize the place of animals in the scheme of things and treat them accordingly. — Hugh Dowding, 1st Baron Dowding

Your life does matter. It always matters whether you reach out in friendship or lash out in anger. It always matters whether you live with compassion and awareness or whether you succumb to distractions and trivia. It always matters how you treat other people, how you treat animals, and how you treat yourself. It always matters what you do. It always matters what you say. And it always matters what you eat. — John Robbins

Contrary to our metaphors, humans are much more imitative than the other apes. For example: if chimps watch a demonstration on how to get food out of a puzzle box, they, in their turn, skip any unnecessary steps, go straight to the treat. Human children overimitate, reproducing each step regardless of its necessity. There is some reason why, now that it's our behavior, being slavishly imitative is superior to being thoughtful and efficient, but I forget exactly what that reason is. — Karen Joy Fowler

Giving cancer to laboratory animals has not and will not help us to understand the disease or to treat those persons suffering from it. — Albert Sabin

I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals. — Winston S. Churchill

My mother folded each pair of trousers over her arm, pulling the legs out so that the creases lay perfectly. She handles clothes meticulously. S did Nai-nai. But there was a difference in attitude. To my grandmother, clothes held a kind of magic--they could change your destiny one way or the other. To my mother, they were servile, like farm animals in China. Treat them well and they'll perform their function. — Patricia Chao

We always had dogs,so I understood all the joy and the love animals are capable of giving. It's crazy to me that some people have dogs in thier homes, but they treat them more like furniture. — Alicia Silverstone

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. — Albert Schweitzer

Every man has the basis of good. Not only human beings, you can find it among animals and insects, for instance, when we treat a dog or horse lovingly. — Dalai Lama

PETA's campaign should be included in school curricula. If we can open children's hearts and minds to animals' needs, teach them to treat a dog or a chicken as if they feel fear and love and pain - as they do - then they will grow up to understand that we are all worthy of respect. — Ingrid Newkirk

Every year tens of thousands of animals suffer and die in laboratory tests of cosmetics and household products ... despite the fact that the test results do not help prevent or treat accidental or purposeful misuse of the products. Please join me in using your voice for those whose cries are forever sealed behind the laboratory doors. — Woody Harrelson

Is it really that much better to make friends with animals before you kill them than to treat them as nameless, faceless objects before you kill them? From a yogic point of view, one must weigh the karmic consequences of perceiving others as mere objects to be used and the consequences of profiting from the suffering of others. — Sharon Gannon

My father felt it was his duty to continue to treat animals long after he stopped getting paid. He couldn't stand by and watch a horse colic or a cow labor with a breech calf even though it meant personal ruin. The parallel is undeniable. There is no question I am the only thing standing between these animals and the business practices of August and Uncle Al, and what my father would do - what my father would want me to do - is look after them, and I am filled with that absolute and unwavering conviction. No matter what I did last night, I cannot leave these animals. I am their shepherd, their protector. And it's more than a duty. It's a covenant with my father. — Sara Gruen

Animal-rights advocates remind us of this admonition: The ways in which people treat animals will be reflected in how people relate to one another. — William Greider

You wouldn't walk with your underpants stuck in your bottom, you'd adjust them. So don't treat life like ill-fitting wondering underpants, adjust it to be comfortable again — E.E.D. Horton

Fish are unable, of course, to speak for themselves about how we treat them. They have ways of communicating with each other and, in some cases, even with other species of fish, as the groupers and eels do. As with most animals, their inability to communicate directly with us puts them at a disadvantage. They cannot argue for their rights or how they might best be treated or farmed or managed in the wild. Most animals have no voice that we can hear, unless we speak up for them. And even if an animal could talk, would we listen? — Virginia Morell

In any case I just cannot imagine attaching so much importance to any food or treat that I would grow irate or bitter at the mention of the suffering of animals. A pig to me will always seem more important than a pork rind. There is the risk here of confusing realism with cynicism, moral stoicism with moral sloth, of letting oneself become jaded and lazy and self-satisfied
what used to be called an 'appetitive' person. — Matthew Scully

Why are we so concerned about whether other animals are like human beings or not? Because we are worried about whether we should consider them kinfolk of ours, relatives. If they are relatives of ours, then we should treat them with more respect than if they are not. — Sydney M. Lamb

Healing is about choices - choices to treat or not to treat, to
choose one type of intervention over another, or to choose one
method of treatment in conjunction with another. One choice does not eliminate all other possibilities.
You can choose and choose again. The most important
choice is the decision to heal; all else follows. — Wanda Buckner

What we must do is bring nonhuman animals within our sphere of moral concern and cease to treat their lives as expendable for whatever trivial purposes we may have. — Peter Singer

The earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth.
All things are connected like the blood that unites one family.
Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it.
Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.
The earth is sacred and men and animals are but one part of it.
Treat the earth with respect so that it lasts for centuries to come and is a place of wonder and beauty for our children. — Extract From Chief Seattle.