Quotes & Sayings About Killing Animals

Killing of animals for food is one thing, but on the other hand they do not exist simply as things to be slaughtered. This is true of fishing, too. Many men fish and leave their victims to rot and stink. But what about the fish? Has he no rights - not to be romanticized as though he were a man - but real rights? — Francis Schaeffer

Killing was a relatively simple matter--a blow to the head, a knife to the throat--complicated only by how much one cared about the pain or terrors animals felt in dying.... The animal also died a second death. Severed from the form in which it had lived, severed from the act that had killed it, it vanished from human memory as one of nature's creatures. — William Cronon

Cows provide approx 100 million tonnes of dry dung a year costing Rs 5000 crores which saves 50 million tonnes of firewood which again means that many trees saved and more environmental damage prevented. It is calculated that if these 73 million animals were to be replaced, we would need 7.3 million tractors at the cost of 2.5 lac each which would amount to an investment of 180,000 crores. In addition 2 crore, 37 lakh and 50 thousand tonnes of diesel which would mean another 57,000 crore rupees. This is how much we owe these animals, and this is what we stand to lose by killing them. — Maneka Gandhi

Armies have spent a lot of time and effort training their soldiers not to think of the enemy as human beings. It's so much easier to kill them if you think of them as dangerous animals. The trouble is, war isn't about killing. It's about getting the enemy to stop resisting your will. Like training a dog not to bite. Punishing him leaves you with a beaten dog. Killing him is a permanent solution, but you've got no dog. If you can understand why he's biting and remove the conditions that make him bite, sometimes that can solve the problem as well. The dog isn't dead. He isn't even your enemy. — Orson Scott Card

While spay neuter is important, our goal has never been no more births, even though reducing birth rates might help. Our goal has been and is, and has always been no more killing. And when you focus on the no more killing part, spay neuter actually takes a backseat to all those other programs like foster care, and adoptions, and helping people overcome the challenges they face that cause them to surrender their animals. — Nathan Winograd

Basically, the reason I'm vegan is because when I was about 16 or 17 years old, I began to understand that we don't need to contribute to the killing and exploitation of animals to feed our bodies correctly. — Daniel Johns

I grew up on a farm, so there were rifles around. Every March around springtime, there's a big hunt that goes on, and you go out and hunt down all the pheasants. I actually never shot the pheasants; I'm not a big fan of killing animals myself. — Joseph Mawle

On this world you have the animals and they have as much right to be on this world as us; and it's man who is the reason they are pushed to extinction. They're killing them for their tusks and their horns, and these fucking idiots, they think claws will give them sex appeal and they get all fucking sissy on you. — Stephen Richards

The secret to being a rider in the hippodrome wasn't just that you must be agile, or that you must be good with horses, or that you must be strong and steady as the horse careens to the far end of the arena and back with you riding on its back. It was that you must hide inside your costume a little of a killer's heart.
The animal will be tender with you, and you with it, but the animal never forgets that when what it wants for survival requires your death, it will become unafraid to kill you. And so you cannot forget this, either.
It is, on reflection, good training to be a courtesan. A woman of any kind. — Alexander Chee

It is strange to hear people talk of Humanitarianism, who are members of societies for the prevention of cruelty to children and animals, and who claim to be God-loving men and women, but who, nevertheless, encourage by their patronage the killing of animals merely to gratify the cravings of appetite. — Otoman Zar-Adusht Ha'nish

What I think was hardest for me to realize was that he had tried each time to stop himself. He had killed animals, taking lesser lives to keep from killing a child — Alice Sebold

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

Given the choice of apathy or someone liberating mink, burning down a research torture-laboratory, or killing a vivisectionist or other DIRECT murderer of animals, I will choose the aforesaid actions over apathy any day of the week.- — Gary Yourofsky

Animals are murdered to produce meat; vegetables are torn up, peeled, and chopped; most of what we eat is treated with fire; and chewing is designed remorselessly to finish what killing and cooking began. People naturally prefer that none of this should happen to them. Behind every rule of table etiquette lurks the determination of each person present to be a diner, not a dish. — Margaret Visser

The first mindfulness training: reverence for life Aware of the suffering caused by the destruction of life, I am committed to cultivating the insight of interbeing, compassion, and learning ways to protect the lives of people, animals, plants, and minerals. I am determined not to kill, not to let others kill, and not to support any act of killing in the world, in my thinking, or in my way of life. Seeing that harmful actions arise from anger, fear, greed, and intolerance, which in turn come from dualistic and discriminative thinking, I will cultivate openness, nondiscrimination, and nonattachment to views in order to transform violence, fanaticism, and dogmatism in myself and in the world. — Thich Nhat Hanh

The middle way is still driving on the wrong side of the road; it still permits the killing of the fox for pleasure. One cannot kill half a fox. Like Monty Python parrot, a fox torn apart by hounds remains dead, deceased and off its perch for ever. Before the fox has been dispatched - sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly - it will have suffered the agonies of the pursuit by animals four times its size and four times its strength. The middle way is a compromise that still seriously compromises the welfare of the fox. — Lyndon Harrison, Baron Harrison

A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral. — Leo Tolstoy

Standing there small among the boxes of Kandy Kakes that rose like brownish cartoon cliffs around him, he resembled the videos I'd seen of sea lions floating angelically among the kelp, black bodies filmed from below, their shapes cut out in bright sunlight, bodies mistakable for those of a human being. I felt the memory of a shadowy arm around me, a watcher again, sitting there on the couch with my boyfriend, watching the animals become prey. Somewhere there were giant whales feeding on creatures too small to see, pressing them against fronds of baleen with a tongue the size of a sedan. There were polar bears killing seals, tearing ovoid chunks from out of their smooth, round bellies. In the surrounding vastness of the warehouse, I heard something scratching against the concrete floor and knew there were rats here, scraping a thin film of nutrient from the dry packaged matter that surrounded them. Life was everywhere, inescapable, imperative. — Alexandra Kleeman

Say that people are "humane" is to say that they are kind; to say that they are "beastly," "brutal," or simply that they behave "like animals" is to suggest that they are cruel and nasty. We rarely stop to consider that the animal who kills with the least reason to do so is the human animal. We think of lions and wolves as savage because they kill; but they must kill, or starve. Humans kill other animals for sport, to satisfy their curiosity, to beautify their bodies, and to please their palates. Human beings also kill members of their own species for greed or power. Moreover, human beings are not content with mere killing. Throughout history they have shown a tendency to torment and torture both their fellow human beings and their fellow animals before putting them to death. No other animal shows much interest in doing this. While — Peter Singer

What really got to me was not the fact that animal cruelty could predict violent behavior - it's that up until I read about it, I never thought that it was wrong. I was killing animals and taking them apart, and I had all the emotional reaction of a kid playing with Legos. It's like they weren't real to m - they were just toys to play with. Things. — Dan Wells

I understand now why they break into convents, force women against their will, defy sanctuary to finish the killing chase. They arouse in themselves a wild vicious hunger more like animals than men. I did not know that war was like this. I feel I have been a fool not to know, since I was raised in a kingdom at war and am the daughter of a man captured in battle, the widow of a knight, the wife of a merciless soldier. But I know now. — Philippa Gregory

I do not see any reason why animals should be slaughtered to serve as human diet when there are so many substitutes. After all, man can live without meat. It is only some carnivorous animals that have to subsist on flesh. Killing animals for sport, for pleasure, for adventures, and for hides and furs is a phenomenon which is at once disgusting and distressing. There is no justification in indulging in such acts of brutality ... Life is as dear to a mute creature as it is to a man. Just as one wants happiness and fears pain, just as one wants to live and not to die, so do other creatures. — Dalai Lama

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

We do know, however that almost no animal routinely kills prey animal on an indiscriminate basis.
The only wild animal I've seen who will sometimes violate this rule is the coyote. Most of the time a coyote eats the animals he kills, but occasionally coyotes will go on a lamb-killing spree, killing twenty and eating only one. I believe it's possible coyotes have lost some of their economy of behavior by living in close proximity to humans and overabundant food supplies. A coyote that kills twenty lambs and eats only one isn't going to have to trek a hundred miles to find more lambs next week. Any sheep rancher will have several hundred other lambs that will be just as easy to catch later on, and the coyote knows it. Wild coyotes have probably lost the knowledge taht you shouldn't waste food or energy. — Temple Grandin

After dinner or lunch or whatever it was
with my crazy 12-hour night I was no longer sure what was what
I said, Look, baby, I'm sorry, but don't you realize that this job is driving me crazy? Look, let's give it up. Let's just lay around and make love and take walks and talk a little. Let's go to the zoo. Let's look at animals. Let's drive down and look at the ocean. It's only 45 minutes. Let's play games in the arcades. Let's go to the races, the Art Museum, the boxing matches. Let's have friends. Let's laugh. This kind of life like everybody else's kind of life: it's killing us. — Charles Bukowski

I believe we can create a truly humane, sustainable, and health food production system without killing any animals. I imagine a revolution in veganic agriculture in which small farmers grow a variety of vegetables, fruits, grains, and legumes, all fertilized with vegetable sources. — Gene Baur

Donald Watson, who founded The Vegan Society in 1944 and who lived a healthy, active life until passing on in 2005, maintained that dairy products, such as milk, eggs, and cheese, were every bit as cruel and exploitive of sentient animal life as was slaughtering animals for their flesh: "The unquestionable cruelty associated with the production of dairy produce has made it clear that lactovegetarianism is but a half-way house between flesh-eating and a truly humane, civilised diet, and we think, therefore, that during our life on earth we should try to evolve sufficiently to make the 'full journey.'" He also avoided wearing leather, wool or silk and used a fork, rather than a spade in his gardening to avoid killing worms.

Let us instil in others the reverence or life that Donald Watson had and that he passed on to us. — Gary L. Francione

By the divine providence [animals] are intended for man's use ... Hence it is not wrong for man to make use of them, either by killing or in any other way whatsoever. — Thomas Aquinas

If you accumulate virtuous actions properly - such as avoiding killing, freeing animals, and cultivating patience toward others - it will be beneficial in the future and in the lives to come; whereas if you indulge in negative actions continuously, you definitely will face the consequences in the future. If you do not believe in the principle of karma, then you can do as you like. — Dalai Lama XIV

The historian William Cronon explains that packing plants
'distanced their customers most of all from the act of killing ... The more people became accustomed to the attractively cut, carefully wrapped, cunningly displayed packages that Swift had introduced to the trade, the more easily they could fail to remember that their purchase had once pulsed and breathed with a life much like their own ... As time went on, fewer of those who ate meat could say they had actually killed the animals themselves. In the packer's world, it was easy not to remember that eating meat was a moral act inextricably bound to killing. Such was the second nature that a corporate order had imposed on the American landscape. Forgetfulness was among the least noticed and most important of its by-products. — Steven M. Wise

There was a difference between killing for nourishment and killing for curiosity or sport. — Nenia Campbell

Scientists believe that sharks are one of the oldest species of animals still in existence. Nature built them as perfect predators. Perfect killing machines. Nature hasn't had to revise or update them much. They were built right the first time.

Dolphins are very different. Scientists say that millions of years ago, dolphins were land animals. Sea mammals not very different from humans and other mammals. They evolved their way back into the ocean. Part of that evolution included learning to cope with predators, with killer whales and sharks.

I don't now what sea the Taxxon race evolved in. I don't know what natural predators they faced there. But they were not ready for this ocean. They were not ready to go one-on-one with the masters of Earth's deep seas. They were no match for dolphin or shark.

-Animorphs #4, The Visitor page 69 — K.A. Applegate

If you want this planet to continue being habitable for everyone that lives here, you have to limit the number of inhabitants. Hunters do it by killing off the old or sick animals in a herd, but I don't think that's a very ethical way of limiting the population. — Christian De Duve

Hunting and fishing involve killing animals with devices (such as guns) for which the animals have not evolved natural defenses. No animal on earth has adequate defense against a human armed with a gun, a bow and arrow, a trap that can maim, a snare that can strangle, or a fishing lure designed for the sole purpose of fooling fish into thinking they have found something to eat — Marc Bekoff

Alone among the animals, humans seek meaning in their lives by killing and dying for the sake of nonsensical dreams. — John N. Gray

Passages in the Bible and Quran or Hadiths endorse holy war, subjugating or exterminating unbelievers, killing blasphemers and others who violate religious taboos, stoning adulterers, ritually slaughtering animals, sexually enslaving females, and beating children. They prescribe mutilation of criminal suspects. — Anonymous

I regularly comment on my desire to exploit my admirers or to kill babies and cute animals, and I don't even need to laugh or smile for people to think I am joking. — M.E. Thomas

Think about Praying Mantis. The deadliest ninja predator. Why isn't his animus a lion or a polar bear - two of the most successful killing machines in the animal kingdom? The answer is that these animals would not be right for him. Think how a praying mantis is invisible on a leaf, how they are carnivores who will devour their own species. The female will even eat her own partner once they've mated and, as hatchlings, their first meal is often one of their own siblings. These are the things that matter to Praying Mantis - and if you study his attributes, they are elements that will help you defeat him. — Jane Prowse

They have no consciousness therefore. Therefore what? Therefore we are free to use them for our own ends? Therefore we are free to kill them? Why? What is so special about the form of consciousness we recognize that makes killing a bearer of it a crime while killing an animal goes unpunished? ... all this discussion of consciousness and whether animals have it is just a smokescreen. At bottom we protect our own kind. Thumbs up to human babies, thumbs down to veal calves. — J.M. Coetzee

When we kill animals to eat them they end up killing us because their flesh ... was never intended for human beings, who are naturally herbivores. — William C. Roberts

What I build upon I shall be told is a folly that wise men are not guilty of: I own it; but whilst it proceeds from a real passion inherent in our nature, it is sufficient to demonstrate that we are born with a repugnancy to the killing, and consequently the eating of animals; for it is impossible that a natural appetite should ever prompt us to act, or desire others to do, what we have an aversion to, be it as foolish as it will. — Sylvester Graham

We're against animal fighting and killing animals for fur ... We want Americans to eat fewer animals — Wayne Pacelle

This, for many people, is what's most offensive about hunting - to some, disgusting: that it encourages, or allows, us not only to kill but to take a certain pleasure in killing — Michael Pollan

Man, says Protagoras, now has the wisdom necessary for life ... but he does not have political wisdom. At this point, people are living spread out and hence are at the mercy of stronger animals, who begin killing them off ... They seek to save themselves from the beasts by banding together and forming cities. But they do injustice to one another, at such close quarters, because they lack the political art. So, dispersed once more, they begin perishing again. — Paul-Ludwig Landsberg

One animal or plant species may become extinct every hour. All species are doomed to extinction, but man through worldwide development/killing animals for food/profit/using toxic chemicals such as pesticides/industrial wastes, will accelerate the extinction of plants/animals and the result will be a more hostile environment for man. — Erik P. Eckholm

One saw a bird dying, shot by a man. It was flying with rhythmic beat and beautifully, with such freedom and lack of fear. And the gun shattered it; it fell to the earth and all the life had gone out of it. A dog fetched it, and the man collected other dead birds. He was chattering with his friend and seemed so utterly indifferent. All that he was concerned with was bringing down so many birds, and it was over as far as he was concerned. They are killing all over the world. Those marvellous, great animals of the sea, the whales, are killed by the million, and the tiger and so many other animals are now becoming endangered species. Man is the only animal that is to be dreaded. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

The Cowardly Lion laughed, and said: I have always thought myself very big and terrible; yet such little things as flowers came near to killing me, and such small animals as mice have saved my life. How strange it all is! But, — L. Frank Baum

None of that is necessary. It's not as if we're in a situation where it is us or them.There's something peculiar about talking about the moral status of animals, when we are killing and eating them for no reason whatsoever. — Gary L. Francione

I'm killing two birds at once, so to speak. Animal-based food kills people. This way, by going vegan ... we get healthy and save animals. I'm being selfish, too, because if I can get my employees healthier, we cut down on sick days and gain more productivity. — Steve Wynn

If someone is killing, on a regular basis, thousands of animals, and if that person can only be stopped in one way by the use of violence, then it is certainly a morally justifiable solution. — Jerry Vlasak

We would parachute in like typical asshole Americans and be completely clueless about what kind of trip we were actually on, asking questions like, "When do we start shooting the animals? Where is the freshest sushi? When do we meet Aretha Franklin, and where are the squash courts?" I'd also insist on hunting live lobster and killing it with my handgun. — Chelsea Handler

It is not how we breed, keep and kill animals for human consumption that has been the impetus for vegetarianism for thousands of years. It is that we breed, keep and kill animals for human consumption. Throughout the centuries the common thread in the arguments against eating animals is the fact that since we have no nutritional requirement for the flesh or fluids of animals, killing them to simply satisfy our taste-buds or habits or customs amounts to senseless slaughter, and senseless slaughter is no small thing. — Colleen Patrick-Goudreau

The ferocious virtues that had been necessary for survival on the American frontier were theirs: they were men who lived freely, wastefully, independently, and they lived by killing
animals as a rule, men if necessary. — Wallace Stegner

Murderers very often start out by killing and torturing animals as kids. — Robert Ressler

The tendency to cruelty
should be watched in
children and if they
incline to any such
cruelty, they should be
taught the contrary
usage. For the custom
of tormenting and killing
other animals will, by
degrees, harden their
hearts even toward man.
Children should from
the beginning, be
brought up in an
abhorrence of killing or
tormenting living
beings. — John Locke

The human race has the capacity to render itself extinct unless alternatives are found to the patterns of intraspecific warfare that have dominated civilized history. Ours has long been a predatory species. Living, for humans, depends upon the ability to kill as clearly as it does for lions or wolves. But lions and wolves, like almost all predatory species, normally limit their killing to prey animals, and they are equipped with elaborate ritual precautions to prevent the destruction of their own kind. Humans appear to be unique among predators in their enthusiasm to destroy members of their own species. Perhaps this unusual behavior can be attributed to some genetic deficiency which may lead humans ultimately to join the rest of nature's failures in the biological graveyard of extinction. Or perhaps our willingness to kill ourselves, like so many of our other problems, is something we have devised by misusing our enlarged brains. — Joseph W. Meeker

After a lifetime of nature shows and magazine photos, we arrive at the woods conditioned to expect splendor - surprised when the parking lot does not contain a snarl of animals attractively mating and killing each other. — Bill McKibben

But you can always justify killing animals on the grounds that you want to eat them, or wear them, or that they smell bad, look funny, bother you, threaten you, and have the bad luck of being in your way. What about killing humans? Well aside from a few die-hard individualists on the fringe, the general consensus among people these days seems to be that eating and wearing other people is just not on. Wearing a suit which costs as much as a farmer will make in his lifetime is acceptable, but actually putting his eyeballs on a string and letting them dangle above tastefully exposed cleavage is bad form. — Mohsin Hamid

Aware of the suffering caused by the destruction of life, I am committed to cultivating compassion and learning ways to protect the lives of people, animals, plants, and minerals. I am determined not to kill, not to let others kill, and not to support any act of killing in the world, in my thinking, and in my way of life. — Nhat Hanh

Among the numerous heartbreaks of this terrible war, the innocent horses shot, abused, and killed would not rank among the worst atrocities - but somehow, the killing of innocent beasts, domesticated animals who existed only for man's beauty and pleasure, seemed to highlight the barbaric and depraved depths to which man had allowed himself to sink. — Elizabeth Letts

Plants, animals, and stars are all kept in place, bridled along appointed ways, with one another, and through the midst of one another
killing and being killed, eating and being eaten, in harmonious proportions and quantities. — John Muir

The holidays are also a time when people freak out about their finances. If you don't want to spend the money, why not try some of the other options instead of killing a bunch of animals? — Christina Applegate

Towns are suffering from all these things, we should unite until we are all satisfied, man cannot be killing each other as if we were animals, as if we had no culture; that is a lack of culture. — Compay Segundo

The empathy and compassion we feel for our own kind is sometimes extended to the rest of the living things on the earth. If we allowed it to keep us from killing a deer, or other animals, we would not live long. The — Jean M. Auel

Sharks are really serious animals. They've been around longer than dinosaurs. They're basically prehistoric killing machines, and that's terrifying and fascinating, at the same time. — Sara Paxton

As a general rule - to which I have seen no exceptions - tigers are responsible for all kills that take place in daylight, and leopards are responsible for all kills that take place in the dark. Both animals are seminocturnal forest-dwellers, have much the same habits, employ similar methods of killing, and both are capable of carrying their human victims for long distances. It would be natural, therefore, to expect them to hunt at the same hours; and that they do not do so is due to the difference in courage of the two animals. When — Jim Corbett

Cruelty ... prefers abstraction. Some have tried to resolved this gap by hunting or butchering an animal themselves, as if those experiences might somehow legitimize the endeavor of eating animals. This is very silly. Murdering someone would surely prove that you are capable of killing, but it woudln't be the most reasonable way to understand why you should or shouldn't do it. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Killing animals to make a fashion statement = a sickening + cold-blooded vanity. — Jess C. Scott

My ahimsa is my own. I am not able to accept in its entirety the doctrine of non-killing of animals. — Mahatma Gandhi

Anything that suffers and dies instead of us is Christ; if they didn't kill birds and fish they would have killed us. The animals die that we may live, they are substitute people, hunters in the fall killing the deer, that is Christ also. And we eat them, out of cans or otherwise; we are eaters of death, dead Christ-flesh resurrecting inside us, granting us life. Canned Spam, canned Jesus, even the plants must be Christ. — Margaret Atwood

After a conversation with someone that went on all night, but I didn't take much persuading, and the next day I was a vegetarian. It came down to one question, can you be healthy without killing animals? If the answer is 'yes' then the only reason you're killing is because you like the taste. But you can't take a life just because you like its taste. — Martin Shaw

I spend a hell of a lot of time killing animals and fish so I wouldn't kill myself. When a man is in rebellion against death, as I am in rebellion against death, he gets pleasure out of taking to himself one of the godlike attributes; that of giving it. — Ernest Hemingway,

In the killing of animals there is cruelty, rage, and the accustoming of oneself to the bad habit of shedding innocent blood. — Joseph Albo

Simply put, killing healthy or treatable animals is immoral. — Nathan Winograd

I ask people why they have deer heads on their walls. They always say because it's such a beautiful animal. There you go. I think my mother is attractive, but I have photographs of her. — Ellen DeGeneres

Some of us seem to be born with a drive to try to make the world kinder. In my twenties, living in New York City, I worked in a soup kitchen every Sunday for many years, just trying to do my part. Then I read Animal Liberation and learned about factory farming and the killing of animals for oven cleaner and realized nobody needed my help as badly as the animals did. — Karen Dawn

Men do not understand that because they unrestrictedly kill so many animals, they also must be slaughtered like animals in big wars. The reaction must be there. You are killing innocent cows and animals. Nature will take revenge. To kill cows means to end human civilization. — Anonymous

In a city where men are killing each other like animals just to make it a happier place, who has the right to stop me from killing myself? — Orhan Pamuk

A dinner! How horrible! I am to be made the pretext for killing all those wretched animals and birds, and fish! Thank you for nothing. Now if it were to be a fast instead of a feast; say a solemn three days' abstention from corpses in my honour, I could at least pretend to believe that it was disinterested. Blood sacrifices are not in my line — George Bernard Shaw

When I think back on it, it was as if I had the Claw already, more than a year before I got it. I can't describe how he looked when he rolled his eye up to see me. He touched my heart. I never revived an animal when I had the Claw, but then I never tried. When I was among them, I was usually wishing I could kill one, because I wanted something to eat. Now I'm no longer sure that killing animals to eat is something we are meant to do. — Gene Wolfe

This for many people is what is most offensive about hunting - to some, disgusting: that it encourages, or allows, us not only to kill but to take a certain pleasure in killing. It's not as though the rest of us don't countenance the killing of tens of millions of animals every year. Yet for some reason we feel more comfortable with the mechanical killing practiced, out of view and without emotion by industrial agriculture. — Michael Pollan

One particularly poor argument in defence of eating meat is that if humans did not eat animals, those animals would not have been brought into existence in the first place. Humans would simply not have bred them in the numbers they do breed them. The claim is that although these animals are killed, this cost to them is outweighed by the benefit to them of having been brought into existence. This is an appalling argument for many reasons. First, the lives of many of these animals are so bad that even if one rejected my argument one would still have to think that they were harmed by being brought into existence. Secondly, those who advance this argument fail to see that it could apply as readily to human babies that are produced only to be eaten. Here we see quite clearly that being brought into existence only to be killed for food is no benefit. It is only because killing animals is thought to be acceptable that the argument is thought to have any force. — David Benatar

Suppose I grant that pigs and dogs are self-aware to some degree, and do have thoughts about things in the future. That would provide some reason for thinking it intrinsically wrong to kill them - not absolutely wrong, but perhaps quite a serious wrong. Still, there are other animals - chickens maybe, or fish - who can feel pain but don't have any self-awareness or capacity for thinking about the future. For those animals, you haven't given me any reason why painless killing would be wrong, if other animals take their place and lead an equally good life. — Peter Singer

Occasionally they would hear a harsh croak or a splash as some amphibian was disturbed, but the only creature they saw was a toad as big as Will's foot, which could only flop in a pain-filled sideways heave as if it were horribly injured. It lay across the path, trying to move out of the way and looking at them as if it knew they meant to hurt it.
'It would be merciful to kill it,' said Tialys.
'How do you know?' said Lyra. 'It might still like being alive, in spite of everything.'
'If we killed it, we'd be taking it with us,' said Will. 'It wants to stay here. I've killed enough living things. Even a filthy stagnant pool might be better than being dead.'
'But if it's in pain?' said Tialys.
'If it could tell us, we'd know. But since it can't, I'm not going to kill it. That would be considering our feelings rather than the toad's.'
They moved on. — Philip Pullman

Over my career I played some badass characters. So, people sometimes think I should have a .44 magnum. But that's not true, I don't have that. But I do fire them and I do enjoy target shooting and all that sort of thing. I'm not much of a hunter. I don't like killing animals, but I love to shoot. — Clint Eastwood

Becoming a vegetarian is not merely a symbolic gesture. Nor is it an attempt to isolate oneself from the ugly realities of the world, to keep oneself pure and so without responsibility for the cruelty and carnage all around. Becoming a vegetarian is a highly practical and effective step one can take toward ending both the killing of nonhuman animals and the infliction of suffering on them. — Peter Singer

Veganism is a brilliant approach for elevating human consciousness and avoiding the energy of death and degeneration associated with killing animals for food, which enters us when we eat their flesh and blood. — Gabriel Cousens M.D.

Strange as it may seem - or perhaps it does not seem so strange - they all had the same thought: it was so much easier to kill humans on the battlefield than animals in cages, even if, on the battlefield, one might end up being killed oneself. — Haruki Murakami

Human beans is the only animals that is killing their own kind. — Roald Dahl

Also, the killing of small animals is the entrance ramp onto the serial killer superhighway. Damn. I bet the cat knows that. He picked me because I can't hurt him, or I'd be fulfilling my biological destiny. So I'm screwed. The cat stays. Unless you'll kill him ... How does fifty bucks sound? — Kelley Armstrong

The cycle of life is death, decomposition and regeneration, and a person who wants to stop killing animals is actually anti-life because it's only in death that life can be regenerated. — Joel Salatin

I'm not saying people should go out and start killing," the California-based Vlasak says. But he's not saying activists shouldn't kill either, even though he's a doctor, devoted to mending people. "There's a lot of violence used against animals" Vlasak rationalizes. And some of those responsible won't stop, he says, "until they are forced to stop. — Jerry Vlasak

The time will come when public opinion will no longer tolerate amusements based on the mistreatment and killing of animals. The time will come, but when? When will we reach the point that hunting, the pleasure in killing animals for sport, will be regarded as a mental aberration? — Albert Schweitzer

Killing an animals oneself is more often then not a way to forget the problem while pretending to remember. This is perhaps more harmful than ignorance. It is always possible to wake someone from sleep, but there is no amount of noise that will wake someone who is pretending to be asleep.
pg. 102. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Taggle, meanwhile, made himself popular, killing rats and bringing a rabbit into camp every evening, preening in the praise - silently, thank god, though at night, he recounted choice bits to Kate: "Rye Baro says I am a princeling; he split the leg bone for me so that I could eat the marrow. They love me. And I'm sure they'll keep you, too."
Mira, she thought, and treasured it each time she heard it, They must keep me. Family. — Erin Bow

Of course, animals have to be killed for food or to prevent their doing injury to others or to property. But such killing is too often carried out without regard to the pain inflicted. — Robert Baden-Powell

The people in the chaos cannot learn. They cannot understand what they are doing to the sea and the sky and the plants and the animals. They cannot understand that they are killing them, and that they will end by killing themselves. And there are so many of them, and each one of them is doing part of the killing, whether they know it or not. And when — Margaret Atwood

It is said about Lord Buddha sadaya-hrdaya darsita-pasu-ghatam. He saw the whole human race going to hell by this animal killing. So he appeared to teach ahimsa, nonviolence, being compassionate on the animals and human beings. In the Christian religion also, it is clearly stated, 'Thou shall not kill'. So everywhere animal killing is restricted. In no religion the unnecessary killing of animals is allowed. But nobody is caring. The killing process is increasing, and so are the reactions. Every ten years you will find a war. These are the reactions. — A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

Killing animals for sport, for pleasure, for adventure, and for hides and furs is a phenomena which is at once disgusting and distressing. There is no justification in indulging is such acts of brutality. — Dalai Lama

The precision metallic ratcheting sound a Glock 9mm makes when a bullet is forced out of the gun's clip into the killing chamber is a universal sound that good guys and bad guys and wild animals alike understand on a primal level. - The Devil's Necktie — John Lansing