Humane EDUCATION: Quotable Quotes

I am sometimes asked: ‘Why do you spend so much of your time and money talking about kindness to animals when there is so much cruelty to men?’ I answer: ‘I am working at the roots.’
George T. Angell Founder of the Mass SPCA. Taken from a speech on Feb 14, 1884.

Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings we are still savages.
Thomas A. Edison, 1890, American Inventor

Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace.
Albert Schweitzer, Ph.D., M.D., Nobel Peace Prize winning humanitarian.

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.
Leo Tolstoy, Author

A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him, that of plants and animals as that of his fellow men, and when he devotes himself helpfully to all life that is in need of help.
Dr. Albert Schweitzer, Nobel Peace Prize recipient 1952

I had been told that the training procedure with cats was difficult. It's not. Mine had me trained in two days.
Bill Dana, Actor/Comedian

A cat improves the garden wall in sunshine, and the hearth in foul weather.
Judith Merkle Riley, Author

If having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans.
James Herriot, Veterinarian and Author

There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.
Dr. Albert Schweitzer, Nobel Peace Prize recipient 1952

Chip, shortly after being brought to the Washington Humane Society.	Chip, after getting proper care.

It seems to me of great importance to teach children respect for life. Towards this end, experiments on living animals in classrooms should be stopped. To encourage cruelty in the name of science can only destroy the finer emotions of affection and sympathy, and breed an unfeeling callousness in the young towards suffering in all living creatures.
Eleanor Roosevelt, former First Lady of the United States of America, author, human rights activist

As custodians of the planet it is our responsibility to deal with all species with kindness, love, and compassion. That these animals suffer through human cruelty is beyond understanding. Please help to stop this madness.
Richard Gere, Actor

To educate our people, and especially our children, to humane attitudes and actions toward living things is to preserve and strengthen our national heritage and the moral values we champion in the world.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, President of the United States

My doctrine is this: That if we see cruelty or wrong that we have the power to stop, and we do nothing, we make ourselves sharers in the guilt.
Anna Sewell, Author of Black Beauty; Autobiography of a Horse

Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart.
Eleanor Roosevelt, former First Lady of the United States of America, author, human rights activist

It is inexcusable for scientists to torture animals; let them make their experiments on journalists and politicians.
Henrik Ibsen, Playwright

Man is taught chivalry; the dog has it naturally. He never attacks the female of his species.
He is the delight of the poor man's hovel and the rich man's mansion. Faithfully follows his master who tramps the dusty roadside, and sits proudly upon the cushioned seat of the millionaire's de luxe machine.
Wealth, cast social distinction are all one to him. He is content and useful in every station assigned to him by fate.
But he knows the just from the unjust, the kind from the unkind, the charitable from the uncharitable, the true from the false, the man from the hypocrite.
Disguise does not deceive him. Paint, tinsel, silf, and jewels are no more to him than tatters, rags worn shoes, or ragged hat. But it is what these things cover, the man, who wins his affection or dislike.
Excerpted from the Dog, a speech given on the U. S. House of Representatives floor on February 3, 1923 by the Honorable Harry B. Hawes