On Animal Rights

President Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1865
Complete Works
I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being. [TOP]

Richard D. Ryder, 1940-
Speciesism: The Ethics of Animal Abuse
Surely if we are all God’s creatures, if all animal species are capable of feeling, if we are all evolutionary relatives, if all animals are on the same biological continuum, then also we should all be on the same moral continuum—and if it is wrong to inflict suffering upon an innocent and unwilling human, then it is wrong to so treat another species. To ignore this logic is to risk being guilty of the prejudice of speciesism. [TOP]

from a lecture
Since Darwin, the alleged gap between man and the rest of creation can no longer be taken so seriously. Nor can any excuse be accepted for giving to man privileges and rights which are entirely withheld from the other sentient species. We are all animals and we are all cousins. [TOP]

Nathaniel Altman, 1948-
Eating for Life
As a so-called “civilized” people, and as members of a society in search of lasting peace in the world, we cannot remain callous to our responsibility toward nature and insensitive to the inherent rights of animals. [TOP]

Professor J. Howard Moore, 1862-1916
The Universal Kinship
All beings are ends; no creatures are means. All beings have not equal rights, neither have all men, but all have rights. The Life Process is the End—not man, nor any other animal temporarily privileged to weave a world’s philosophy. Nonhuman beings were not made for human beings any more than human beings were made for nonhuman beings. The great Law, the all inclusive gospel of social salvation, is to act toward others as you would act toward a part of your own self. [TOP]

St. Ciaran of Ossory
Animals have rights in themselves because of their capacity to feel both pain and pleasure. [TOP]

Peter Singer, 1946-
Animal Liberation
[Animal liberation] is about the tyranny of human over nonhuman animals. This tyranny has caused and today is still causing an amount of pain and suffering that can only be compared with that which resulted from the centuries of tyranny by white humans over black humans. The struggle against this tyranny is a struggle as important as any of the moral and social issues that have been fought over in recent years. [TOP]

This is speciesism, pure and simple, and it is as indefensible as the most blatant racism. There is no ethical basis for elevating membership of one particular species into a morally crucial characteristic. From an ethical point of view, we all stand on an equal footing—whether we stand on two feet, or four, or none at all. [TOP]

Roslind Godlovitch, 1944-
Animals, Men and Morals
If we hold genuine moral principles about animals, these will not differ in substance from those we hold about human beings. If humans have natural rights, then so do animals. [TOP]

Lord Douglas Houghton of Sowerby, 1898-
House of Commons Debate, 5/11/73
I ask upon what pinnacle do we base human life and well-being that denies all rights whatsoever to every species but our own? [TOP]

Victor Hugo, 1802-1885
Alpes et Pyrénées
I believe that pity is a law like justice and that kindness is a duty like uprightness. That which is weak has a right to the kindness and pity of that which is strong. [TOP]

Jan Morris, 1926-
in Encounter
It is perfectly obvious to me that the whole of animal life, from the saints to the slugs, is equal in the sight of Nature, and that our duty toward our fellow creatures is no less than it is to our fellow humans—more perhaps, if we accept the notion of noblesse oblige. I find this ethical principle so self-evident that in theory I cannot see why any decent human being, with a modicum of compassion and imagination, fails to subscribe to it. [TOP]

J. Todd Ferrier, 1855-1943
On Behalf of the Creatures
Much of the indifference, apathy, and even cruelty which we see has its origin in the false education given the young concerning the rights of animals, and their duty toward them. [TOP]

Brigid Brophy, 1929-
Don’t Never Forget
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 the obligation to recognize and respect the rights of animals. [TOP]

The Rights of Animals
To us it seems incredible that the Greek philosophers should have scanned so deeply into right and wrong and yet never noticed the immorality of slavery. Perhaps 3000 years from now it will seem equally incredible that we do not notice the immorality of our own oppression of animals. [TOP]

Alice Walker
in The Dreaded Comparison by Marjorie Spiegel
The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for whites or women for men. [TOP]

Martyn Ford, 1954-
Toward Animal Rights
That animals should be the subject of serious moral concern may seem a rather strange idea. After all, the gulf between us and them is enormous—so the theory goes—that we can’t possibly think of them in the same way as ourselves. We eat them, hunt them, laugh at them, wear them, inflict pain upon them. Our language itself reflects the bias. “Animal” or “pig” are just two of many terms of abuse commonly used. Intelligence, cooperation and altruism are all allegedly human characteristics, while territoriality, aggression and dominance are considered to belong to the realm of animal nature. [TOP]

But the myth has to be sustained for some deeply rooted practices may be threatened. Animal experimentation and factory farming are the two greatest examples of “speciesism” at work. We have chosen to deny other animals fundamental consideration purely because they happen to belong to other species of animal. Like racism, speciesism is arbitrary and irrational. And it explains why otherwise decent people can condone suffering on a vast scale, pay for it with their taxes, and bestow titles and honors on those who carry out the atrocities. [TOP]

Jeremy Bentham, 1748-1832
Principles of Morals and Legislation
The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withheld from them but by the hand of tyranny ... a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day, or a week or even a month old. But suppose the case were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not Can they reason? Nor, Can they talk? But Can they suffer? Why should the law refuse its protection to any sensitive being? The time will come when humanity will extend its mantle over everything which breathes... [TOP]

Leonard Nelson, 1882-1927
A System of Ethics
...by virtue of its rationality, a being is not only invested with rights, but also assumes duties. A man who shirks his duties is certainly not superior to an animal, which is not even capable of committing a wrong. Whoever takes this fact honestly into account will hesitate before justifying an injury to an animal’s interests on the sole ground that his own life is rational. [TOP]

Arthur Schopenhauer, 1788-1860
On the Basis of Morality
The unpardonable forgetfulness in which the lower animals have hitherto been left by the moralists of Europe is well known. It is pretended that the beasts have no rights. They persuade themselves that our conduct in regard to them has nothing to do with morals or (to speak the language of their morality) that we have no duties toward animals; a doctrine revolting, gross and barbarous... [TOP]

Ibid.
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. [TOP]

Jimmy Stewart, 1908-
The Reader’s Digest
I consider them fellow living creatures with certain rights that should not be violated any more than those of humans. [TOP]

Robert Lawson Tait, 1845-1899
The Uselessness of Vivisection as a Method of Scientific Research
Admitting the so-called lower animals are part of ourselves, in being of one scheme and differing from us only in degree, no matter how they be considered, is to admit they have equal rights. These rights are in no case to be hastily and unfairly set aside, but should be all the more tenderly dealt with... [TOP]

Professor Francis William Newman, 1805-1897
Essays on Diet
We must admit into our moral treatises the question of the rights of animals; and not only the limits of our rights over them, but other topics hence arising. When man must starve unless he kills a deer or a bison, no one blames the slaughter; but it does not follow that when we have plenty of wholesome food without killing, we are at liberty to kill for mere gratification of the palate. To nourish a taste for killing is morally evil; to be accustomed to inflict agony on harmless animals by wounding or maiming them without remorse, prepares men’s hearts for other cruelty. [TOP]

Macaulay’s Prize Essay, Vivisection
Evidently the reason why it is wicked to torture a man is not because he has an immortal soul, but because he has a highly sensitive body; and so has every vertebrate animal, especially the warm-blooded. If we have no moral right to torture a man, neither have we a moral right to torture a dog. We have to add to our morals a new chapter on the rights of animals. [TOP]

Jon Wynne-Tyson, 1924-
Talk for Writers Against Experiments on Animals, 4/24/85
Of the animal rights issue, some would say it is a minor, irrelevant, even ridiculous concern. “Man must come first,” is the cry, as though it was an either/or matter. [TOP]

Carl Sagan, 1934-
The Dragons of Eden
If chimpanzees have consciousness, if they are capable of abstractions, do they not have what until now has been described as “human rights”? How smart does a chimpanzee have to be before killing one constitutes murder? [TOP]

Tom Regan, 1938-
All That Dwell Therein
Both the moral right not to be caused gratuitous suffering and the right to life, I argue, are possessed by the animals we eat if they are possessed by the humans we do not. To cause animals to suffer cannot be defended merely on the grounds that we like the taste of their flesh, and even if animals were raised so that they led generally pleasant lives and were “humanely” slaughtered, that would not insure that their rights, including their right to life, were not violated. [TOP]

Thomas Jefferson, 1743-1826
Equal rights for all; special privileges for none. [TOP]

Bruce Wagman
Co-Author, Animal Law
If you agree that a dog or cat (or a chimpanzee or lion or gorilla) is significantly different than a book or a car or your shoes, then the notion that they should be treated differently in the eyes of the law is common sense. That animals see, hear, breathe and feel is undisputed — books, cars and shoes do not. The idea of guardianship versus ownership flows naturally from the distinction and simply recognizes it as a legal principle. [TOP]

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