Animal rights focus on the belief that animals deserve to live freely and without harm just like humans.
They are creatures with feelings, emotions and their lives shouldn’t be exploited for consumer needs.
This concept is championed by activists like Ingrid Newkirk of PETA emphasizing our shared responsibility for ethical treatment and coexistence.
The collection of 71 quotes about animal rights highlights our role in creating a world that values and respects animal life urging kindness and compassion.
These quotes will motivate everyone from animal rights supporters to pet owners to consider our impact on animals and work towards ending animal cruelty.
Animal Rights Quotes
It takes nothing away from a human to be kind to an animal. ~ Joaquin Phoenix.
The soul is the same in all living creatures, although the body of each is different. ~ Hippocrates.
When I see bacon, I see a pig, I see a little friend, and that’s why I can’t eat it. Simple as that. ~ Paul McCartney.
Becoming vegan is the most important and direct change we can immediately make to save the planet and its species. ~ Chris Hedges.
The question is not, ‘can they reason?’ nor, ‘can they talk?’ but ‘can they suffer?’ ~ Jeremy Bentham.
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.
Concern for animals is a matter of taking the side of the weak against the strong, something the best people have always done. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe
With every animal species that fade to extinction, one more opportunity is lost from the realm of human growth and possibility. ~ Laurence Overmire.
I call my horses ‘divine mirrors’ – they reflect back the emotions you put in. If you put in love and respect and kindness and curiosity, the horse will return that. ~ Allan Hamilton
Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace. ~ Albert Schweitzer
I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being. ~ Abraham Lincoln.
See Also: Pet Quotes
Inspirational Quotes About Animal Rights
It is just like man’s vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions. ~ Mark Twain.
Kindness and compassion towards all living things is a mark of a civilized society. Conversely, cruelty, whether it is directed against human beings or against animals, is not the exclusive province of any one culture or community of people. ~ Cesar Chavez.
Never believe that animals suffer less than humans. Pain is the same for them that it is for us. Even worse, because they cannot help themselves. ~ Louis J. Camuti.
I believe animals should be respected as citizens of this earth. They should have the right to their own freedom, their own families, and their own life. ~ John Feldmann.
We don’t need to eat anyone who would run, swim, or fly away if he could. ~ James Cromwell.
Compassion for animals is intimately connected with goodness of character; and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer.
The human body has no more need for cows’ milk than it does for dogs’ milk, horses’ milk, or giraffes’ milk. ~ Dr Michael Klaper.
Humanity’s true moral test, its fundamental test…consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. ~ Milan Kundera.
If you look into their [chimpanzees’] eyes, you know you’re looking into a thinking mind. They teach us that we are not the only beings with personalities, minds capable of rational thought, altruism and a sense of humor. That leads to new respect for other animals, respect for the environment and respect for all life. ~ Jane Goodall.
Could you look an animal in the eyes and say to it, ‘My appetite is more important than your suffering’? ~ Moby.
The Best Animal Rights Quotes
Never, never be afraid to do what’s right, especially if the well ~ being of a person or animal is at stake. ~ Martin Luther King Jr.
If you don’t like pictures of animal cruelty being posted on social media, you need to help stop the cruelty, not the pictures. You should be bothered that its happening, not that you saw it. ~ Marie Sarantakis.
We are, quite literally, gambling with the future of our planet, for the sake of hamburgers. ~ Peter Singer.
Societies that lack respect for animals eventually lose respect for human beings. ~ Wayne Gerard Trotman.
To be a vegetarian is to disagree – to disagree with the course of things today… starvation, cruelty – we must make a statement against these things. Vegetarianism is my statement. And I think it’s a strong one. ~ Isaac Bashevis Singer.
When humans act with cruelty, we characterize them as ‘animals’, yet the only animal that displays cruelty is humanity. ~ Anthony Douglas Williams
The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than Blacks were made for whites, or women for men. ~ Alice Walker.
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.
Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight. ~ Albert Schweitzer.
Animals do not exist for our entertainment. They deserve to live their lives free from exploitation and abuse. ~ Pat Derby.
Until we have the courage to recognize cruelty for what it is, whether its victim is human or animal, we cannot expect things to be much better in this world. ~ Rachel Carson.
Quotes To Stop Animal Cruelty
The love of all living creatures is the noble attribute of man. ~ Charles Darwin.
A man is only noble when he has pity on all living creatures. ~ Shenita Etwaroo.
Although other animals may be different from us, this does not make them less than us. ~ Marc Bekoff.
I have always felt that the way we treat animals is a pretty good indicator of the compassion we are capable of for the human race. ~ Ali MacGraw.
If you really care about animals, then stop trying to figure out how to exploit them ‘compassionately’. Just stop exploiting them. ~ Gary Francione.
If there are still zoos in the world, it means that humanity has not yet stepped back from this cruelty we define as animality! ~ Mehmet Murat İldan.
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. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer.
Personal purity isn’t really the issue. Not supporting animal abuse, and persuading others not to support it, is. ~ Peter Singer.
Show me the enforced laws of a state for the prevention of cruelty to animals and I in turn will give you a correct estimate of the refinement, enlightenment, integrity, and equity of that commonwealth’s people. ~ L.T. Danshiell
Our task must be to free ourselves… by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty. ~ Albert Einstein.
Only when we have become nonviolent towards all life will we have learned to live well with others. ~ Cesar Chavez.
These enthusiasts often like to hang signs that say Gone Fishin’ or Gone Huntin’. But what these slogans really mean is Gone Killing. ~ Marc Bekoff.
A reduction of meat consumption by only 10% would result in about 12 million more tons of grain for human consumption. This additional grain could feed all of the humans across the world who starve to death each year – about 60 million people! ~ Marc Bekoff.
Quotations about Animal Rights
People speak sometimes about the bestial cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky
One day, the absurdity of the almost universal human belief in the slavery of other animals will be palpable. We shall then have discovered our souls and become worthier of sharing this planet with them. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
Life is as dear to mute creature as it is to man. Just as one wants happiness and fears pain, just as one wants to live and not die, so do other creatures. ~ The Dalai Lama
I hold that the more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of man. ~ Mahatma Gandhi.
Until we consider animal life to be worthy of the consideration and reverence we bestow upon old books and pictures and historic monuments, there will always be the animal refugee living a precarious life on the edge of extermination, dependent for existence on the charity of a few human beings. ~ Gerald Durrell.
To make a difference in the world, you don’t have to be perfect, clever, or beautiful. You just need to be kind. ~ Paul Oxton.
But for the sake of some little mouthful of flesh, we deprive a soul of the sun and light, and of that proportion of life and time it had been born into the world to enjoy. ~ Plutarch.
Dogs do not have many advantages over people, but one of them is extremely important: euthanasia is not forbidden by law in their case; animals have the right to a merciful death. ~ Milan Kundera.
When it comes to having a central nervous system and the ability to feel pain, hunger, and thirst, a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. ~ Ingrid E Newkirk.
If you have men who will exclude any of God’s creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men. ~ Francis of Assisi.
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 Edison
Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer.
Intelligence is the ability of a species to live in harmony with its environment. ~ Paul Watson.
I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men. ~ Leonardo da Vinci.
As long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seeds of murder and pain cannot reap the joy of love. ~ Pythagoras.
Hard-Hitting Animal Rights Quotes
Just how destructive does a culinary preference have to be before we decide to eat something else? ~ Jonathan Safran Foer.
Animals have certain rights, as inalienable as those of man to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ~ Caroline Earle White
Animal abuse is an international problem, which has been part of human civilization for millennia. ~ Catherine Tiplady
The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated. ~ Mahatma Gandhi.
The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that’s the essence of inhumanity. ~ George Bernard Shaw.
Animals should not require our permission to live one earth. ~ Anthony Douglas William.
If you want to test cosmetics, why do it on some poor animal who hasn’t done anything? ~ Ellen DeGeneres.
He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. ~ Emmanuel Kant.
If we can’t be cordial to these creatures’ fleece, I think that we deserve to freeze. ~ Marianne Moore.
If slaughterhouses had glass walls, the whole world would be vegetarian. ~ Linda McCartney.
It made me feel particularly sickened to know that this kind of callous attitude toward animals is repeated again and again in laboratories around this country. Animals, whether they’re dogs, cats, monkeys, or any other sentient beings, should not be subjected to cruel and unnecessary experimentation. ~ Jane Goodall.
I hope these quotes inspire action against animal cruelty by supporting animal rescues with time and better resources.
