by Dorothy Hoffman

Created on: August 29, 2009   Last Updated: August 30, 2009

Inspiring Quotes about Animals

The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men. Alice Walker

I'm most inspired by quotations, like Alice Walker's, that eloquently and concisely express a deeply humane philosophy of life and put it clearly into a broad context. Many people throughout human history have spoken out against cruelty toward animals and those who are weaker or more vulnerable, and many have written about the innate rights of all living creatures. But Alice Walker, I think, takes us a step beyond simply observing the Golden Rule in our relationships with animals. She sees the analogy between people who treat other animals as if they existed just for our benefit and exploitation, and those who treat other groups of human beings in the same way. If we can't extend our imaginations far enough to see that other species have their own lives, needs and purposes, entirely separate from the uses we can make of them, are we any better able to view the needs and purposes of other races or gender as independent of our own? It's as mistaken to regard animals as nothing more than natural resources for human use as it is to regard other groups of humans as existing for our benefit.

In The Philosophy of Civilization, Albert Schweitzer says much the same thing, but emphasizes that being truly human means feeling compassion toward all creatures capable of suffering:

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.

I particularly like Schweitzer's term circle of compassion. It evokes the image of all living creatures being part of a larger communitya kind of extended family beyond the human family. Without the ability to empathize with and feel compassion toward our nonhuman cousins, we cannot be truly human or truly a part of the greater world of living, sentient beings.

Voltaire, writing on the subject of tolerance, criticized the prevalent scientific view of animals of his time (which still permeates most scientific research today), writing that

People must have renounced,. . . all natural intelligence to dare to advance that animals are but animated machines.... [Such people] can never have observed with attention the character of animals, not to have distinguished

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