Library of Animal Rights History » Animal Welfare-Animal Rights Activists-Advocates-Quotes Against Cruelty to Animals

Animal Rights Quotes

—References to "Rights" of Animals in Historical Literature

But tell us, O Men ! we pray you tell us what injuries have we committed to forfeit ? What Law have we broken, or what Cause given you, whereby you can pretend a Right to invade and violate our part, and natural Rights? (Thomas Tryon, 1684)

In consequence of the sensibility with which they are endowed, [animals] ought to partake of natural right. (Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1755)

"A BOY, who was a great destroyer of nests, had carefully preserved one, that he might enjoy the cruel pleasure of confining in a cage the poor birds, who had the same natural right to liberty with himself. (Thomas Percival, 1775)

The day may come, when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. (Jeremy Bentham, 1780)

"Where the mossy riv'let strays, "Far from human haunts and ways, "All on Nature you depend, "And life's poor season peaceful spend. "Or, if man's superior might "Dare invade your native right, "On the lofty ether borne, "Man with all his powers you scorn; "Swiftly seek, on clanging wings, "Other lakes and other springs; "And the foe you cannot brave, "Scorn at least to be his slave.
(Robert Burns, 1787)

Do they not confine the feathered warblers in a cage, barring them from freedom their inherent right, and from those employments to which instinctive nature so strongly impels them? Will the lark carol with that energy, on one poor sod in his wire prison, as when he soars into the sky till his flight is imperceptible? (Rector of Obscure Country Village, 1787)

If we judge impartially, we shall acknowledge that there are the RIGHTS of a BEAST, as well as the RIGHTS of a MAN. And because man is considered as the Lord of this lower creation, he is not thereby licensed to infringe on the rights of those below him, any more than a King, or Magistrate, is licensed to infringe on the rights of his subjects. (Herman Daggett, 1791)

The public mind had been much occupied by the discussion of the rights of man, in which much progress had been made, whilst not the smallest attention has been given to the rights of other animals. It has been said that human liberty consists in one man doing whatever does not injure another man; and it is affirmed that one man has a right to do whatsoever does not injure another man. Were man the only being in this system capable of happiness and misery, this would not only be the truth, but the whole truth; but as there are innumerable beings, besides man in the system, to which we belong, capable of pleasure and pain, these beings must have rights, and those rights must limit the liberty and rights of man. If it be true that one man has not a right to injure another it is also true that man had not right to wantonly to injure or torment any other animal. (Rights of Brute Creatures, 1795)

Experience plainly demonstrates the inefficacy of mere morality to prevent aggression, and the necessity of coercive laws for the security of rights. I therefore propose, that the Rights of Beasts be formally acknowledged by the state, and that a law be framed upon that principle, to guard and protect them from acts of flagrant and wanton cruelty, whether committed by their owners or others. (John Lawrence, 1796)

Animals are endued with a capability of perceiving pleasure and pain; and, from the abundant provision which we perceive in the world for the gratification of their several senses, we must conclude that the Creator wills the happiness of these his creatures, and consequently that humanity towards them is agreeable to him, and cruelty the contrary. This, I take it, is the foundation of the Rights of Animals, as far as they can be traced independently of scripture and is, even by itself, decisive on the subject, being the same sort of argument as that on which Moralists found the Rights of Mankind, as deduced from the Light of Nature. (Thomas Young, 1798)

Whilst you are pleading the rights of the animal creation, you will also promote the best interests of Christianity in the hearts of your children. (Legh Richmond, 1801)

Their freedom and enjoyments, when they cease to be consistent with our just dominion and enjoyments, can be no part of their natures; but whilst they are consistent, their rights, subservient as they are, ought to be as sacred as our own…Every other branch of our duties, when subject to frequent violation, has been recognised and inculcated by our laws, and the breaches of them repressed by punishments; and why not in this, where our duties are so important, so universally extended, and the breaches of them so frequent and so abominable? (Lord Erskine, 1809)

Animals have their rights, and cruelty towards them is only punished from a refernce to the interest of the owners, without consideration of the wanton cruelties infliced on them through inhumanity and caprice. (Belfast Monthly Magazine, 1809)

Brutes have their rights, and that there should be some reform of the tyrannical and wanton cruelties exercised by man upon the animal world, will be admitted by the just and generous of all parties. (Samuel Jackson Pratt, 1810)

The wise man calls upon us to 'open our mouths' [for] the 'dumb,'…the unhappy victims of…lawless cruelty and oppression; wretches, who have no kind advocate to plead in behalf of their invaded rights; no helping hand to procure for them redress from their furious assailants; no friend to truth, ready, or willing, to expose the cunning devices wherewith they have been entrapped.—Well may they be called "dumb," since their tongues can be of no avail to them, when silenced by the imperiousness of wealth, the dread of irritating, by a vain appeal to justice, those under whose hands they have already groaned, to still further acts of violence, and their utter inability to baffle the false gloss with which the vile schemes of their adversaries have deluded them. (Clergyman of the Church of England, 1824)

"Who would not deem it an offence to heaven "To harm your joys, or from one little nook, "Their heritage from God, your wingless brood "Cruel dislodge? Like man, from God ye spring, "Are God's dependents—ratified as his, "Your rights to share the bounty Nature gives, "Sport in the waves, or on your native rocks "To congregate and clamour as ye will. "Ye too, perchance, as particles detached (William Hamilton Drummond, 1835)

Animals are as delicately constituted and as sensible to pain as themselves—that all of them, as well as man, have their rights, which it is both unjust and cruel to violate or infringe. (William Hamilton Drummond, 1838)

Considering them as creatures of God, formed by the same Almighty hand that forms ourselves, and though subject to man's dominion, still retaining their peculiar rights. (William Hamilton Drummond, 1838)

To injure and destroy animals for obeying the instincts of their nature, is not only a violation of their rights, and a demonstration of ignorance and barbarism, but an act of rebellion against God. (William Hamilton Drummond, 1838)

Animals have the same abstract Rights of Life and Personal Liberty with man. (Edward Nicholson, 1879)

If 'rights' exist at all—and both feeling and usage indubitably prove that they do exist—they cannot be consistency awarded to men and denied to animals, since the same sense of justice and compassion apply in both cases. (Henry Salt, 1892)

To advocate the rights of animals is far more than to plead for compassion or justice towards the victims of ill-usage; it is not only, and not primarily, for the sake of the victims that we plead, but for the sake of mankind itself. Our true civilization, our race-progress, our humanity (in the best sense of the term) are concerned in this development; it is ourselves, our own vital instincts, that we wrong, when we trample on the rights of the fellow-beings, human or animal, over whom we chance to hold jurisdiction. (Henry Salt, 1892)

Above all, the sense of ridicule that at present attaches to the supposed 'sentimentalism' of an advocacy of animals' rights must be faced and swept away. The fear of this absurd charge deprives the cause of humanity of many workers who would otherwise lend their aid, and accounts in part for the unduly diffident and apologetic tone which is too often adopted by humanitarians. We must meet this ridicule, and retort it without hesitation on those to whom it properly pertains. The laugh must be turned against the true 'cranks' and 'crotchet-mongers'—noodles who can give no wiser reason for the infliction of suffering on animals than that it is 'better for the animals themselves'—the flesh-eaters who labour under the pious belief that animals were 'sent' to us as food—the silly women who imagines that the corpse of a bird is a becoming article of head-gear—the half-witted sportsmen who vow that the vigour of the English race is dependent on the practice of fox-hunting—and the half-enlightened scientists who are unaware that vivisection has moral and spiritual, no less than physical, consequences. (Henry Salt, 1892)

In English law animals have legal rights corresponding to a reality embraced by every sound mind. They have rights therefore—animal rights. (Wilfrid Lescher, 1896)