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I have observed cats and dogs, horses, cattle and sheep under every kind of pain, and I do unhesitatingly say that they suffer as we suffer.

— William Brown

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More quotes by William Brown

When we really understand what pain has to teach us, we shall in large measure have abolished suffering.

Our Lesser Brethren (1919)

There are paths to knowledge which must be forever closed to us, and the way of vivisection is one of those paths. It is made possible only because of our cowardice and fears.

While some animals are protected by law, far too many still remain outside the pale of such protection. And so, I ask: should not their capacity to suffer be the measure of their right to be protected? This is not a plea for charity but for justice—a right that must be claimed.

Have you a right to torture animals for your pleasure? Have you a right to make their lives amid terror and misery in order to derive some measure of gratification from what are called the pleasures of the chase?

I am quite convinced that within its limitations an animal has this higher life, and that it has not merely a 'blind life within the brain', but a very real one within the soul, with its own standard of right and wrong.

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All breathing, existing, living, sentient creatures should not be slain, nor treated with violence, nor abused, nor tormented, nor driven away.

Mahavira

A dog cannot relate his autobiography; however eloquently he may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were honest but poor.

Bertrand Russell Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (1948)

Histories are more full of Examples of the Fidelity of dogs than of Friends.

Alexander Pope

True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power.

Milan Kundera The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: William Brown (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.