Thou shalt not kill.
Exodus 20:13

Speak to the Earth, and it shall teach thee.
Job 12:8

A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast; but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.
Proverbs 12:10

Open thy mouth for the dumb, in the cause of all such as are appointed to destruction.
Proverbs 31:8

Even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath, so that a man hath no pre-eminence above a beast.
Ecclesiastes 3:19

The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them ... They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.
Isaiah 11:6-9

He that killeth an ox is as if he slew a man; he that sacrificeth a lamb, as if he cut off a dog's neck; he that offereth an oblation, as if he offered swine's blood; he that burneth incense, as if he blessed an idol. Yea, they have chosen their own ways, and their soul delighteth in their abominations.
Isaiah 66:3

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
Matthew 5:7

Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.
Romans 12:21

Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees.
Revelation 7:3

The unnatural eating of flesh-meats is as polluting as the heathen worship of devils, with its sacrifices and its unpure feasts, through participation in which a man becomes a fellow-eater with devils.
Clementine Homilies (Second Century AD)

A tree is known by its fruit; a man by his deeds. A good deed is never lost; he who sows courtesy reaps friendship, and he who plants kindness gathers love.
St.Basil, Bishop of Caesarea (329-379 AD)

The saints are exceedingly loving and gentle to mankind, and even to brute beasts ... Surely we ought to show them [animals] great kindness and gentleness for many reasons, but, above all, because they are of the same origin as ourselves.
St.John Chrysostom (c.347-407)

It should not be believed that all beings exist for the sake of the existence of man. On the contrary, all the other beings too have been intended for their own sakes and not for the sake of anything else.
Rabbi Moses ben Maimon (1135-1204)

[Regarding animals and their offspring], there is no difference between the pain of humans and the pain of other living beings, since the love and tenderness of the mother for the young are not produced by reasoning, but by feeling, and this faculty exists not only in humans but in most living beings.
Rabbi Moses ben Maimon (1135-1204)

If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who deal likewise with their fellow men.
St.Francis of Assisi (1181-1226)

Not to hurt our humble brethren is our first duty to them, but to stop there is not enough. We have a higher mission - to be of service to them wherever they require it.
St.Francis of Assisi (1181-1226)

You, who are innocent, what have you done worthy of death! (On seeing animals being killed for food)
Richard of Wyche, Bishop of Chichester (1197-1253)

And if thy heart be straight with God, then every creature shall be to thee a mirror of life and a book of holy doctrine, for there is no creature so little or so vile, but that sheweth and representeth the goodness of God.
Thomas A Kempis (1379-1471)

Be careful that the love of gain draw us not into any business which may weaken our love of our Heavenly Father, or bring unnecessary trouble to any of His creatures.
John Woolman (1720-1772)

I tremble for my species when I reflect that God is just.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

I am to ask your Lordships, in the name of that God who gave to man his dominion over the lower world, to acknowledge and recognise that dominion to be a moral trust.
Lord (Thomas) Erskine (1750-1823)

...the primitve Christians, by laying so much stress upon a future life in contradiction to this life, and placing the lower creatures out of the pale of sympathy, and thus had the foundation for this utter disregard of animals in the light of our fellow creatures.
Anna Bronwell Jameson (1794-1860)

It is almost a definition of a gentleman to say he is one who never inflicts pain.
Cardinal Newman (1801-1890)

...and we have so far improved upon the custom of Adam and Eve, that we generally furnish forth our feasts with a portion of some delicate calf or lamb, whose unspotted innocence entitles them to the happiness of becoming our sustenance.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)

For fidelity, devotion, love, many a two-legged animal is below the dog and the horse. Happy would it be for thousands of people if they could stand at last before the Judgement Seat and say "I have loved as truly and I have lived as decently as my dog." And yet we call them "only brutes"!
Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887)

Without the perfect sympathy with the animals around them, no gentleman's education, no Christian education, could be of any possible use.
John Ruskin (1819-1900)

Love animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled. Do not trouble their joy, don't harrass them, don't deprive them of their happiness, don't work against God's intent. Man, do not pride yourself on superiority to animals; they are without sin, and you, with your greatness, defile the earth by your apppearance on it, and leave the traces of your foulness after you - alas, it is true of almost every one of us!
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881)

Love all God's creatures, the animals, the plants. Love everything to perceive the divine mystery in all.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881)

He who does evil that good may come, pays a toll to the devil to let him into heaven.
Hare and Charles (c. 1830)

Heaven is by favor; if it were by merit your dog would go in and you would stay out.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)

The animal world being altogether external to the scheme of redemption, was regarded as beyond the range of duty, and the belief that we have any kind of obligation to its members has never been inculcated - has never, I believe, been even admitted - by Catholic theologians.
W.E.H.Lecky (1838-1903)

Spain and southern Italy, in which Catholicism has most deeply implanted its roots, are even now, probably beyond all other countries in Europe, those in which inhumanity to animals is most wanton and unrebuked.
W.E.H.Lecky (1838-1903)

...the atrocious doctrine that beast and birds were made solely for man's use and pleasure, and that he has no duties towards them.
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt (1840-1922)

It is a deplorable fact that many Christians are so accustomed to a certain creed and dogma of their own that they will adhere to it even at the sacrifice of the great moral laws of love and mercy.
E.D.Buckner MD, AM, PhD (1843-1907)

Man should regard lower animals as being in the same dependent condition as minors under his government ... For a man to torture an animal whose life God has put into his hands, is a disgrace to his species.
E.D.Buckner MD, AM, PhD (1843-1907)

You think those dogs will not be in heaven! I tell you they will be there long before any of us.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

The great discovery of the nineteenth century, that we are of one blood with the lower animals, has created new ethical obligations which have not yet penetrated the public conscience. The clerical profession has been lamentably remiss in preaching this obvious duty.
William Ralph Inge (1860-1954)

God gave our first parents the food He designed that the race should eat. It was contrary to His plan to have the life of any creature taken. There was to be no death in Eden. The fruit of the trees in the garden was the food man's wants required.
- Ellen White, co-founder Seventh Day Adventists (1864)

Kindness to all God's creatures is an absolute rock-bottom necessity if peace and righteousness are to prevail.
Sir Wilfred Grenfell (1865-1940)

Cruelty to animals is the degrading attitude of paganism.
Cardinal Hinsley (1865-1943)

The infliction of cruelty with a clear conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented hell.
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

I hated the things they believe in, the things they so innocently and charmingly pretended. I hated the sanctimonious piety that let people hurt helpless creatures. I hated the prayers and the hymns - the fountains and the red images that coloured their drab music, the fountains filled with blood, the sacrifice of the lamb.
Ellen Glasgow (1874-1945)

Compared with that of Taoists and Far Eastern Buddhists, the Christian attitude toward Nature has been curiously insensitive and often downright domineering and violent. Taking their cue from an unfortunate remark in Genesis, Catholic moralists have regarded animals as mere things which men do right to regard for their own ends....
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)

If we understand and feel that the greatest act of devotion and worship to God is not to harm any of His beings, we are loving God.
Meher Baba (1894-1969)

To love God in the most practical way is to love our fellow beings. If we feel for others in the same way as we feel for our own dear ones, we love God.
Meher Baba (1894-1969)

If we suffer in the sufferings of others and feel happy in the happiness of others, we are loving God.
Meher Baba (1894-1969)

The diet of animals is vegetables and grains. Must the vegetables be animalized, must they be incorporated into the system of animals, before we get them? Must we obtain our vegetable diet by eating the flesh of dead creatures? God provided fruit in its natural state for our first parents. He gave to Adam charge over the garden, to dress it, and to care for it, saying, "To you it shall be for meat." One animal was not to destroy another animal for food."
-Ellen White, co-founder Seventh Day Adventists (1896)

Let our ministers and canvassers step under the banners of strict temperance. Never be ashamed to say, "No thank you; I do not eat meat. I have conscientious scruples against eating the flesh of dead animals.
- Ellen White, co-founder Seventh Day Adventists, 1901

Flesh was never the best food; but its use is now doubly objectionable, since disease in animals is so rapidly increasing.
- Ellen White, co-founder Seventh Day Adventists, 1902

Animals are becoming more diseased and it will not be long until animal food will be discarded by many besides Seventh-day Adventists. Foods that are healthful and life sustaining are to be prepared, so that men and women will not need to eat meat.
- Ellen White, co-founder Seventh Day Adventists, 1902

Vegetables, fruits, and grains should compose our diet. Not an ounce of flesh meat should enter our stomachs. The eating of flesh is unnatural. We are to return to God's original purpose in the creation of man.
- Ellen White, co-founder Seventh Day Adventists, 1903

The moral evils of a flesh diet are not less marked than are the physical ills. Flesh food is injurious to health, and whatever affects the body has a corresponding effect on the mind and the soul. Think of the cruelty to animals meat-eating involves, and its effect on those who inflict and those who behold it. How it destroys the tenderness with which we should regard those creatures of God!
- Ellen White, co-founder Seventh Day Adventists, 1905

Animals are often transported long distances and subjected to great suffering in reaching a market. Taken from the green pastures and traveling for weary miles over the hot, dusty roads, or crowded into filthy cars, feverish and exhausted, often for many hours deprived of food and water, the poor creatures are driven to their death, that human beings may feast on the carcasses.
- Ellen White, co-founder Seventh Day Adventists, 1905

It is a mistake to suppose that muscular strength depends on the use of animal food. The needs of the system can be better supplied, and more vigorous health can be enjoyed, without its use. The grains, with fruits, nuts, and vegetables, contain all the nutritive properties necessary to make good blood. These elements are not so well or so fully supplied by a flesh diet. Had the use of flesh been essential to health and strength, animal food would have been included in the diet appointed man in the beginning.
- Ellen White, co-founder Seventh Day Adventists, 1905

Those who eat flesh are but eating grains and vegetables at second hand; for the animal receives from these things the nutrition that produces growth. The life that was in the grains and the vegetables passes into the eater. We receive it by eating the flesh of the animal. How much better to get it direct by eating the food that God provided for our use!
- Ellen White, co-founder Seventh Day Adventists, 1905

I write in sorrow [on vivisection]: as far as I can tell, no voice has been heard from the Church about this evil. The matter is forgotten for another year. It should not be. It is one of the most appalling blots on our plentifully blotted civilisation.
Rev Geoffrey Mather (1910- )

It is man who has fallen, not the beasts: that is the message even for the irreligious, and to some extent salvation can be measured by his very treatment of them.
Roy Fuller (1912- )

Let the law of kindness show no limits. Show a loving consideration for all God's creatures.
General Advices (1928) (Quakers)

We shall respect that of God in all creation. We shall live in loving harmony with the earth. Humankind shall be a joyful gardener of the world given us by God, and shall use its fruits wisely and moderately.
Quakers (1979)

• Religion - from the Articles Index