An infallible characteristic of meanness is cruelty. Men who have practised tortures on animals without pity, relating them without shame, how can they still hold their heads among human beings?
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

A course of experimental physiology in which brutes are agonised to exhibit facts already established, is a disgrace to the country that permits it.
John Elliotson, MD, FRS (1791-1868)

I despise amd abhor the pleas on behalf of that infamous practice, vivisection. I would rather submit to the worst of deaths, so far as pain goes, than have a single dog or cat tortured on the pretense of sparing me a twinge or two.
Robert Browning (1812-1899)

The Queen has done all she could on the dreadful subject of vivisection, and hopes that Mr. Gladstone will speak strongly against such a practice which is a disgrace to humanity...
Queen Victoria (1819-1901)

The excuse or toleration of cruelty upon any living creature by a woman is a deadly sin against the grandest force in nature - maternal love ... In not a single instance known to science has the cure of any human disease resulted necessarily from this fallacious method of research.
Elizabeth Blackwell (1821-1910)

What I think about vivisection is that if people admit that they have the right to take or endanger the life of living beings for the benefit of many, there will be no limit for their cruelty.
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)

I am not interested to know whether vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn't...The pain which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity toward it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)

The discovery of the law of evolution, which revealed that all organic creatures are of one family, shifted the centre of altruism from humanity to the whole conscious world collectively. Therefore, the practice of vivisection has been left by that discovery without any logical argument in its favour.
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

There are many more eminent men in my profession who are adverse to vivisection than who are in favour of it.
L.Forbes Winslow, DCL, MB, LLD, MCRP (1844-1913)

If, as we know, the creatures with fur, feathers or fins are our brothers in a lower stage of development, then their very weakness and inability to protest demands that man should refrain from torturing them for the mere possibility of obtaining some knowledge which he believes may be to his own interests.
Luther Burbank (1849-1926)

I have always felt that the cause of science cannot possibly be served by cruelty to animals, and especially by the barbarous practice of vivisection.
Robert Howell Perks, MD, FRCS, LRCP (1854-1929)

Atrocities are not less atrocities when they occur in laboratories and are called medical research.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

Vivisection is a social evil because if it advances human knowledge, it does so at the expense of human character.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

Vivisection, for the purpose of class demonstration as practised abroad, cannot be too severely condemned. I am quite convinced that even at the present day in these islands an immense amount of needless and absolutely purposeless suffering is caused to dumb animals by so-called scientific enquiries.
Sir Thomas Myles CB, MD, FRCSI (1857-1937)

We ought not to ridicule the pretensions of the anti-vivisectionists - the sufferings of animals are truly horrible; and sympathy with them is not sentimentality.
Vikenty Veressayev (1867-1945)

Vivisection is the blackest of all the black crimes that a man is at present committing against God and his fair creation. It ill becomes us to invoke in our daily prayers the blessings of God, the Compassionate, if we in turn will not practise elementary compassion towards our fellow creatures.
Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948)

Let none count themselves wise who have not with the nerves of their imagination felt the pain of the vivisected.
John Cowper Powys (1872-1963)

Scientific civilisation has destroyed the soul of the world.
Alexis Carrel, MD (1873-1944)

During my medical education at the University of basle I found vivisection horrible barbarous and above all unnecessary.
Carl Jung (1875-1924)

To fight against vivisection is to fight against the principal fortress of the foe of idealism and spiritual evolution. Not until this fortress be shattered, and even its ruins removed from the face of the earth, can we justly claim to possess civilisation.
Emilia Lind-Af-Hageby (1878-1963)

Knowledge acquired in biological research is seldom directly applicable to human beings ... The results of scientific research, obtained under these conditions, cannot be applied directly to human beings who vary widely in their hereditary make-up, in their environment, and in their past health record.
Lord (John) Boyd Orr, CH, FRS, LLD (1880-1971)

Vivisection is mostly undertaken in the expectation that the goal which has been mentally erected is attainable. The results never justify the means as erecting goals is an idle pursuit, as evidenced by research conducted on these lines retarding instead of advancing progress.
James McDonagh FRCS (1881-1965)

Even should it be conclusively proved that human beings benefit directly from the suffering of animals, its infliction would nevertheless be unethical and wrong.
Air Chief Marshall, Lord Dowding (1882-1970)

Most experts agree that animal testing today is virtually pointless. As one clinical director puts it: "You cannot really rely on tests with any other animal or combination of animals to predict drug or surgical action in man."
Curtis Freshel (1886-1968)

... on account of the dissimilarity between animals and human beings, it is worse than useless to attempt to base any methods of treatment or prevention of human disease on animal experimentation.
Dr.M.Beddow Bayly, MRCS, LRCP (1887-1961)

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.
Dr Louis J.Camuti (1893-1981)

Terror, agony, and abominable cruelty are inseperable from the experiments on animals at the Government Microbiological Research Establishment at Porton Down - an Animal Belsen.
Emrys Hughes MP (1894-1969)

Vivisection can only be defended by showing it to be right that one species should suffer in order that another species be happier ... If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reasons.
C.S.Lewis (1898-1963)

We have a special duty to all animals and we must fight against the merchants of animal suffering who subordinate compassion to the heartless demands of so-called scientific progress.
Edgar Lustgarten (1907-1978)

Knowledge without pity may well be the greatest danger that besets the world.
John Vyvyan (1908-1975)

Vivisection - a social evil that advances human knowledge at the expense of human character.
John Vyvyan (1908-1975)

The humane acquisition of knowledge is indispensable to a civilised society.
John Vyvyan (1908-1975)

Science ... has established a new set of values, which amounts to the pitiless exploitation of the rest of nature for the physical benefit of man.
John Vyvyan (1908-1975)

Vivisection is wrong because it is an abuse of man's power over the helpless, involving pain and suffering. The name for this is cruelty, and cruelty is immoral, no matter what the reason for its introduction.
Jon Evans (1917- )

Most animal experimentation is useless.
Henry J. Heimlich (1920 - )

Ask the experimenters why they experiment on animals, and the answer is: "Because the animals are like us." Ask the experimenters why it is morally OK to experiment on animals, and the answer is: "Because the animals are not like us." Animal experimentation rests on a logical contradiction.
Professor Charles R.Magel (1920- )

The case against vivisection is the same as that against war and all other forms of cruelty - that violence does not produce long-term solutions.
Jon Wynne-Tyson (1924- )

... the only argument against vivisection that will be seen to have lasting power - that we do not improve human society by means that debase human character.
Jon Wynne-Tyson (1924- )

There is conditioned brutality among scientists, especially in the universities of Britain. The time has come to call a halt. The situation has got out of hand.
Dr Kit Pedler (1928-1981)

A medical profession founded on callousness to the pain of the other animals may eventually destroy its own sensibility to the pain of humans.
Brigid Brophy (1929- )

The philosophy behind vivisection, the sacrifice of creatures we regard as 'inferior' beings, differs little from that behind the concentration camp or the slave trader.
Aga Khan (Prince Sadruddin) (1933- )

I do not believe that chimpanzees, rats and the rest should be sacrificed, even for an acknowledged greater good; such sacrifice infringes their right to refuse. In my morality, all creatures with feelings and wishes should be thought of as ends-in-themselves, and not merely means.
Professor Stephen L.Clark (1945- )

At present scientists do not look for alternatives simply because they do not care enough about the animals they are using.
Peter Singer (1946- )

Once one accepts that there is something essentially different between a dog chasing after a stick and a stone plummeting to earth, then one will have a hard time in morally justifying for example, why a healthy dog is given lung cancer with tobacco smoke in order to prove something to a suicidal human who smokes forty cigarettes a day.
Stanley Godlovitch (1947- )