Charles Darwin
English naturalist, geologist, author of On the Origin of Species
(1809-1882)
"It is a significant fact, that the more the habits of any particular animals are studied by a naturalist, the more he ascribes to reason and less to unlearnt instincts."
"Few men could endure to watch for five minutes an animal struggling in a trap with a crushed and torn limb. Some will wonder how such cruelty can have been permitted to continue in these days of civilization."
"The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man."
"The difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind."
"There is no fundamental difference between man and the higher mammals in their mental faculties... The difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind. The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man. We have seen that the senses and intuitions, the various emotions and faculties, such as love, memory, attention and curiosity, imitation, reason, etc., of which man boasts, may be found in an incipient, or even sometimes a well-developed condition, in the lower animals."
“As man advanced gradually in intellectual power and was enabled to trace the more remote consequences of his actions; as his sympathies became more tender and widely diffused, extending to men of all races, and finally, to the lower animals, so would the standard of his morality rise higher and higher.”
“The most energetic workers I have encountered in my world travels are the vegetarian miners of Chile.”