Ingrid Newkirk Animal Quotations

Perhaps measuring animal intelligence by comparing it to human intelligence isn't the best litmus test.

Every animal has his or her story, his or her thoughts, daydreams, and interests. All feel joy and love, pain and fear, as we now know beyond any shadow of a doubt. All deserve that the human animal afford them the respect of being cared for with great consideration for those interests or left in peace.

If we are ever to halt climate change and conserve land, water and other resources, not to mention reduce animal suffering, we must celebrate Earth Day every day - at every meal.

When it comes to having a central nervous system, and the ability to feel pain, hunger, and thirst, a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy.

Whether or not we are religious, respecting others should be seen as just as important as looking out for ourselves, yet it requires discipline to change our bad habits that cause pain to animals.

Since we can't count on the meat, egg, and dairy industries to protect animals from the most egregious forms of cruelty, what can we, as consumers, do? Opting out of paying someone to allow animals to die in a barn fire or at the slaughterhouse seems pretty reasonable.

By adopting a wonderful mutt, you'll save a life and help reduce animal homelessness while also boosting your chances of a more robust new furry friend, as mixed-breed dogs have demonstrated better health and longer life spans than their purebred cousins.

Most Americans, like most Japanese, view their dogs, cats, and other animal companions as family members, and rightly so.

To me, it is one world, and the non-human animals bear the brunt of oppression and suffering.

Animals aren't any better equipped to survive an emergency than humans are. Few people missed the fact that after Hurricane Katrina, people died because buses and emergency shelters wouldn't allow their animals.

All of us in society are supposed to believe that cruelty to animals is wrong and that it is a good thing to prevent needless suffering. So if that is true, how can meat be acceptable under any but the most extraordinary circumstances, such as perhaps roasting the bird who died flying into a window?

At PETA, we often say that the issue of how animals are treated isn't just about them; it's about us, how we behave.

I think if you're against cruelty and you look at what happens to animals in slaughterhouses and on factory farms, you have to be completely against eating meat.

I hope SeaWorld is exploring how, like Ringling, it can get out of the wild animal business.

Being asked to support humane meat means being asked to support the suffering of animals in transport, to approve of treatment that causes them palpable fear, their bodies shaking and their eyes wide as saucers, as they are slung by their legs into crates that are slammed onto the back of a truck.

There's nothing humane about the flesh of animals who have had one or two or even three improvements made in their singularly rotten lives on today's factory farms.

Ninety-five percent of the eggs produced in America come from factory-farmed birds. Even if free-range farms were hugely more humane, the sheer number of animals raised to satisfy people's desire for eggs, meat, and milk makes it impossible for us to raise them all on small, free-range farms.

We do not advocate right to life for animals.

Even if animal experiments did result in a cure for AIDS, of which there is no chance, I'd be against it on moral grounds.

Would I rather the research lab that tests animals is reduced to a bunch of cinders? Yes.

Perhaps the mere idea of receiving a nasty missive will allow animal researchers to empathize with their victims for the first time in their lousy careers. I find it small wonder that the laboratories aren’t all burning to the ground. If I had more guts, I’d light a match.

We’re looking for good lawsuits that will establish the interests of animals as a legitimate area of concern in law.

Even if animal tests produced a cure for AIDS, we'd be against it,

If that hideousness came here [to the U.S.], it wouldn't be any more hideous for the animals-they are all bound for a ghastly death anyway. But it would wake up consumers.... I openly hope that it comes here. It will bring economic harm only for those who profit from giving people heart attacks and giving animals a concentration camp-like existence. It would be good for animals, good for human health, and good for the environment.

The best bet for the horses would be to stop betting on the Derby and other horse races, and to stop breeding, racing and killing thoroughbreds altogether

Eventually companion animals would be phased out, and we would return to a more symbiotic relationship, enjoyment at a distance.

U.K. citizens fleeing the Middle East and Japan have been allowed to take their animal companions with them on evacuation flights. The U.S. is not so civilized, and that's a blot on our national copybook.

Medical research is "immoral even it it's essential."

It is dangerous to engage in even the most innocuous-seeming discourse with the FBI/ Homeland Security/ a local detective.

Seriously, I think everybody needs to be more disciplined; nobody needs any meat. But from a perspective of how many animals suffer, it's probably better to kill and eat one whale than it is to eat fish, chickens, cows, lambs and eggs.

We are opposed to all cruelty, so as advocates of non-violence, opponents of oppression, people who abhor the cruelty inherent in slaughtering we say the only ethical way to consume flesh is to pick up the carcass of an animal who has died naturally or been killed accidentally, say by being hit by a car, and eat that.

When we build an attractive home, we raze land on which animals have already built their homes. They have nowhere to go.

When I hear of anyone walking into a lab and walking out with animals, my heart sings.

Even painless research is fascism, supremacism.

We are complete press sluts.

Winners don't eat wieners.

Businesses are terrified. They have no idea what I'm going to do next.

More power to [Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty] if they can get someone's attention.

Society is celebrity-based and we are determined to use [celebrities'] voices to make sure no one forgets there are issues over the use of animals. Celebrities can be great for our cause and can really make people sit up and think for the first time about animal abuse.

[I believe] that animals have a worth in and of themselves, and that they are not inferior to human beings but rather just different from us, and that they really don't exist for us nor do they belong to us...it should not be a question of how they should be treated within the context of their usefulness, or perceived usefulness, to us, but rather whether we have a right to use them at all.

I wish we all would get up and go into the labs and take the animals out or burn them down.

I am just trying to make the best possible case for the animals. That is clearly what I have been put on earth to do. Even after I am gone I will try to continue.

I'd go to work early, before anyone got there, and I would just kill the animals myself...I must have killed a thousand of them, sometimes dozens every day.

....we would like an end to pet shops and the breeding of animals.

We are not in the home finding business, although it is certainly true that we do find homes from time to time for the kind of animals people are looking for. Our service is to provide a peaceful and painless death to animals who no one wants.

I don't use the word 'pet.' I think it's speciest language. I prefer 'companion animal.' We would no longer allow... pet shops... Eventually companion animals would be phased out.

Probably everything we do is a publicity stunt ... we are not here to gather members, to please, to placate, to make friends. We're here to hold the radical line.

Cows are gentle, interesting animals.

A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy.

I will be the last person to condemn ALF [the Animal Liberation Front].

...no movement for social change has ever succeeded without 'the militarism component'....Thinkers may prepare revolutions, but bandits must carry them out

Animal liberationists do not separate out the human animal, so there is no rational basis for saying that a human being has special rights. A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. They're all mammals.

I find that as I get older I seem to become more of a Luddite... And hearing animal experimenters describe me as a Luddite--which used to think I was not. And now I think Ned Lud had the right idea and we should have stopped all the machinery way back when, and learned to live simple lives.

Our nonviolent tactics are not as effective. We ask nicely for years and get nothing. Someone makes a threat, and it works.

Pet ownership is an absolutely abysmal situation brought about by human manipulation.

You dont have to own squirrels and starlings to get enjoyment from them ... One day, we would like an end to pet shops and the breeding of animals. [Dogs] would pursue their natural lives in the wild ... they would have full lives, not wasting at home for someone to come home in the evening and pet them and then sit there and watch TV,

Pet ownership is slavery. Animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, or be entertained by.

Anybody who witnesses the suffering of animals and has a glimmer of hope of reducing that suffering can't take the position that it's all or nothing. We have to be pragmatic. Screw the principle.

Recognize meat for what it really is: the antibiotic- and pesticide-laden corpse of a tortured animal.

We have to be aggressive when those we stick up for have no voice. I don't consider it radical to say cruelty is wrong and that animals should be respected. I consider it radical to eat corpses, put electrodes in animals' heads, make elephants live in chains in the circus, and poison animals we consider a nuisance.

a great way to bring about animal liberation.