QuotationsGeorge Bernard Shaw
Quotations Archive From all-creatures.org

This Quotations Archive contains words from famous and some not so famous people who have expressed a sense of love, compassion, and respect for all of God's creation: for people, for animals, and for the environment. They speak of our teaching methods and philosophy. They speak of a lifestyle of non-violence. They seek to eliminate cruelty and suffering. They seek to wake us up. They seek to give us hope.

Weeds by Mary T. Hoffman

George Bernard Shaw
Irish playwright, Nobel Prize and Oscar winner
(1856-1950)

"This is the true joy of life, the being used up for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy."

"When a man wants to murder a tiger, it’s called sport; when the tiger wants to murder him, it’s called ferocity."

"My situation is a solemn one. Life is offered to me on condition of eating beefsteaks. But death is better than cannibalism. My will contains directions for my funeral, which will be followed not by mourning coaches, but by oxen, sheep, flocks of poultry, and a small traveling aquarium of live fish, all wearing white scarfs in honor of the man who perished rather than eat his fellow creatures."

"God has given us a world that nothing but our own folly keeps from being a paradise."

"All great truths begin as blasphemies."

"While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth?"

"The arguments used to justify vivisection are those which could be used to justify any atrocity"

"Animals are my friends...and I don't eat my friends."

"We pray on Sundays that we may have light To guide our footsteps on the path we tread; We are sick of war, we don't want to fight, And yet we gorge ourselves upon the dead."

"A man of my spiritual intensity does not eat corpses."

“Atrocities are no less atrocities when they occur in laboratories and are called medical research.”

“Custom will reconcile people to any atrocity; and fashion will drive them to acquire any custom.”

“Think of the fierce energy concentrated in an acorn! You bury it in the ground, and it explodes into an oak! Bury a sheep, and nothing happens but decay.”

“Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.”

Go on to quotations by: Percy Bysshe Shelley
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