Mahatma Gandhi Animal Quotations

I do feel that spiritual progress does demand at some stage that we should cease to kill our fellow creatures for the satisfaction of our bodily wants.

When I see a cow, it is not an animal to eat, it is a poem of pity for me and I worship it and I shall defend its worship against the whole world.

Man is neither mere intellect not the gross animal body, nor the heart or soul alone.

A man who wants to control his animal passions easily does so if he controls his palate.

Himsa does not need to be taught, Man as animal is violent, but as spirit is nonviolent.

To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being.

Unlike the animal, God has given man the faculty of reason.

It is very significant that some of the most thoughtful and cultured men are partisans of a pure vegetable diet

Wildlife is decreasing in the jungles, but it is increasing in the towns.

I abhor vivisection with my whole soul. All the scientific discoveries stained with innocent blood I count as of no consequence.

The most violent weapon on earth is the table fork.

Study not man in his animal nature - man following the laws of the jungle - but study man in all his glory.

Animal experimentation is the blackest of all the black crimes that a man is at present committing... We should be able to refuse to live if the price of living be the torture of sentient beings... I abhor [animal] experimentation with my whole soul. All the scientific discoveries stained with innocent blood I count as of no consequence... The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.

Ethically they had arrived at the conclusion that man's supremacy over lower animals meant not that the former should prey upon the latter, but that the higher should protect the lower, and that there should be mutual aid between the two as between man and man. They had also brought out the truth that man eats not for enjoyment but to live.

It ill becomes us to invoke in our daily prayers the blessings of God, the Compassionate, if we in turn will not practice elementary compassion toward our fellow creatures.

It is necessary to correct the error that vegetarianism has made us weak in mind, or passive or inert in action. I do not regard flesh-food as necessary at any stage

Complete non-violence is complete absence of ill-will against all that lives. It therefore embraces even sub-human life, not excluding noxious insects and beasts. They have not been created to feed our destructive propensities. If we only knew the mind of the Creator, we should find their proper place in His creation.

Of all the animal creations of God, main is the only animal who has been created in order that he may know his Maker. Man's aim is life is not therefore to add from day to day to his material prospects and to his material possessions, but his predominant calling is, from day to day to come nearer to his own Maker.

The lower animals are our brethren. I include among them the lion and the tiger. We do not know how to live with these carnivorous beasts and poisonous reptiles because of our ignorance.

Violence begins with the fork.

... man was not born a carnivorous animal, but born to live on the fruits and herbs that the earth grows. I know we must all err. I would give up milk if I could, but I cannot. I have made that experiment times without number. I could not, after a serious illness, regain my strength, unless I went back to milk. That has been the tragedy of my life. But the basis of my vegetarianism is not physical, but moral. If anybody said that I should die if I did not take beef tea or mutton, even on medical advice, I would prefer death. That is the basis of my vegetarianism.

Human nature will find itself only when it fully realizes that to be human it has to cease to be beastly or brutal.

The measure of a society can be how well its people treat its animals

One can measure the greatness and the moral progress of a nation by looking at how it treats its animals.

You can judge a society by the way it treats it's animals

I hold flesh-food to be unsuited to our species. We err in copying the lower animal world if we are superior to it.

Kaffirs are as a rule uncivilized - the convicts even more so. They are troublesome, very dirty and live almost like animals.

My ahimsa is my own. I am not able to accept in its entirety the doctrine of non-killing of animals.