Ten Animal Rights Quotes (General)

I once came up with the idea of making monthly blog entry with ten animal rights quotes by famous people. Today, part one.

Legend:
Quote
~Author

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The question is not, "Can they reason?" nor, "Can they talk?" but rather, "Can they suffer?"
~Jeremy Bentham

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The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest.
~Henry David Thoreau

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The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creatures that cannot.  
~Mark Twain, What Is Man, 1906

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As often as Herman had witnessed the slaughter of animals and fish, he always had the same thought:  in their behaviour toward creatures, all men were Nazis.  The smugness with which man could do with other species as he pleased exemplified the most extreme racist theories, the principle that might is right.
~Isaac Bashevis Singer

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Life is life - whether in a cat, or dog or man.  There is no difference there between a cat or a man.  The idea of difference is a human conception for man's own advantage.  
~Sri Aurobindo

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Those who wish to pet and baby wild animals "love" them.  But those who respect their natures and wish to let them live normal lives, love them more.
~Edwin Way Teale, Circle of the Seasons, 1953

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Heaven is by favor; if it were by merit your dog would go in and you would stay out.  Of all the creatures ever made [man] is the most detestable.  Of the entire brood, he is the only one... that possesses malice.  He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain.
~Mark Twain

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I believe in animal rights, and high among them is the right to the gentle stroke of a human hand.  
~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

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Teaching a child not to step on a caterpillar is as valuable to the child as it is to the caterpillar.
~Bradley Millar

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People must have renounced, it seems to me, all natural intelligence to dare to advance that animals are but animated machines.... It appears to me, besides, that [such people] can never have observed with attention the character of animals, not to have distinguished among them the different voices of need, of suffering, of joy, of pain, of love, of anger, and of all their affections.  It would be very strange that they should express so well what they could not feel.
~Voltaire, Traité sur la tolerance