Inaccurate Quotes on animals

[Guest guest]

Hello,

I got this very interesting message from Patricia Tricker of the

Vegan Society. Clarifies many quotes randomly used. I also got some more

information on the popular Gandhi quote " The greatness of a nation and its

moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated " .

Some Gandhian quotes on morality are quite ambiguous and contradictory.

Gandhi actually believed in the inferiority of the black races in South

Africa.

 

Also the Abraham Lincoln quote : " I am in favor of animal rights as well as

human rights. That is the way of a whole human being. " There appears to be

no evidence he said this.

" I do not regard flesh-food as necessary for us at any stage and under any

clime in which it is possible for human beings ordinarily to live. I hold

flesh-food to be unsuited to our species. We err in copying the lower animal

world - if we are superior to it. - Mahatma Gandhi, his Mission and Message

 

" I hold today the same opinion as I held then. To my mind, the life of a

lamb is no less precious than that of a human being. I should be unwilling

to take the life of a lamb for the sake of the human body. I hold that, the

more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is to protection by man from

the cruelty of man " - An Autobiography, the Story of My Experiments with

Truth

 

The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way

its animals are treated.

Vivisection is the blackest of all the black crimes that a man is at present

committing against God and his fair creation. It ill becomes us to invoke in

our daily prayers the blessings of God, the Compassionate, if we in turn

will not practise elementary compassion towards our fellow creatures.

- This quote is from 'The Extended Circle, a dictionary of humane thought'

published in 1985 by Jon Wynne-Tyson (reproduced with permission) - he gives

the source as ' The Moral Basis of Vegetarianism' but we cannot find it in

the 1931 talk of that title, but apparently hat title was also used for a

book published in the 60's, which collects Gandhi's different writings on

vegetarianism - we do not have that and would like to hear from anyone who

does as it may give the original context. If anyone can verify this, or any

other quotes, quote please contact IVU. We also have an alternative version

of this quote as:

The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be measured by the way

in which its animals are treated.

- but no source for that either...

However.... way back in 1883 Howard Williams published 'The Ethics of Diet -

a Catena' a collection of articles by ethical writers. Williams was a friend

of Gandhi at the London Vegetarian Society, and Gandhi clearly states in his

autobiography that he read the book in the early 1890s. In the section on

Schopenhauer, p.287, Williams quotes Dr. David Strauss (Die Alte und die

Neue Glaube) " The manner in which a nation, in the aggregate, treats the

other species, is one chief measure of its real civilisation. " - so wherever

Gandhi might have used his variation of the quote, he did not entirely

originate it.

 

I want to realize brotherhood or identity not merely with the beings called

human, but I want to realize identity with all life, even with such things

as crawl upon earth. - quoted in Words of Gandhi

 

I abhor vivisection with my whole soul. All the scientific discoveries

stained with innocent blood I count as of no consequence. - unknown origin

 

" Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good. " -

unknown origin

*http://www.ivu.org/history/gandhi/index.html*<http://www.ivu.org/history/gandhi\

/index.html>

 

yes, but some are the usual hopeless inaccuracies :-

 

(d) " 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. " -George Bernard Shaw

>

 

this was attributed to Shaw but there is no evidence he wrote it and Shaw

scholars reject it.

 

(g) " If man wants freedom why keep birds and animals in cages? Truly man is

> the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds them. We live by the death of

> others. We are burial places! I have since an early age abjured the use of

> meat. " -Leonardo-da-Vinci

>

 

this was NOT written by Leonardo, it came from Merijowsky, a fiction writer

in the 1920s who put the words into Leonardo's mouth and it has been

misquoted ever since.

 

(i) " My refusing to eat flesh occasioned an inconveniency, and I was

> frequently chided for my singularity, but, with this lighter repast, I made

> the greater progress, for greater clearness of head and quicker

> comprehension " " Flesh eating is unprovoked murder. " -Benjamin Franklin

>

 

- this fails to mention that a few years later he changed his mind and

reverted to meat eating, its rather dishonest quoting out-of-context in this

way.

 

(k) " I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way

> of a whole human being " -Abraham Lincoln

>

 

there has been a lot of research to try to find the source of this one, none

has ever been found and there is no reason to believe he ever said it.

 

(q) " In all the round world of utopia there is no meat. There used to be.

> But now we cannot stand the thought of slaughterhouses. And in a population

> that is all educated and at about the same level of physical refinement, it

> is practically impossible to find anyone who will hew a dead ox or pig. We

> never settled the hygienic aspect of meat-eating at all. This other aspect

> decided us. I can still remember as a boy the rejoicings over the closing of

> the last slaughterhouse. " -H.G. Wells

>

 

this was Wells writing in a work of fiction - his 'Utopia', he was never

remotely veg himself, despite being added to various internet lists.

 

® " There is something so very dreadful, so satanic in tormenting those who

> have never harmed us, and who cannot defend themselves, who are utterly in

> our power, who have weapons neither of offence nor defence, that none but

> very hardened persons can endure the thought of it. " -Cardinal Newman

>

 

I suspect this one has been muddled with his brother, Prof. Newman who was

president of the UK vegsoc; the cardinal was never interested.

 

(x) " We stopped eating meat many years ago. During the course of a Sunday

> lunch we happened to look out of the kitchen window at our young lambs

> playing happily in the fields. Glancing down at our plates, we suddenly

> realized that we were eating the leg of an animal who had until recently

> been playing in a field herself. We looked at each other and said, " Wait a

> minute, we love these sheep - they're such gentle creatures. So why are we

> eating them? " It was the last time we ever did. " -Linda and Paul McCartney

> (musicians)

>

 

they made this up too. I've put a lot of details on ivu.org showing that the

real McCartney process was quite different, but this made better PR.

 

(z) " The earth affords a lavish supply of riches, of innocent foods, and

> offers you banquets that involve no bloodshed or slaughter; only beasts

> satisfy their hunger with flesh, and not even all of those, because horses,

> cattle, and sheep live on grass. As long as men massacre animals, they will

> kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seeds of murder and pain cannot

> reap joy and love. " -Pythagoras, Greek philosopher

>

 

Nothing written by Pythagoras has survived, he certainly didn't write this!

Probably from Ovid a few hundred years later.

 

(*b) " Until he extends the circle of compassion to all living things, man

> will not himself find peace. " -Albert Schweitzer

>

 

Schweitzer was not veg either, his 'living things' included plants, more

like the usual environmentalist approach.

 

If we are going to have these things posted please at least check that there

some minimum level of accuracy. There are many details about all the people,

and the mis-quotes on the IVU website, just use the search box to find them.

 

john

-------

john davis

manager

http://www.ivu.org