What does Reverence for Life say abut the relations between [humanity] and the animal world? Whenever I injury any kind of life I must be quite certain that it is necessary. I must never go beyond the unavoidable, not even in apparently insignificant things. The farmer who has mowed down a thousand flowers in his meadow in order to feed his cows must be careful on his way home not to strike the head off a single flower by the side of the road in idle amusement, for he thereby infringes on the law of life without being under the pressure of necessity.

Any profound view of the world is mysticism. It has, of course, to deal with life and the world, both of which are nonrational entities.

Our age is bent on trying to make the barren tree of skepticism fruitful by tying the fruits of truth on its branches.

Who can describe the injustice and the cruelties that in the course of centuries the peoples of color of the world have suffered at the hands of Europeans?... We and our civilization are burdened, really, with a great debt. We are not free to confer benefits on these men, or not, as we please; it is our duty. Anything we give them is not benevolence but atonement.

Love . . . includes fellowship in suffering, in joy and in effort.

The disastrous feature of our civilization is that it is far more developed materially than spiritually. Its balance is disturbed.

A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him, that of plants and animals as that of his fellow men, and when he devotes himself helpfully to all life that is in need of help.