Why should the law refuse its protection to any sensitive being? The time will come when humanity will extend its mantle over everything which breathes.

Pleasure is in itself a good; nay, even setting aside immunity from pain, the only good.

...the rarest of all human qualities is consistency.

Create all the happiness you are able to create; remove all the misery you are able to remove.

Bodies are real entities. Surfaces and lines are but fictitious entities. A surface without depth, a line without thickness, was never seen by any man; no; nor can any conception be seriously formed of its existence.

Nature has placed mankind under the government of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure... they govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it.

A civilized society must count animals as worthy of moral consideration and ethical treatment. The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?