What do great minds say about hunting?
Theodor Heuss (1884-1963), 1st President of the Republic of Germany:
"Hunting is merely a cowardly circumlocution for the especially cowardly murder of fellow creatures who don’t have a chance. Hunting is a variant of human mental illness."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), German author:
"Hunting is indeed always a form of war."
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), Russian author:
"From the murder of animals to the murder of humans is only a small step."
Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), German natural scientist:
"Where a hunter lives, ten shepherds could live, one hundred farmers and a thousand gardeners. Cruelty against animals can exist neither with true education nor true learning. It is one of the most typical vices of a base and ignoble people."
François Voltaire (1694-1788), French author and philosopher:
"Hunting is one of the surest means of killing people’s feelings for their fellow creatures."
Pythagoras (6 centuries B.C.), Greek philosopher and mathematician:
"Whatever a person does to animals will be paid back to him in kind."
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), German philosopher:
"Amongst all the ways of life, a life of hunting is without doubt the most repugnant to the civilized condition; the forbiddance to shed blood from the time of Noah seems from the very beginning to be nothing other than the forbiddance to a life of hunting."
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Irish playwright:
"When a human wants to kill a tiger, it is called sport. When a tiger wants to kill a human, it is called bestiality."
Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898), German statesman:
"There is never so much lying as after the hunt and before the election."
Hans-Dietrich Genscher (1927- ), German politician (FDP), former Secretary of State:
"I could never shoot at animals; they would have to commit suicide."
Gustav Heinemann (1899-1976), German politician (SPD),
former German president:
"I find it so right that before the beginning of a hunt the hares and pheasants are warned by the sound of horns."
Hubert Wienzirl (1935- ), former president
of the Society for the Protection of Nature:
"Everything has its time. The time for hunting has run out."
Bernhard Grzimek (1909-1989), German zoologist and
producer of animal films:
"I have never understood the joy that some people have in shooting animals dead."
Wilhelm Dietler (19th C.), German professor of philosophy, author:
"There are really many lovers of hunting who are actually hardened to murder and evil – repulsive monsters, craving blood, used to anguished whimpering, who are never more happy than under noisy, intoxicating diversions. Others have acquired their taste for hunting from the coarseness of their upbringing and way of living, and this is not only professional hunters, but many a country squire and others of like mind, who – without having learned a reasonable, human occupation, without consideration – know no other way to kill their time than by hunting."
Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805), German author:
"It is dangerous to awaken the lion, pernicious is the tiger’s tooth; but the most terrible of all is man in his insanity."
Karlheinz Deschner (1924- ), Dr. of Philosophy, literary giant, philosopher and award-winning author:
"Wherever man takes the right to sacrifice an animal for a purpose, he commits not only an injustice but a crime."
Erasmus von Rotterdam (1465-1536), Dutch humanist, author:
"Erasmus von Rotterdam considered the hunting-crazed ones as crazy people of this world, who like nothing better than hunting animals and who think they feel an incredible enjoyment whenever they hear the obnoxious sound of the hunting horns and the barking of the hounds. I nearly assume that they sense dog droppings like the scent of cinnamon! ... When they then taste a piece of the meat of the wild game, they think they are almost completely ennobled. While these people with their constant hunting and gluttony basically only attain their own decadence, they think they live like kings."
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