“I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men.”
Quoted allegedly "From da Vinci`s Notes" in Jon Wynne-Tyson: The Extended Circle. A Dictionary of Humane Thought. Centaur Press 1985, p. 65 books.google http://books.google.de/books?id=1mMbAQAAIAAJ&q=murder.
Actually the quote is not authentic but made up from a novel by Dmitri Merejkowski (w:Dmitry Merezhkovsky) entitled "The Romance of Leonardo da Vinci" (La Résurrecton de Dieux 1901), translated from Russian into English by Herbert Trench. G.P. Putnam's Sons New York and London, The Knickerbocker Press. There, in Book (i.e. chapter) VI, entitled The Diary of Giovanni Boltraffio, one finds the following:
The master [Leonardo da Vinci] permits harm to no living creatures, not even to plants. Zoroastro http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommaso_Masini tells me that from an early age he has abjured meat, and says that the time shall come when all men such as he will be content with a vegetable diet, and will think on the murder of animals as now they think on the murder of men ( p. 226 books.google http://books.google.de/books?id=g_pa0OaYX64C&pg=PA226).
However, despite the quote's false attribution, da Vinci was in fact a vegetarian.
Misattributed
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Leonardo Da Vinci 363
Italian Renaissance polymath 1452–1519Related quotes
Source: The Broken God (1992), p. 278
Speech at the funeral of Friedrich Alfred Krupp (27 November 1902), quoted in William Manchester, The Arms of Krupp 1587-1968 (London: Michael Joseph, 1968), p. 275
1900s
“Not because Socrates said so,… I look upon all men as my compatriots.”
Book III, Ch. 9. Of Vanity
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“They come together like the Coroner's Inquest, to sit upon the murdered reputations of the week.”
Act I, scene i
The Way of the World (1700)
Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNEo_mOi29U
O’Connell’s Correspondence, Letter No 700, Vol II
Said after Hilton threatens to 'murder the hog', as quoted in "Hilton threatens to 'murder the hog'" http://politics.guardian.co.uk/conservatives/story/0,,1962285,00.html, The Guardian, October 22, 2011