Vegetarian Quotes...

Check out these cool vegetarian quotes...

"Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages." ~Thomas Edison, inventor

People often say that humans have always eaten animals, as if this is a justification for continuing the practice. According to this logic, we should not try to prevent people from murdering other people, since this has also been done since the earliest of times.~Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904-)

You put a baby in a crib with an apple and a rabbit. If it eats the rabbit and plays with the apple, I'll buy you a new car.
~Harvey Diamond

A vegetarian is a person who won't eat anything that can have children. ~David Brenner

For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love. ~Pythagoras, mathematician

If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian. ~Paul McCartney

"If a group of beings from another planet were to land on Earth -- beings who considered themselves as superior to you as you feel yourself to be to other animals -- would you concede them the rights over you that you assume over other animals?"
~George Bernard Shaw, playwright, Nobel Prize 1925

There is no fundamental difference between man and the higher animals in their mental faculties... The lower animals, like man, manifestly feel pleasure and pain, happiness, and misery.~ Charles Darwin

The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated." "To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being.~ Mahatma Gandhi, statesman and philosopher

"What is it that should trace the insuperable line? ...The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?" ~Jeremy Bentham, philosopher

"In their behavior toward creatures, all men are Nazis. Human beings see oppression vividly when they're the victims. Otherwise they victimize blindly and without a thought." ~Isaac Bashevis Singer, author, Nobel Prize 1978

"Our task must be to free ourselves . . . by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty." "Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances of survival for life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet." ~Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel Prize 1921

"I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being." ~Abraham Lincoln, 16th U.S. President

"My refusing to eat meat occasioned an inconveniency, and I have been frequently chided for my singularity. But my light repast allows for greater progress, for greater clearness of head and quicker comprehension."~BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (1706-1790)American statesman, inventor and author

Think of the fierce energy concentrated in an acorn! You bury it in the ground, and it explodes into an oak! Bury a sheep, and nothing happens but decay. ~George Bernard Shaw

The beef industry has contributed to more American deaths than all the wars of this century, all natural disasters, and all automobile accidents combined. If beef is your idea of "real food for real people" you'd better live real close to a real good hospital. ~Neal Barnard

The human body has no more need for cows' milk than it does for dogs' milk, horses' milk, or giraffes' milk. ~Michael Klaper

Tongue - a variety of meat, rarely served because it clearly crosses the line between a cut of beef and a piece of a dead cow. ~Bob Ekstrom

Recognize meat for what it really is: the antibiotic- and pesticide-laden corpse of a tortured animal. ~Ingrid Newkirk

I will not eat anything that walks, runs, skips, hops or crawls. God knows that I've crawled on occasion, and I'm glad that no one ate me. ~Alex Poulos

A man of my spiritual intensity does not eat corpses. ~George Bernard Shaw

Truely man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds theirs. We live by the death of others: we are burial places! I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look on the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men. ~Leonardo da Vinci

I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other.... ~Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854

I venture to maintain that there are multitudes to whom the necessity of discharging the duties of a butcher would be so inexpressibly painful and revolting, that if they could obtain a flesh diet on no other condition, they would relinquish it forever. ~W.E.H. Lecky

I just could not stand the idea of eating meat - I really do think that it has made me calmer.... People's general awareness is getting much better, even down to buying a pint of milk: the fact that the calves are actually killed so that the milk doesn't go to them but to us cannot really be right, and if you have seen a cow in a state of extreme distress because it cannot understand why its calf isn't by, it can make you think a lot. ~Kate Bush

You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Thou shalt not kill" does not apply to murder of one's own kind only, but to all living beings; and this Commandment was inscribed in the human breast long before it was proclaimed from Sinai. As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields."
~Leo Tolstoy

As soon as I realized that I didn't need meat to survive or to be in good health, I began to see how forlorn it all is. If only we had a different mentality about the drama of the cowboy and the range and all the rest of it. It's a very romantic notion, an entrenched part of American culture, but I've seen, for example, pigs waiting to be slaughtered, and their hysteria and panic was something I shall never forget. ~Cloris Leachman

We manage to swallow flesh only because we do not think of the cruel and sinful thing that we do. Cruelty... is a fundamental sin, and admits of no arguments or nice distinctions. If only we do not allow our heart to grow callous, it protests against cruelty, is always clearly heard; and yet we go on perpetrating cruelties easily, merrily, all of us - in fact, anyone who does not join in is dubbed a crank. ~Rabindranath Tagore

Can you really ask what reason Pythagoras had for abstaining from flesh? For my part I rather wonder both by what accident and in what state of soul or mind the first man did so, touched his mouth to gore and brought his lips to the flesh of a dead creature, he who set forth tables of dead, stale bodies and ventured to call food and nourishment the parts that had a little before bellowed and cried, moved and lived. How could his eyes endure the slaughter when throats were slit and hides flayed and limbs torn from limb? How could his nose endure the stench? How was it that the pollution did not turn away his taste, which made contact with the sores of others and sucked juices and serums from mortal wounds? ~Plutarch

A veteran USDA meat inspector from Texas describes what he has seen: "Cattle dragged and choked... knocking 'em four, five, ten times. Every now and then when they're stunned they come back to life, and they're up there agonizing. They're supposed to be re-stunned but sometimes they aren't and they'll go through the skinning process alive. I've worked in four large [slaughterhouses] and a bunch of small ones. They're all the same. If people were to see this, they'd probably feel really bad about it. But in a packing house everybody gets so used to it that it doesn't mean anything." ~Slaughterhouse 1997

I do not like eating meat because I have seen lambs and pigs killed. I saw and felt their pain. They felt the approaching death. I could not bear it. I cried like a child. I ran up a hill and could not breathe. I felt that I was choking. I felt the death of the lamb. ~Vaslav Nijinsky

"If a man earnestly seeks a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from animal food..."~COUNT LEO TOLSTOY (1828-1910)Russian novelist and philosopher

"I am conscious that meat eatingis not in accordance with the finer feelings,and I abstain from it whenever I can."~ALBERT SCHWEITZER, M.D. (1875-1965)Alsatian philosopher and medical missionary;1952 Nobel Peace Prize recipient

"The moral duty of man consists of imitatingthe moral goodness and beneficence of God,manifested in the creation, toward all His creatures."~THOMAS PAINE (1737-1809)English born American patriot, author and political thinkerThe Age of Reason

"The obligations of law and equity reach only to mankind;but kindness and beneficence should be extendedto the creatures of every species,and these will flow from the breast of a true man,as streams that issue from the living fountain."~PLUTARCH (46-120 AD.)Greek philosopher and moralist

"It is very significant that some of the most thoughtful and cultured men are partisans of a pure vegetable diet." ~MAHATMA GANDHI (1869-1948) Hindu pacifist, spiritual leader

"But for the sake of some little mouthful of meat, we deprive a soul of the sun and light, and of that proportion of life and time it had been born into the world to enjoy."~SENECA (C.5 - C.E.65)Roman philosopher, tutor to Nero

"The gods created certain kinds of beingsto replenish our bodies...they are the trees and the plants and the seeds."~PLATO (circa 428-347 B.C.)Greek philosopher

"Every man who has ever been earnest to preserve his higher or poetic faculties in the best condition, has been particularly inclined to abstain from animal food."~HENRY DAVID THOREAU (1817-1862)American author, poet, and naturalist

"The animals share with usthe privilege of having a soul."~PYTHAGORAS (circa 582-507 B.C.)Greek philosopher, mathematician, mystic"Father of Vegetarianism"

"The average age (longevity) of a meat-eater is 63.I am on the verge of 85 and still at work as hard as ever. I have lived quite long enough and am trying to die,but I simply cannot do it. A single beef-steak would finishme, but I cannot bring myself to swallow it. I am oppressed with a dread of living forever. That is the only disadvantage of vegetarianism."~GEORGE BERNARD SHAW (1856-1950)Anglo-Irish author and playwright

"The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man."~CHARLES DARWIN (1809-1882)English biologist and naturalist

Would you kill your pet dog or cat to eat it? How about an animal you're not emotionally attached to? Is the thought of slaughtering a cow or chicken or pig with your own hands too much to handle? Instead, would hiring a hit-man to do the job give you enough distance from the emotional discomfort? What animal did you put a contract out on for your supper last night? Did you at least make sure that none went to waste and to take a moment to be grateful for its sacrifice? ~Anonymous

"For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love." -- Pythagoras

"I said in mine heart concerning the estate of the sons of men, that God might manifest them, and that they might see that they themselves are beasts. For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity."~Ecclesiastes

"Not to hurt our humble brethren is our first duty to them, but to stop there is not enough." ~ St. Francis of Assisi

"Awareness is bad for the meat business. Conscience is bad for the meat business. Sensitivity to life is bad for the meat business. DENIAL, however, the meat business finds indispensable."~John Robbins, Diet for a New America

"There will come a time...when civilised people will look back in horror on our generation and the ones that preceded it: the idea that we should eat other living things running around on four legs, that we should raise them just for the purpose of killing them! The people of the future will say "meat-eaters!" in disgust and regard us in the same way we regard cannibals and cannibalism"--Dennis Weaver

"The last thing my father told me before he was taken to his death... was to love all creation."~Alex Hershaft, concentration camp survivor and coordinator of The Great American Meatout 1 800 Meatout.

(DID YOU KNOW?)I have been a vegetarian for 27 years and am a jogger. Recently I found that sugar in America is processed using charcoaled bones of animals... so for the last 3 months I have been off of sugar.~D. Wilson

Olympic wrestler: Vegetarian wrestlers who do not work out lose their muscle much more slowly than nonvegetarians.

Oprah Winfrey, being sued by Amarillo cattle ranchers for saying: "I'm stopped. I'll never eat another burger". (paraphrased)

Harriet Beecher Stowe: We should remember in our dealings with animals that they are a sacred trust to us from our heavenly Father. They are dumb and cannot speak for themselves.

Ralph Nader on ABC re the 13 states with veggie libel laws (such as Texas Cattlemen's Beef Assn is trying to use against Oprah): These laws are designed to chill free speech.

Howard Lyman, former cattle rancher: (paraphrased from his appearances on more than l show) 100,000 cows in the U.S. are alive at night and dead in the morning. These cows on the ground are ground into feed, making their fellows not only carnivores but cannibals. Europe after Mad Cows' Disease has banned this practice. The U.S has not yet.

Steven Spielberg screenwriter Koepp: Humans are the only hunters who kill when not hungry.

There is no force powerful enoughto stem the tide of an idea whose time has come.We can no longer, in good conscience or in good health,continue to use animals for food.The vegan concept is not a fad that will pass with time.It is a necessary shift in thinking, that will lead toa heightened empathy and concern for others.It is the expansion of compassion, which is the single mostimportant step in the next evolution of humankind.~GentleWorld.Org

RELIGIOUS/ RELIGIOUS TEXTS:

Genesis l:29: Behold I have given you herb yielding seed. To you it shall be for meat.

Quran: There is no beast on earth nor bird which flieth..but the same is a people like unto you. All God's creatures are God's family.

Buddha: To become vegetarian is to step into the stream which leads to nirvana.

Bhagavad Gita: One is dearest to God who has no enemies among the living beings, who is nonviolent to all creatures. (Sanskrit word ahimsa means nonharm to all life)

Isaiah: He that slayeth an ox is as he that killeth a human.

Mahavira, founder of the Jain religion: May all that have life be delivered from suffering.

Siuh, Malaysian woman lab technician: If I follow Kwon Yin (Chinese Divine Mother Deity of Mercy) I guess I should become vegetarian.

Return from Vegetarian Quotes to raw-living-food-success Home Page...