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• A vegetarian is a person who won’t eat anything that can have children. David Brenner
• 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
• I made the choice to be vegan because I will not eat (or wear, or use) anything that could have an emotional response to its death or captivity. Rai Aren
• I won’t eat anything that has intelligent life, but I’d gladly eat a network executive or a politician. Marty Feldman
• How can you eat anything with eyes? Will Kellogg
• We don’t need to eat anyone who would run, swim, or fly away if he could. James Cromwell
• Animals,  Diet,  Health,  Food

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Many vegetarians argue that eating meat is an unnecessary form of killing …

• A human can be healthy without killing animals for food. Therefore if he eats meat he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy
• Animals are my friends… and I don’t eat my friends. George Bernard Shaw
• While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth? George Bernard Shaw
• The man who kills the animals today is the man who kills the people who get in his way tomorrow. Dian Fossey
• To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being. I should be unwilling to take the life of a lamb for the sake of the human body. Mahatma Gandhi
• We cannot have peace among men whose hearts find delight in killing any living creature. Rachel Carson
• It’s not guilt that stops me eating meat. It’s the pride I take in living without killing. Edward Sanchez
• I’d rather die than live by the death of others. Edward Sanchez

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… akin even to murder

• Auschwitz begins wherever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they’re only animals. Theodor W. Adorno
• It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of appetite is nothing but an act of murder.  Edward Sanchez
• 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. Leo Tolstoy
• Flesh eating is unprovoked murder. Benjamin Franklin
• It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets. Voltaire
• Truly 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

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Many vegetarians argue that to eat meat is to eat dead corpses and tortured flesh

• A man of my spiritual intensity does not eat corpses. George Bernard Shaw
• It is only by softening and disguising dead flesh by culinary preparation that it is rendered susceptible of mastication or digestion, and that the sight of its bloody juices and raw horror does not excite intolerable loathing and disgust. Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab Notes
• Nothing more strongly arouses our disgust than cannibalism, yet we make the same impression on Buddhists and vegetarians, for we feed on babies, though not our own. Robert Louis Stevenson
• Recognize meat for what it really is: the antibiotic- and pesticide-laden corpse of a tortured animal. Ingrid Newkirk
• I choose not to make a graveyard of my body for the rotting corpses of dead animals. George Bernard Shaw
• My body will not be a tomb for other creatures. Vegan Da Vinci
• I wonder both by what accident and in what state of soul or mind the first man abstained from flesh, 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? We slaughter harmless, tame creatures without stings or teeth to harm us, creatures that Nature appears to have produced for the sake of their beauty and grace. But nothing abashed us not the flower-like like tinting of the flesh, not the persuasiveness of the harmonious voice, not the cleanliness of their habits or the unusual intelligence that may be found in the poor wretches. No, for the sake of a little flesh we deprive them of sun, of light, of the duration of life to which they are entitled by birth and being. Plutarch
• Fork: An instrument used chiefly for the purpose of putting dead animals into the mouth. Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary
• 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
• Perhaps in the back of our minds we already understand, without all the science I’ve discussed, that something terribly wrong is happening. Our sustenance now comes from misery. We know that if someone offers to show us a film on how our meat is produced, it will be a horror film. We perhaps know more than we care to admit, keeping it down in the dark places of our memory– disavowed. When we eat factory-farmed meat we live, literally, on tortured flesh. Increasingly, that tortured flesh is becoming our own. Jonathan Safran Foer

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Many vegetarians argue that eating meat is to value taste and pleasure above the suffering of animals

• Do you eat chicken because you are familiar with the scientific literature on them and have decided that their suffering doesn’t matter, or do you do it because it tastes good? Jonathan Safran Foer
• This isn’t animal experimentation, where you an imagine some proportionate good at the other end of the suffering. This is what we feel like eating. Tell me something: Why is taste, the crudest of our sense, exempted from the ethical rules that govern our other sense? If you stop and think about it, it’s crazy. Why doesn’t a horny person have as strong a claim to raping an animal as a hungry one does to killing and eating it?  Jonathan Safran Foer
• Could you look an animal in the eyes and say to it, ‘My appetite is more important than your suffering’? Moby
• Suffering

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By all accounts, modern factory farming is extremely cruel …

• 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
• Needless to say, jamming deformed, drugged, overstressed birds together in a filthy, waste-coated room is not very healthy. Beyond deformities, eye damage, blindness, bacterial infections of bones, slipped vertebrae, paralysis, internal bleeding, anemia, slipped tendons, twisted lower legs and necks, respiratory diseases, and weakened immune systems are frequent and long-standing problems on factory farms. Jonathan Safran Foer
• I became a vegan the day I watched a video of a calf being born on a factory farm. The baby was dragged away from his mother before he hit the ground. The helpless calf strained its head backwards to find his mother. The mother bolted after her son and exploded into a rage when the rancher slammed the gate on her. She wailed the saddest noise I’d ever heard an animal make, and then thrashed and …dug into the ground, burying her face in the muddy placenta. I had no idea what was happening respecting brain chemistry, animal instinct, or whatever. I just knew that this was deeply wrong. I just knew that such suffering could never be worth the taste of milk and veal. I empathized with the cow and the calf and, in so doing, my life changed. James McWilliams
• When chickens get to live like chickens, they’ll taste like chickens, too. Michael Pollan
• Cruelty

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… causing animals much fear and distress …

• 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 consume the carcasses of creatures of like appetites, passions and organs with our own, and fill the slaughterhouses daily with screams of pain and fear. Robert Louis Stevenson
• 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
• Fear

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… causing animals much suffering and pain …

• 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
• I don’t like to see animals in pain. That was very uncomfortable to me. I don’t like factory farming. I’m not an advocate for the meat industry. Anthony Michael
• I made the choice to be vegan because I will not eat (or wear, or use) anything that could have an emotional response to its death or captivity. I can well imagine what that must feel like for our non-human friends – the fear, the terror, the pain – and I will not cause such suffering to a fellow living being. Rai Aren

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… driven to a large degree by demand and corporate profit

• In fact, if one person is unkind to an animal it is considered to be cruelty, but where a lot of people are unkind to animals, especially in the name of commerce, the cruelty is condoned and, once large sums of money are at stake, will be defended to the last by otherwise intelligent people. Ruth Harrison
• Whenever people say ‘We mustn’t be sentimental’ you can take it they are about to do something cruel. And if they add ‘We must be realistic’ they mean they are going to make money out of it. Brigid Brophy

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Many vegetarians argue that eating meat is born of wilful ignorance of what goes on behind slaughterhouse walls …

• Were the walls of our meat industry to become transparent, literally or even figuratively, we would not long continue to raise, kill, and eat animals the way we do. Michael Pollan
• If you knew how meat was made, you’d probably lose your lunch. k.d. lang
• If slaughterhouses had glass walls, the whole world would be vegetarian. Linda McCartney
• 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

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… and that to be wilfully ignorant and indifferent is to be complicit in cruelty

• Not responding is a response–we are equally responsible for what we don’t do. In the case of animal slaughter, to throw your hands in the air is to wrap your fingers around a knife handle. Jonathan Safran Foer
• Whether we change our lives or do nothing, we have responded. To do nothing is to do something. Jonathan Safran Foer
• You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that’s the essence of inhumanity.  George Bernard Shaw
• Very little of the great cruelty shown by men can really be attributed to cruel instinct. Most of it comes from thoughtlessness or inherited habit. The roots of cruelty, therefore, are not so much strong as widespread. But the time must come when inhumanity protected by custom and thoughtlessness will succumb before humanity championed by thought. Let us work that this time may come. Albert Schweitzer
• One common response is ‘I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know.’
• Cruelty to animals is an abuse of power, and when people take advantage of animals and do cruel and wicked things to them, they debase themselves. Thomas Scully
• The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing. Albert Einstein

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Many vegetarians argue that future societies will look back at today’s treatment of animals as something savage, violent and uncivilised

• 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
• Truly 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
• The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men. Dmitry Merezhkovsky
• 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 savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized. Henry David Thoreau
• 150 years ago, they would have thought you were absurd if you advocated for the end of slavery. 100 years ago, they would have laughed at you for suggesting that women should have the right to vote. 50 years ago, they would object to the idea of African Americans receiving equal rights under the law. 25 years ago they would have called you a pervert if you advocated for gay rights. They laugh at us now for suggesting that animal slavery be ended. Some day they won’t be laughing. Gary Smith
• In their behaviour 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
• 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
• 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 A. Edison

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Many vegetarians argue that we don’t need meat to live …

• Elsewhere the paper notes that vegetarians and vegans (including athletes) ‘meet and exceed requirements’ for protein. And, to render the whole we-should-worry-about-getting-enough-protein-and-therefore-eat-meat idea even more useless, other data suggests that excess animal protein intake is linked with osteoporosis, kidney disease, calcium stones in the urinary tract, and some cancers. Despite some persistent confusion, it is clear that vegetarians and vegans tend to have more optimal protein consumption than omnivores. Jonathan Safran Foer
• One farmer says to me, “You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make the bones with;” and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying himself with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle. Henry David Thoreau
• We do not need to eat animals, wear animals, or use animals for entertainment purposes, and our only defense of these uses is our pleasure, amusement, and convenience. Gary L. Francione
• People eat meat and think they will become as strong as an ox, forgetting that the ox eats grass. Pino Caruso

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… that meat is, in fact, bad for our health

• The combination of processed foods and animal products should comprise less than 10 percent of your total caloric intake; go beyond that and you start to pay a significant price in health issues. Joel Fuhrman, M.D.
• Plant protein did not promote cancer growth, even at the higher levels of intake. What did? The animal protein. T. Colin Campbell
• People who ate the most animal based foods got the most chronic disease… People who ate the most plant- based foods were the healthiest and tended to avoid chronic disease. T. Colin Campbell
• Being a meat eater is really expensive, even if you don’t count the cost of chemo. Snargleplexon.com
• Heart attacks… God’s revenge for eating his little animal friends.
• You’re thinking I’m one of those wise-ass California vegetarians who is going to tell you that eating a few strips of bacon is bad for your health. I’m not. I say its a free country and you should be able to kill yourself at any rate you choose, as long as your cold dead body is not blocking my driveway. Scott Adams
• 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 D. Barnard
• Health

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Many vegetarians argue that modern factory farming produces meat that is foul

• Scientific studies and government records suggest that virtually all (upwards of 95 percent of) chickens become infected with E. coli (an indicator of fecal contamination) and between 39 and 75 percent of chickens in retail stores are still infected. Around 8 percent of birds become infected with salmonella (down from several years ago, when at least one in four birds was infected, which still occurs on some farms). Seventy to 90 percent are infected with another potentially deadly pathogen, campylobacter. Chlorine baths are commonly used to remove slime, odor, and bacteria. Of course, consumers might notice that their chickens don’t taste quite right – how good could a drug-stuffed, disease- ridden, shit-contaminated animal possibly taste? – but the birds will be injected (or otherwise pumped up) with “broths” and salty solutions to give them what we have come to think of as the chicken look, smell, and taste. (A recent study by Consumer Reports found that chicken and turkey products, many labeled as natural, “ballooned with 10 to 30 percent of their weight as broth, flavoring, or water. Jonathan Safran Foer
• Getting your nutrients from meat is like running your water through a sewer before you drink it. Colleen Riordan
• Recognize meat for what it really is: the antibiotic- and pesticide-laden corpse of a tortured animal. Ingrid Newkirk

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Many vegetarians argue that raising animals for slaughter is wasteful and bad for the environment

• Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet. Albert Einstein
• By eating meat we share the responsibility of climate change, the destruction of our forests, and the poisoning of our air and water. The simple act of becoming a vegetarian will make a difference in the health of our planet. Thích Nhất Hạnh
• About 2,000 pounds of grains must be supplied to livestock in order to produce enough meat and other livestock products to support a person for a year, whereas 400 pounds of grain eaten directly will support a person for a year. Thus, a given quantity of grain eaten directly will feed 5 times as many people as it will if it is eaten indirectly by humans in the form of livestock products…. E. Ensminger, PH.D.
• Care for the environment

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Many vegetarians argue you shouldn’t eat anything you aren’t willing to kill yourself

• A human body in no way resembles those that were born for ravenousness; it hath no hawk’s bill, no sharp talon, no roughness of teeth, no such strength of stomach or heat of digestion, as can be sufficient to convert or alter such heavy and fleshy fare. But if you will contend that you were born to an inclination to such food as you have now a mind to eat, do you then yourself kill what you would eat. But do it yourself, without the help of a chopping-knife, mallet or axe, as wolves, bears, and lions do, who kill and eat at once. Rend an ox with thy teeth, worry a hog with thy mouth, tear a lamb or a hare in pieces, and fall on and eat it alive as they do. But if thou had rather stay until what thou eat is to become dead, and if thou art loath to force a soul out of its body, why then dost thou against nature eat an animate thing? There is nobody that is willing to eat even a lifeless and a dead thing even as it is; so they boil it, and roast it, and alter it by fire and medicines, as it were, changing and quenching the slaughtered gore with thousands of sweet sauces, that the palate being thereby deceived may admit of such uncouth fare. Plutarch
• Don’t eat anything you aren’t willing to kill yourself. Lorene Lavora
• I think if you want to eat more meat you should kill it yourself and eat it raw so that you are not blinded by the hypocrisy of having it processed for you. Margi Clark

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To be a vegetarian is a moral choice …

• Unlike any other animal, you have a choice. You can choose to kill and destroy, or you can choose to save and create. I chose the latter. Edward Sanchez
• I don’t hold animals superior or even equal to humans. The whole case for behaving decently to animals rests on the fact that we are the superior species. We are the species uniquely capable of imagination, rationality, and moral choice – and that is precisely why we are under an obligation to recognize and respect the rights of animals. Brigid Brophy
• Choice,  Morality and ethics,  Right action

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… and a spiritual choice

• To become vegetarian is to step into the stream which leads to nirvana. Gautama Buddha
• A man of my spiritual intensity does not eat corpses. George Bernard Shaw
• The eating of meat extinguishes the seed of great compassion. Mahaparinirvana (Buddhist)

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To be a vegetarian is to recognise that animals experience pain and suffering as much as we do

• We must fight against the spirit of unconscious cruelty with which we treat the animals. Animals suffer as much as we do. Albert Schweitzer
• The brute animals have all the same sensations of pain as human beings, and consequently endure as much pain when their body is hurt; but in their case the cruelty of torment is greater, because they have no mind to bear them up against their sufferings, and no hope to look forward to when enduring the last extreme pain…. Thomas Chalmers
• Humans — who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals — have had an understandable penchant for pretending animals do not feel pain. A sharp distinction between humans and ‘animals’ is essential if we are to bend them to our will, make them work for us, wear them, eat them — without any disquieting tinges of guilt or regret. It is unseemly of us, who often behave so unfeelingly toward other animals, to contend that only humans can suffer. The behavior of other animals renders such pretensions specious. They are just too much like us. Carl Sagan
• When it comes to having a central nervous system, and the ability to feel pain, hunger, and thirst, a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. Ingrid Newkirk
• There is no fundamental difference between man and animals in their ability to feel pleasure and pain, happiness, and misery. Charles Darwin
• The question is not, ‘Can they reason?’ nor, ‘Can they talk?’ but rather, ‘Can they suffer? Jeremy Bentham

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To be a vegetarian is to recognise that animals have emotions just as we do

• When animals express their feelings they pour out like water from a spout. Animals’ emotions are raw, unfiltered, and uncontrolled. Their joy is the purest and most contagious of joys and their grief the deepest and most devastating. Their passions bring us to our knees in delight and sorrow. Marc Bekoff
• Answer me, you who believe that animals are only machines. Has nature arranged for this animal to have all the machinery of feelings only in order for it not to have any at all? Voltaire
• Intellectually, human beings and animals may be different, but it’s pretty obvious that animals have a rich emotional life and that they feel joy and pain. It’s easy to forget the connection between a hamburger and the cow it came from. But I forced myself to acknowledge the fact that every time I ate a hamburger, a cow had ceased to breathe. Moby
• Emotions

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To be a vegetarian is to recognise that animals have consciousness just as we do

• Once I saw a chimpanzee gaze at a particularly beautiful sunset for a full 15 minutes, watching the changing colors [and then] retire to the forest without picking a pawpaw for supper. Adriaan Kortlandt
• It’s very likely that most mammals have consciousness, and probably birds, too. Richard Dawkins
• You are consciousness. Consciousness is spirit. Recognize yourself, and you will see yourself everywhere — in every other human being, in every animal, in every plant, in every rock. Gangaji
• Consciousness

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To be a vegetarianism is to take a stand against cruelty to animals …

• 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
• To be a vegetarian is to disagree – to disagree with the course of things today… starvation, cruelty – we must make a statement against these things. Vegetarianism is my statement. And I think it’s a strong one. Isaac Bashevis Singer
• As long as man eats animals how can cruelty to animals be removed. Morarji Desai
• 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

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… and the resultant suffering

• Suffering is suffering. It is always ugly. It is always unwelcome. It always needs to be stopped. There are no exceptions. A person with the capacity but not the inclination to cease suffering is morally incomplete. Mirko Bagaric
• Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight. Albert Schweitzer
• It is more important to prevent animal suffering, rather than sit to contemplate the evils of the universe praying in the company of priests. Buddha

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To be a vegetarian is to recognise that a society that is cruel to animals cannot hope to become truly peaceful, loving and enlightened

• 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
• Civilization can only revive when there shall come into being in a number of individuals a new tone of mind independent of the one prevalent among the crowd and in opposition to it, a tone of mind which will gradually win influence over the collective one, and in the end determine its character. It is only an ethical movement which can rescue us from the slough of barbarism, and the ethical comes into existence only in individuals. Albert Schweitzer
• Cruelty has cursed the human family for countless ages. It is almost impossible for one to be cruel to animals and kind to humans. If children are permitted to be cruel to their pets and other animals, they easily learn to get the same pleasure from the misery of fellow- humans. Such tendencies can easily lead to crime. Fred A. McGrand
• Compassion for animals is intimately associated with goodness of character, and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man. Arthur Schopenhauer
• If man is not to stifle his human feelings, he must practise kindness towards animals, for he who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals. Immanuel Kant
• I am sometimes asked Why do you spend so much of your time and money talking about kindness to animals when there is so much cruelty to men?”” I answer: “”I am working at the roots.”” George Thorndike Angell
• Mercy to animals means mercy to mankind. Henry Bergh
• As long as people will shed the blood of innocent creatures there can be no peace, no liberty, no harmony between people. Slaughter and justice cannot dwell together. Isaac Bashevis Singer
• If you have men who will exclude any of God’s creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men. Francis of Assisi
• Brutality to an animal is cruelty to mankind – it is only the difference in the victim. Alphonse de Lamartine
• Until we have the courage to recognize cruelty for what it is — whether its victim is human or animal — we cannot expect things to be much better in this world. We cannot have peace among men whose hearts delight in killing any living creature. By every act that glorifies or even tolerates such moronic delight in killing, we set back the progress of humanity. Rachel Carson

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To be a vegetarian is to recognise that we must respect the rights of animals …

• The assumption that animals are without rights and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality. Arthur Schopenhauer
• Life is as dear to a mute creature as it is to man. Just as one wants happiness and fears pain, just as one wants to live and not die, so do other creatures. His Holiness The Dalai Lama
• I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being. Abraham Lincoln
• I believe in animal rights, and high among them is the right to the gentle stroke of a human hand. Robert Brault

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… especially as so many animals, due to us, have become helpless and powerless

• We are called to treat animals with kindness, not because they have rights or power or some claim to equality, but in a sense because they don’t; because they all stand unequal and powerless before us. Matthew Scully
• I hope to make people realize how totally helpless animals are, how dependent on us, trusting as a child must that we will be kind and take care of their needs … They are an obligation put on us, a responsibility we have no right to neglect, nor to violate by cruelty. James Herriot
• I hold that the more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of man. Mohandas Gandhi
• Why do we find it so horrible to kill a baby? It’s because they are voiceless and defenceless. The same applies to animals. Killing them is cowardice. Edward Sanchez
• 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
• Poor animals! How jealously they guard their pathetic bodies . . . that which to us is merely an evening’s meal, but to them is life itself. Casey Brennan
• Ethically they had arrived at the conclusion that man’s supremacy over lower animals meant not that the former should prey upon the latter, but that the higher should protect the lower, and that there should be mutual aid between the two as between man and man. They had also brought out the truth that man eats not for enjoyment but to live. Mahatma Gandhi

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To be a vegetarian is to recognise the need to treat animals with compassion

• Compassion for animals is intimately associated with goodness of character, and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man. Arthur Schopenhauer
• Compassion is the basis of all truthful relationship: it means being present with love–for ourselves and for all life, including animals, fish, birds, and trees.   Ram Dass
• 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. Albert Einstein
• It is much easier to show compassions to animals. They are never wicked. Haile Selassie
• Aware of the suffering caused by the destruction of life, I undertake to cultivate compassion and learn ways to protect the lives of people, animals, plants, and minerals.  Thich Nhat Hanh
• We must fight against the spirit of unconscious cruelty with which we treat the animals. Animals suffer as much as we do. True humanity does not allow us to impose such sufferings on them. It is our duty to make the whole world recognize it. Until we extend our circle of compassion to all living things, humanity will not find peace. Albert Schweitzer
• Keep fighting for animals by making compassionate, cruelty-free choices every day and encouraging those around you to do the same. Bea Arthur
• Not to hurt our humble brethren (the animals) is our first duty to them, but to stop there is not enough. We have a higher mission – to be of service to them whenever they require it… If you have men who will exclude any of God’s creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men. St Francis of Assisi
• Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace. Albert Schweitzer
• The human spirit is not dead. It lives on in secret…..It has come to believe that compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind. Albert Schweitzer
• It is a human beings sympathy with all creatures that makes a truly human being. Dr Albert Schweizer
• Compassion

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To be a vegetarian is to recognise that the way we treat animals is a measure of our character and our society

• You can judge a man’s true character by the way he treats his fellow animals. Paul McCartney
• Show me the enforced laws of a state for the prevention of cruelty to animals and I in turn will give you a correct estimate of the refinement, enlightenment, integrity and equity of that commonwealth’s people. L.T. Danshiell
• The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated. …I hold that the more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of man. Mahatma Gandhi
• True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. Mankind’s true moral test, its fundamental test (which is deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
• The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated. Mahatma Gandhi
• Mankind’s true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it. Milan Kundera
• Humanity’s true moral test, its fundamental test…consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. Milan Kundera
• The thinking man must oppose all cruel customs no matter how deeply rooted in tradition and surrounded by a halo. When we have a choice, we must avoid bringing torment and injury into the life of another, even the lowliest creature; to do so is to renounce our manhood and shoulder a guilt which nothing justifies.  Albert Schweitzer

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To be a vegetarian is to stop seeing animals as something made simply for our use

• The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant: ‘What good is it?” Aldo Leopold
• The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men. Alice Walker

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To be a vegetarian is to stop seeing animals as inferior beings to us

• We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate for having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein do we err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth. Henry Beston
• Animals, whom we have made our slaves, we do not like to consider our equal. Charles Darwin
• It is just like man’s vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions. Mark Twain
• Man, of all the animals, is probably the only one to regard himself as a great delicacy. Jacques Yves Cousteau
• Animals are in possession of themselves; their soul is in possession of their body. But they have no right to their life, because they do not will it. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
• I don’t hold animals superior or even equal to humans. The whole case for behaving decently to animals rests on the fact that we are the superior species. We are the species uniquely capable of imagination, rationality, and moral choice – and that is precisely why we are under an obligation to recognize and respect the rights of animals. Brigid Brophy

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To be a vegetarian is to do away with the paradox of animals being both friends and food

• Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them. Samuel Butler
• For the most part, we carnivores do not eat other carnivores. We prefer to eat our vegetarian friends. Robert Brault
• Animals are my friends…and I don’t eat my friends. George Bernard Shaw
• We all love animals. Why do we call some ‘pets’ and others ‘dinner?  D. Lang
• Deep inside, everyone’s a vegetarian. I just eat a few less animals than most. Once you come to terms why you don’t eat dogs, cats, monkeys and dolphins, you’ll begin to understand why I don’t eat cows, pigs, chickens and lambs Edward Sanchez

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To be a vegetarian is to revere life as precious

• It may be considered folly by common opinion but this refusal to destroy life unnecessarily, this reverence for it, must become a deeply implanted part of his ethical standard. Paul Brunton
• All creatures are deserving of a life free from fear and pain. Maura Cummings ‎
• An animal’s eyes have the power to speak a great language. Martin Buber
• One should not kill a living being, nor cause it to be killed, nor should one incite another to kill. Do not injure any being, either strong or weak, in the world. Buddha
• But for the sake of some little mouthful of flesh 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. Plutarch
• 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. Albert Schweitzer
• I will not kill or hurt any living creature needlessly, nor destroy any beautiful thing, but will strive to save and comfort all gentle life, and guard and perfect all natural beauty upon the earth. John Ruskin
• Ethics, too, are nothing but reverence for life. That is what gives me the fundamental principle of morality, namely, that good consists in maintaining, promoting, and enhancing life, and that destroying, injuring, and limiting life are evil. Albert Schweitzer
• Life is life–whether in a cat, or dog or man. There is no difference there between a cat or a man. The idea of difference is a human conception for man’s own advantage.  Sri Aurobindo
• All beings tremble before violence. All fear death, all love life. See yourself in others. Then whom can you hurt? What harm can you do? Buddha
• Poor animals! How jealously they guard their pathetic bodies . . . that which to us is merely an evening’s meal, but to them is life itself. Casey Brennan
• Humans do have authority over creation—but it is a delegated authority to care for animals as God would and not to destroy them. All life still belongs to the Creator of life, as it did the in the beginning.  Richard A. Young

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To be a vegetarian is to be able to look animals in the eye

• Now I can look at you in peace; I don’t eat you any more. Franz Kafka
• The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man. Charles Darwin
• How can you eat anything with eyes? Will Kellogg
• Could you look an animal in the eyes and say to it, ‘My appetite is more important than your suffering’? Moby

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Some vegetarians (vegans) argue that consuming dairy is as bad as eating meat

• My perspective of veganism was most affected by learning that the veal calf is a by-product of dairying, and that in essence there is a slice of veal in every glass of what I had thought was an innocuous white liquid – milk. Rynn Berry, quoted in Joanne Stepaniak
• The human body has no more need for cows’ milk than it does for dogs’ milk, horses’ milk, or giraffes’ milk. Michael Klaper
• Being vegetarian here also means that we do not consume dairy and egg products, because they are products of the meat industry. If we stop consuming, they will stop producing. Only collective awakening can create enough determination for action. Thích Nhất Hạnh

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Vegetarians and meat eaters are often at logger heads

• The symbolism of meat-eating is never neutral. To himself, the meat-eater seems to be eating life. To the vegetarian, he seems to be eating death. There is a kind of gestalt-shift between the two positions which makes it hard to change, and hard to raise questions on the matter at all without becoming embattled. Mary Midgley

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Many meat eaters make light of vegetarianism and vegetarians…

• Yeah, where I come from, we eat our sushi cooked—medium rare. And it’s made out of a cow. John Henson
• I didn’t fight my way to the top of the food chain to be a vegetarian.
• I never go without my dinner. No one ever does, except vegetarians and people like that. Oscar Wilde
• I take a vitamin every day. It’s called a steak. Leo Benvenuti and Steve Rudnick
• All normal people love meat. If I went to a barbeque and there was no meat, I would say, “Yo Goober! Where’s the meat?” I’m trying to impress people here, Lisa. You don’t win friends with salad. Matt Groening, The Simpsons, spoken by the character Homer Simpson
• If God did not intend for us to eat animals, then why did he make them out of meat? John Cleese
• If God didn’t want us to eat animals, then why’d he make them so tasty? Homer Simpson
• Look, PETA! If God hadn’t wanted us to eat animals, he wouldn’t have made them so darn tasty! Stephen Colbert
• Red meat is not bad for you. Now blue-green meat, that’s bad for you! Tommy Smothers
• Thanks cows. I appreciate your tastiness. Craig Ferguson
• Vegetarians are cool. All I eat are vegetarians – except for the occasional mountain lion steak. Ted Nugent
• Vegetarians taste better.
• Most vegetarians look so much like the food they eat that they can be classified as cannibals. Finley Peter Dunne
• He soon acquired the forlorn look that one sees in vegetarians. Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez
• You can’t possibly ask me to go without having some dinner. It’s absurd. I never go without my dinner. No one ever does, except vegetarians and people like that. Oscar Wilde
• Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans … are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit. Anthony Bourdain

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… and wax lyrically about the pleasures of eating meat

• It’s nice to eat a good hunk of beef but you want a light dessert, too. Arthur Fiedler
• Meat isn’t murder, it’s delicious. John Lydon
• My favorite animal is steak. Fran Lebowitz
• The only time to eat diet food is while you’re waiting for the steak to cook. Julia Child
• Vegetables are interesting but lack a sense of purpose when unaccompanied by a good cut of meat. Fran Lebowitz
• They claim red meat is bad for you. But I never saw a sick-looking tiger.  Chi Chi Rodriguez
• Meat is necessary when there is hard physical work to be done, or in a very cold climate, or when edible plants cannot be found…Animal flesh provides all the substances we need, both for the intensive working of our organism and for maintaining a normal temperature in cold climates. I. Gurdjieff

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Some meat eaters argue that vegetarians are righteous, sentimental and squeamish

• Vegetarianism can easily reach religious proportions. Refraining from meat on moral grounds serves to dignify feelings of guilt toward sad-eyed, furry creatures and substitutes righteousness for squeamishness. Bill Griffith
• Vegetarianism is harmless enough though it is apt to fill a man with wind and self-righteousness. Robert Hutchison
• Whenever people say ‘We mustn’t be sentimental’ you can take it they are about to do something cruel. And if they add ‘We must be realistic’ they mean they are going to make money out of it. Brigid Brophy

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Some meat eaters argue that vegetarians also dice out their fair share of death

• Sprouts: Innocent green plants snatched in their infancy and devoured alive by ravenous vegetarians.
• I am not a vegetarian because I love animals; I am a vegetarian because I hate plants. A. Whitney Brown
• In the strict scientific sense we all feed on death – even vegetarians. Mr. Spock, Star Trek, “Wolf in the Fold”

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Some meat eaters argue eating meat is ethical as long as it is done painlessly

• I think using animals for food is an ethical thing to do, but we’ve got to do it right. We’ve got to give those animals a decent life and we’ve got to give them a painless death. We owe the animal respect. Temple Grandin

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If you’re drawn to vegetarianism, know that you can make a difference

• Let everyone sweep in front of his own door, and the whole world will be clean. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• You must be the change you wish to see in the world. Mohandas Gandhi
• I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do. Edward Everett Hale
• I’ve found without question that the best way to lead others to a more plant-based diet is by example – to lead with your fork, not your mouth. Bernie Wilke
• Making a difference

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• A mind of the calibre of mine cannot derive its nutriment from cows. George Bernard Shaw
• Do vegetarians eat animal crackers?
• Even as a junkie I stayed true to vegetarianism – ‘I shall have heroin, but I shan’t have a hamburger.’ What a sexy little paradox.” Russell Brand
• How can you eat anything with eyes? Will Kellogg
• I am not a vegetarian because I love animals; I am a vegetarian because I hate plants. A. Whitney Brown
• I bought a book for my girlfriend called cheap and easy cooking for vegetarians which is ideal for her because she is a vegetarian and …
• I did not become a vegetarian for my health, I did it for the health of the chickens. Isaac Bashevis Singer
• I didn’t fight my way to the top of the food chain to be a vegetarian.
• I was eating a steak at a local restaurant last night, when a random woman said: “Y’know, you’d be much better off being a vegetarian.” “Are you crazy?” I said, “The cow was a vegetarian and look what happened to it!” Quentin R. Bufogle
• I won’t eat anything that has intelligent life, but I’d gladly eat a network executive or a politician. Marty Feldman
• I’m not a vegetarian! I’m a dessertarian! Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes
• If vegetarians eat vegetables, what do humanitarians eat?
• If we aren’t supposed to eat animals, then why are they made out of meat? Jo’ Brand
• It was actually easier for me to become a vegetarian – you know quitting meat – because your friends never show up at your house with a sack of meat.   Brian Posehn
• People eat meat and think they will become as strong as an ox, forgetting that the ox eats grass. Pino Caruso
• Red meat is not bad for you. Now blue-green meat, that’s bad for you! Tommy Smothers
• The thought of two thousand people crunching celery at the same time horrified me. George Bernard Shaw
• They claim red meat is bad for you. But I never saw a sick-looking tiger.  Chi Chi Rodriguez
• This girl said she recognized me from the vegetarian club, but I’d never met herbivore.
• To expect life to treat you good is foolish as hoping a bull won’t hit you because you are a vegetarian. Roseanne Barr
• Vegetables are a must on a diet. I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread, and pumpkin pie. Jim Davis
• Vegetarian – that’s an old Indian word meaning “lousy hunter.” Andy Rooney
• Vegetarian: Native American definition for “lousy hunter”.
• Vegetarians are cool. All I eat are vegetarians – except for the occasional mountain lion steak. Ted Nugent
• Vegetarians taste better.
• Why does Sea World have a seafood restaurant? I’m halfway through my fishburger and I realize, Oh my God. I could be eating a slow learner. Lynda Montgomery
• 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
• Food (funny quotes)

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