|
|
"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."
|
| Dr Neal D. Barnard (physician,
author, clinical researcher, and founding president of the
Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM)) |
|
|
"The question
is not, can they reason? nor, can they talk? but can they
suffer?"
|
| Jeremy Bentham (jurist, philosopher,
and legal and social reformer, 1748–1832) |
|
|
"While we ourselves
are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect
any ideal conditions on Earth?"
|
| George Bernard Shaw (writer and
critic, 1856-1950) |
|
|
"Custom will reconcile people to
any atrocity."
|
| George Bernard Shaw (writer and
critic, 1856-1950) |
|
|
"Animals are my friends, and I don't eat
my friends."
|
| George Bernard Shaw (writer and
critic, 1856-1950) |
|
|
"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 (writer and
critic, 1856-1950) |
|
|
"The greatest happiness in life was to remember that
one had never caused hurt or sorrow to any living thing."
|
| Annie Besant (Theosophist, women's
rights activist, writer and orator, 1847–1933) |
|
|
"Can I see another's woe,
And not be in sorrow too?
Can I see another's grief,
And not seek for kind relief?"
|
| William Blake (poet, painter, and
printmaker, 1757-1827) |
|
|
"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 (novelist, essayist,
critic, biographer, and dramatist, 1929-1995) |
|
|
"If the use of animal food be, in consequence, subversive
to the peace of human society, how unwarrantable is the
injustice and the barbarity which is exercised toward these
miserable victims. They are called into existence by human
artifice that they may drag out a short and miserable existence
of slavery and disease, that their bodies may be mutilated,
their social feelings outraged. It were much better that
a sentient being should never have existed, than that it
should have existed only to endure unmitigated misery."
|
| Percy Bysshe Shelley (poet, 1792-1822) |
|
|
"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."
|
| Leonardo Da Vinci (painter, sculptor,
architect and engineer, 1452-1519) |
|
|
"The love for all living creatures is the most noble
attribute of man."
|
| Charles Darwin (Naturalist, 1809-1882) |
|
|
"We have seen that the senses and intuitions, the
various emotions and faculties, such as love, memory, attention
and curiosity, imitation, reason, etc., of which man boasts,
may be found in an incipient, or even sometimes in a well-developed
condition, in the lower animals."
|
| Charles Darwin (Naturalist, 1809-1882) |
|
|
"There is no fundamental difference between man and
the higher mammals in their mental faculties ... The difference
in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it
is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind."
|
| Charles Darwin (Naturalist, 1809-1882) |
|
|
"Nothing will benefit human health and increase
the chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the
evolution to a vegetarian diet."
|
| Albert Einstein (physicist and
mathematician, 1879-1955) |
|
|
"Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by
widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living
creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
|
| Albert Einstein (physicist and
mathematician, 1879-1955) |
|
|
"Truly man is the king of beasts, for flesh eating is unprovoked
murder."
|
| Benjamin Franklin (statesman, scientist
and author, 1706-90) |
|
|
"The greatness of a nation can be
judged by the way its animals are treated."
|
| Mohandas Karamchand (Mahatma) Gandhi,
(political and spiritual leader, 1869–1948) |
|
|
"I should be unwilling to take the life of the lamb
for the sake of the human body. I hold that, the more helpless
a creature, the more entitled it is to protection by man
from the cruelty of man."
|
| Mohandas Karamchand (Mahatma) Gandhi,
(political and spiritual leader, 1869–1948) |
|
|
"The whole problem of health, in soil, plant, animal
and man is one great subject."
|
| Sir Albert Howard (botanist and
organic farming pioneer, 1873-1947) |
|
|
"I care not much for a man's religion whose dog or
cat are not the better for it."
|
| Abraham Lincoln (sixteenth President
of the United States, 1809-1865) |
|
|
"If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would go
vegetarian."
|
| Sir Paul McCartney (musician and
songwriter, 1942) |
|
|
"I don't like the idea that to have a piece of steak
or chop on the table, a live creature has to have its throat
slit and be skinned."
|
| Sir Paul McCartney (musician and
songwriter, 1942) |
|
|
"I, for my part, wonder of what sort of feeling, mind or
reason that man was possessed who was first to pollute his
mouth with gore, and allow his lips to touch the flesh of
a murdered being; who spread his table with the mangled
form of dead bodies, and claimed as daily food and dainty
dishes what but now were beings endowed with movement, with
perception and with voice."
|
| Plutarch (biographer and philosopher,
46-120 A.D.) |
|
|
"As long as man continues to be the ruthless destroyer
of lower living beings, he will never know health or peace.
For as long men massacre animals, they will kill each other."
|
| Pythagoras (philosopher and mathematician,
580-500 B.C.) |
|
|
"Animals do not 'give' their life to us, as
the sugar-coated lie would have it. No, we take their
lives. They struggle and fight to the last breath, just
as we would do if we were in their place."
|
| John Robbins (author, 1947-) |
|
|
"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 humankind."
|
| Albert Schweitzer (medical missionary,
philosopher and theologian, 1875-1965) |
|
|
"Not until we extend the circle of
our compassion to include all living things, shall we ourselves
know peace."
|
| Albert Schweitzer (medical missionary,
philosopher and theologian, 1875-1965) |
|
|
"The thinking [person] must oppose all cruel customs,
no matter how deeply rooted in tradition and surrounded
by a halo."
|
| Albert Schweitzer (medical missionary,
philosopher and theologian, 1875-1965) |
|
|
"If true, the Pythagorean principles as to abstain from
flesh, foster innocence; if ill-founded they at least teach
us frugality, and what loss have you in losing your cruelty?
It merely deprives you of the food of lions and vultures…let
us ask what is best - not what is customary. Let us love
temperance - let us be just - let us refrain from bloodshed."
|
| Seneca (philosopher, statesman
and dramatist, 4 B.C.-65 A.D.) |
|
|
"My doctrine is this, that if we see cruelty or wrong
that we have the power to stop, and do nothing, we make
ourselves sharers in the guilt."
|
| Anna Sewell (writer, author of
the classic novel 'Black Beauty', 1820-1878) |
|
|
"... People may talk as much as they like about their
religion, but if it does not teach them to be good and kind
to other animals as well as humans, it is all a sham."
|
| Anna Sewell (writer, author of
the classic novel 'Black Beauty', 1820-1878) |
|
|
"Becoming a vegetarian is not merely
a symbolic gesture. Nor is it an attempt to isolate
oneself from the ugly realities of the world, to keep oneself
pure and so without responsibility for the cruelty and carnage
all around. Becoming a vegetarian is
a highly practical and effective step one can take
toward ending both the killing of nonhuman animals and the
infliction of suffering on them."
|
| Peter Singer, Animal Liberation,
Second Edition, London: Jonathan Cape, 1990, pp. 168 & 169. |
|
|
"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."
|
| Henry David Thoreau (writer and
social critic, 1817-62) |
|
|
"A man can live and 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.
And to act so is immoral."
|
| Leo Tolstoy (writer and philosopher,
1828-1910) |
|
|
"What I think about vivisection is that if people admit
that they have the right to take or endanger the life of
living beings for the benefit of many, there will be no
limit for their cruelty."
|
| Leo Tolstoy (writer and philosopher,
1828-1910) |
|
|
"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 Malsenior Walker (author
and feminist, 1944-) |
|
For an extensive database of quotations and a comprehensive list
of vegetarian celebrities from ancient history to today, we encourage
you to visit the International Vegetarian Union's directory of 
