Quotes about Vegetarianism

Here are a few quotes about vegetarianism, compassion, and practicality. Note that some of the brightest, most significant minds in the history of our world, such as Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Plutarch, Leonardo Da Vinci, Tolstoy, Tagore, Buddha, Rousseau, Shelley, Thoreau, Isaac Bashevis Singer, George Bernard Shaw, Albert Einstein, Gandhi and Albert Schweitzer, were vegetarians.

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

"If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian." --Paul and Linda McCartney

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? … It is certainly not lions and wolves that we eat out of self-defense; on the contrary, we ignore these and slaughter harmless, tame creatures without stings or teeth to harm us, creatures that, I swear, 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

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

"The eating of meat extinguishes the seed of great compassion." --The BUDDHA (circa 563-483 B.C.)
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Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace. --Albert Schweitzer, French philosopher, physician, and musician (Nobel 1952)

Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow creatures is amusing in itself.--James A. Froude (1818-1894)

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

If you visit the killing floor of a slaughterhouse, it will brand your soul for life. --Howard Lyman

"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 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

I don't understand why asking people to eat a well-balanced vegetarian diet is considered drastic, while it is medically conservative to cut people open. -- Dean Ornish, M.D.

"Animals are my friends and I don't eat my friends." --George Bernard Shaw

"Many things made me become a vegetarian, among them, the higher food yields as a solution to world hunger." --John Denver

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, M.D., President, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. Washington, D.C.

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

"To consider yourself an environmentalist and still eat meat is like saying you're a philanthropist who doesn't give to charity." --Howard Lyman

Now I can look at you in peace; I don't eat you any more. --Franz Kafka, while admiring fish in an aquarium

"I began to wonder why we cuddle some animals and put a fork in others." --Henry Spira

"As custodians of the planet, it is our responsibility to deal with all species with kindness, love and compassion. That these animals suffer through human cruelty is beyond understanding. Please help to stop the madness." --Richard Gere

"Animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, or use for entertainment. They simply are not ours, and we have no business whatsoever in treating them as if we owned them or as if we are entitled to them." --PETA