quotations about vegetarianism
If we each had to butcher our own meat, there would be a great increase in the number of vegetarians.
ERNEST HOWARD CROSBY
Tolstoy and His Message
I advance no exaggerated or fanciful claim for Vegetarianism. It is not, as some have asserted, a "panacea" for human ills; it is something much more rational -- an essential part of the modern humanitarian movement, which can make no true progress without it. Vegetarianism is the diet of the future, as flesh-food is the diet of the past.
HENRY S. SALT
"The Humanities of Diet", Ethical Vegetarianism
It is a cruel folly to offer up to ostentation so many lives of creatures, as make up the state of our treats; as it is a prodigal one to spend more in sauce than in meat.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
Vegetables contain more nutriment than an equal amount of dead flesh. This will sound a surprising and incredible statement to many people, because they have been brought up to believe that they cannot exist unless they defile themselves with flesh, and this delusion is so widely spread that it is difficult to awaken the average man from it.
C. W. LEADBEATER
Vegetarianism and Occultism
Vegetarianism is not only optimally healthy for your body, but your environment and the planet's animals. It allows you to live more harmoniously with the world around you, which improves mental and emotional health accordingly.
WINGS OF SUCCESS
The Advantages of Being a Vegetarian
Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter-faction, the vegans, are a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn. To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demiglace, or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living.
ANTHONY BOURDAIN
Kitchen Confidential
I was born into a family of carnivores, and I married into a family of carnivores -- I know through experience that the concept of vegetarianism is difficult to comprehend in meat-and-potatoes country.
MYCHEL MATTHEWS
"Eating veggies in meat-and-potatoes country", Twin Falls Times-News, April 4, 2017
You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
"Fate", Essays and Lectures
I did not become a vegetarian for my health, I did it for the health of the chickens.
ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER
attributed, Main Street Vegan
Thanksgiving dinner's sad and thankless.
Christmas dinner's dark and blue.
When you stop and try to see it
From the turkey's point of view.
SHEL SILVERSTEIN
"Point of View", Vegetarian Times, November 1982
Nothing compares with a cafe that feels like home. But that kind of cafe can be tough to find when you're a vegetarian.
MYCHEL MATTHEWS
"Eating veggies in meat-and-potatoes country", Twin Falls Times-News, April 4, 2017
The repugnance I have come to feel about eating such animals is an extension of what I would feel about eating my pet cat rather than the product of some calculation of quanta of suffering.
THOMAS WELLS
"The Incoherence of Peter Singer's Utilitarian Argument for Vegetarianism", ABC Online, October 25, 2016
Actually, when we really think about it, we are all "grim reapers," inhabiting a planet where killing is the law. The big fish gobbles up the little fish, and where do all those hamburgers come from? Animals give their lives for us, and for each other, as the tiger eats the gazelle. Even vegetarians are killers though they might fool themselves into thinking they are not. Read The Secret Life of Plants, by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird, and empathize with the philodendron, hooked up to a polygraph machine. The polygraph went "wild" when a plant-destroying student walked by. The plants also responded to music and adapted to human wishes. Does that ripe, juicy tomato feel it when you take a bite? (By eating it, you are also practicing tomato "sprout" control by preventing its seeds from becoming future tomato plants.) To live on planet Earth, all must kill.
A. CARLSON WHALEN
Mother Earth and the Gene Machines
Refrain at all times from such foods as cannot be procured without violence and oppression.
THOMAS TRYON
attributed, Humanimal
The vegetarian is the only living creature who belongs to the vegetable kingdom.
EVEN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
If we're not supposed to eat animals ... how come they're made out of meat?
ANONYMOUS
I see a vegetarian mayor, not preaching to the masses, but living as a shining example that vegetarians are interested in building a just and thriving city capable of feeding all of its citizens in a sustainable and healthy manner.
DAVID ALEXANDER
"The tofu revolution: Toronto's vegetarians from 1945 to 2009 and beyond", The Edible City
Thousands of people who say they "love" animals sit down once or twice a day to enjoy the flesh of creatures who have been utterly deprived of everything that could make their lives worth living and who endured the awful suffering and the terror of the abattoirs.
JANE GOODALL
The Ten Trusts
I tell vegetarians, "Hey, vegetables are living things too. They're just easier to catch."
KEVIN BRENNAN
attributed, The Mammoth Book of Comic Quotes
Poor little innocent creatures, if you were reasoning beings and could speak, how you would curse us! For we are the cause of your death, and what have you done to deserve it?
SAINT RICHARD OF CHICHESTER
attributed, Lives of the Saints