quotations about vegetarianism
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
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
I'm a postmodern vegetarian -- I eat meat ironically.
BILL BAILEY
Part Troll
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
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
Were one to stop and think of what meat is, and what it was, it is doubtful if one could eat it. It is merely dead and decaying flesh -- flesh from the body of an animal.... Only by the fact that hey are covered up, and their true nature concealed by cooking, and basting, and pickling, and peppering and salting can we eat them at all. If we were natural carnivorous animals, we should delight in bloodshed and gore of all kind!... We should eat our flesh warm and quivering -- just as it comes from the cow!
HEREWARD CARRINGTON
The Natural Food for Man
Some people think vegetarianism is an extremist suppression of sensual passion. That is an obstacle.
ZHANG SI
"Using Vegetarianism to Put Animal Welfare on the Table", Sixth Tone, April 7, 2017
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
Anyone who lives in the fantasy world that vegetarianism is taking over needs to give their head a shake, meat lovers are ever increasing their consumption. U.S. Beef Production is projected to be 26.564 billion pounds in 2017, up 2.8 billion pounds from 2015.
JIM LONG
"Pork Commentary: US -- No Shortage of Meat Protein", The Pig Site, April 25, 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
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
I tell vegetarians, "Hey, vegetables are living things too. They're just easier to catch."
KEVIN BRENNAN
attributed, The Mammoth Book of Comic Quotes
Men think it right to eat animals, because they are led to believe that God sanctions it. This is untrue. No matter in what books it may be written that it is not sinful to slay animals and to eat them, it is more clearly written in the heart of man than in any books that animals are to be pitied and should not be slain any more than human beings. We all know this if we do not choke the voice of our conscience.
LEO TOLSTOY
The Pathway of Life: Teaching Love and Wisdom
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
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
If we're not supposed to eat animals ... how come they're made out of meat?
ANONYMOUS
Refrain at all times from such foods as cannot be procured without violence and oppression.
THOMAS TRYON
attributed, Humanimal
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
The vegetarian is the only living creature who belongs to the vegetable kingdom.
EVEN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
I'm not a vegetarian, but I eat animals who are.
GROUCHO MARX
attributed, The Mammoth Book of Comic Quotes