quotations about vegetarianism
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
Animals and Why They Matter
Vegetarianism is harmless enough, though it is apt to fill a man with wind and self-righteousness.
SIR ROBERT HUTCHISON
attributed, Wordsworth Book of Humorous Quotations
Vegetarianism -- You are what you eat, and who wants to be a lettuce?
PETER BURNS
attributed, The Book of Poisonous Quotes
First, how do you prove that mankind is invested with the right of killing them, and that brutes have been created for the purpose you assert them to be? Secondly, it is to be observed that the flesh of man himself possesses the same nourishing and palatable qualities? Are we then to become cannibals for that reason?
LEWIS GOMPERTZ
Moral Inquiries
Perhaps a man hitched to the cart of a Martian or roasted on the spit by inhabitants of the Milky Way will recall the veal cutlet he used to slice on his dinner plate and apologize (belatedly) to the cow.
MILAN KUNDERA
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
The meat industry spends hundreds of millions of dollars lying to the public about their product. But no amount of false propaganda can sanitize meat. The facts are absolutely clear: Eating meat is bad for human health, catastrophic for the environment, and a living nightmare for animals.
CHRISSIE HYNDE
attributed, Meaty Vegan Blog
The vegetarian is the only living creature who belongs to the vegetable kingdom.
EVEN ESAR
20,000 Quips & 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
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
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
I was a vegetarian until I started leaning toward the sunlight.
RITA RUDNER
attributed, The Mammoth Book of Comic Quotes
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
Sunday dinner isn't sunny
Easter feasts are just bad luck
When you see it from the viewpoint
Of a chicken or a duck.
SHEL SILVERSTEIN
"Point of View", Vegetarian Times, November 1982
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
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'm a postmodern vegetarian -- I eat meat ironically.
BILL BAILEY
Part Troll
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
On Civil Disobedience
Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.
BIBLE
Genesis 1:29
Only by discarding a diet based on rotting corpses could men become sane.
JACK LINDSAY
Fanfrolico and After
When a man of normal habits is ill, everyone hastens to assure him that he is going to recover. When a vegetarian is ill (which fortunately very seldom happens), everyone assures him that he is going to die, and that they told him so, and that it serves him right. They implore him to take at least a little gravy, so as to give himself a chance of lasting out the night.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Saturday Review, May 21, 1898