quotations about vegetarianism
The meat industry is one of the most destructive ecological industries on the planet. The raising and slaughtering of pigs, cows, sheep, turkeys and chickens not only utilizes vast areas of land and vast quantities of water, but it is a greater contributor to greenhouse gas emissions than the automobile industry.
PAUL WATSON
A Very Inconvenient Truth
A fine morning's killing, ay! All their necks wrung -- all dead birds! Once they could fly -- fly and swim! Fly and swim! All dead now -- and sold cheap in the open market!
MARIE CORELLI
The Master-Christian
Honestly, most of the research performed on meat-free diets has shown that vegetarianism is a wash when it comes to health. Generally speaking, vegetarians are more likely to be health-conscious in other aspects of their life other than their strict meat-free diet, such as exercising, not smoking, and getting enough sleep at night. Therefore it's hard to pinpoint if their healthiness comes from the lack of meat in their diet, or their lifestyle in general.
AUDREY MILLER
"Veg-Heads: Are They On To Something?", My Duhawk, April 6, 2017
Do you eat chicken because you are familiar with the scientific literature on them and have decided that their suffering doesn't matter, or do you do it because it tastes good?
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER
Eating Animals
To see the convulsions, agonies and tortures of a poor fellow-creature, whom they cannot restore nor recompense, dying to gratify luxury and tickle callous and rank organs, must require a rocky heart, and a great degree of cruelty and ferocity. I cannot find any great difference between feeding on human flesh and feeding on brute animal flesh, except custom and practice.
GEORGE CHEYNE
Essay on Regimen
Could you look an animal in the eyes and say to it, "My appetite is more important than your suffering"?
MOBY
End of Everything
Vegetarianism is curable.
JONATHAN MEADES
The Plagiarist in the Kitchen
Vegetarians are cool. All I eat are vegetarians -- except for the occasional mountain lion steak. Pure, real, honest-to-God free-range protein is the rocketfuel for my spiritual campfire.
TED NUGENT & SHEMANE NUGENT
Kill It and Grill It: A Guide to Preparing and Cooking Wild Game and Fish
Vegetarianism brings with it a new relationship to food, plants, and nature. Flesh taints our meals. Disguise it as we may, the fact remains that the centerpiece of our dinner has come to us from the slaughterhouse, dripping blood.
PETER SINGER
Animal Liberation
This isn't food -- this is what food eats.
DEAN BATALI & ROB DESHOTEL
That '70s Show
Vegetarians have wicked, shifty eyes and laugh in a cold, calculating manner. They pinch little children, steal stamps, drink water, favor beards.
J. B. MORTON
attributed, The Book of Poisonous Quotes
Animals are my friends ... and I don't eat my friends.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
attributed, Inside the Mind of George Bernard Shaw
Vegetarians are not as predictable in their beliefs, as there are many reasons to become vegetarian that don't necessarily include altruism as a primary motive.
RON SHILLINGFORD
"Veggies rising to the top", Cayman Reporter, April 28, 2017
The lamb misused breeds public strife
And yet forgives the butcher's knife
WILLIAM BLAKE
"Proverbs"
Initially, many vegetarians feel angry -- they are angry about animals' suffering. At some point, some of the angry vegetarians decide for other people that eating meat is objectively wrong. As a result, people are disgusted by these "angry" vegetarians, and then they become averse to vegetarianism in general. This is also a kind of obstacle to promoting vegetarianism.
ZHANG SI
"Using Vegetarianism to Put Animal Welfare on the Table", Sixth Tone, April 7, 2017
He soon acquired the forlorn look that one sees in vegetarians.
GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Nothing can be more shocking and horrid than one of our kitchens sprinkled with blood, and abounding with the cries of expiring victims or with the limbs of dead animals scattered or hung up here and there.
ALEXANDER POPE
The Guardian, May 21, 1713
Flesh-eating by humans is unnecessary, irrational, anatomically unsound, unhealthy, unhygienic, uneconomic, unaesthetic, unkind and unethical. May I elaborate?
HELEN NEARING
Simple Food for the Good Life
Cruelty stares at me from the butcher's face. I tread amidst carcasses. I am in the presence of the slain. The death-set eyes of beasts peer at me and accuse me of belonging to the race of murderers.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
The Journals of Bronson Alcott
Carnivores should be asked to expose themselves to the vegetarian dialectic of diet and ethic for one day, for just one day. Since vegetarians are forcibly indoctrinated in the opposite each and every day, that is not much to ask. Some things are easier done than said; once inner inclination is felt, no more need be said. But if after that single day carnivores do not feel inspired to modify their diets, then we have done all we can do.
MARK MATHEW BRAUNSTEIN
Radical Vegetarianism