Famous Vegan and Vegetarian Quotes

A vegetarian is a person who won’t eat anything that can have children. –David Brenner

Animals are my friends…and I don’t eat my friends. –George Bernard Shaw

How can you eat anything with eyes? –Will Kellogg

Teaching a child not to step on a caterpillar is as valuable to the child, as it is to the caterpillar. — Bradley Miller

If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegetarian. We feel better about ourselves and better about the animals, knowing we’re not contributing to their pain. –Paul (1942- ) and Linda McCartney

I do not like eating meat because I have seen lambs and pigs killed. I saw and felt their pain. They felt the approaching death. I could not bear it. I cried like a child. I ran up a hill and could not breathe. I felt that I was choking. I felt the death of the lamb. –Vaslav Nijinsky (dancer and choreographer)

Now I can look at you in peace; I don’t eat you anymore. — Franz Kafka-Novelist (to the fishes in his aquarium)

People often say that humans have always eaten animals, as if this is a justification for continuing the practice. According to this logic, we should not try to prevent people from murdering other people, since this has also been done since the earliest of times. –Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904- )

For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love. –Pythagoras (6th century BC)

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. –Leo Tolstoy

Nothing more strongly arouses our disgust than cannibalism, yet we make the same impression on Buddhists and vegetarians, for we feed on babies, though not our own. –Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

Recognize meat for what it really is: the antibiotic- and pesticide-laden corpse of a tortured animal. ~Ingrid Newkirk, National Director of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them. — Samuel Butler, Note-Books, 1912Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet. –Albert Einstein

Nothing more strongly arouses our disgust than cannibalism, yet we make the same impression on Buddhists and vegetarians, for we feed on babies, though not our own. — Robert Louis Stevenson

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 Barnard, M.D.

We all love animals. Why do we call some “pets” and others “dinner?” –k.d. lang

Dear Lord, I’ve been asked, nay commanded, to thank Thee for the Christmas turkey before us… a turkey which was no doubt a lively, intelligent bird… a social being… capable of actual affection… nuzzling its young with almost human-like compassion. Anyway, it’s dead and we’re gonna eat it. Please give our respects to its family. –Berke Breathed, Bloom County Babylon

We pray on Sundays that we may have light/To guide our footsteps on the path we tread;/We are sick of war, we don’t want to fight,/And yet we gorge ourselves upon the dead. — George Bernard Shaw

We don’t need to eat anyone who would run, swim, or fly away if he could. –James Cromwell

If you knew how meat was made, you’d probably lose your lunch. –k.d. lang

A man of my spiritual intensity does not eat corpses. –George Bernard Shaw

As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields. –Leo Tolstoy, author

The eating of meat extinguishes the seed of great compassion. –Mahaparinirvana (Buddhist)

I do feel that spiritual progress does demand at some stage that we should cease to kill our fellow creatures for the satisfaction of our bodily wants. — Gandhi

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

One farmer says to me, “You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make the bones with;” and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying himself with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle. –Henry David Thoreau

Think of the fierce energy concentrated in an acorn! You bury it in the ground, and it explodes into an oak! Bury a sheep, and nothing happens but decay. –George Bernard Shaw

My situation is a solemn one. Life is offered to me on condition of eating beefsteaks. But death is better than cannibalism. My will contains directions for my funeral, which will be followed not by mourning coaches, but by oxen, sheep, flocks of poultry, and a small traveling aquarium of live fish, all wearing white scarfs in honor of the man who perished rather than eat his fellow creatures. –George Bernard Shaw

I did not become a vegetarian for my health, I did it for the health of the chickens. –Isaac Bashevis Singer, quoted in You Said a Mouthful edited by Ronald D. Fuchs

Suppose that tomorrow a group of beings from another planet were to land on Earth, beings who considered themselves as superior to you as you feel yourself to be to other animals. Would they have the right to treat you as you treat the animals you breed, keep and kill for food? –John Harris (1946- )

Heart attacks… God’s revenge for eating his little animal friends. –Author Unknown

Vegetarian food leaves a deep impression on our nature. If the whole world adopts vegetarianism, it can change the destiny of humankind. — Albert Einstein

Our task must be to free ourselves… widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty. — Albert Einstein

The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated. — Gandhi

If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalist for the same reasons. — C. S. Lewis

Among the noblest in the land – Though man may count himself the least – That man I honor and revere, Who without favor, without fear, In the great city dares to stand, The friend of every friendless beast. –Henry W. Longfellow

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

Tongue – a variety of meat, rarely served because it clearly crosses the line between a cut of beef and a piece of a dead cow. –Bob Ekstrom

While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth? –George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

Coexistence… what the farmer does with the turkey – until Thanksgiving. –Mike Connolly

A mind of the calibre of mine cannot derive its nutriment from cows. –George Bernard Shaw

It is strange to hear people talk of Humanitarianism, who are members of societies for the prevention of cruelty to children and animals, and who claim to be God-loving men and women, but who, nevertheless, encourage by their patronage the killing of animals merely to gratify the cravings of appetite. –Otoman Zar-Adusht Ha’nish (1844-1936)You put a baby in a crib with an apple and a rabbit. If it eats the rabbit and plays with the apple, I’ll buy you a new car. –Harvey Diamond

But for the sake of some little mouthful of flesh we deprive a soul of the sun and light, and of that proportion of life and time it had been born into the world to enjoy. –Plutarch (c.AD 46-c.120)

Flesh eating is simply immoral, as it involves the performance of an act, which is contrary to moral feeling: killing. By killing, man suppresses in himself, unnecessarily, the highest spiritual capacity, that of sympathy and pity towards living creatures like himself and by violating his own feelings becomes cruel. — Leo Tolstoy

Flesh eating is unprovoked murder. — Benjamin Franklin

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 (1452-1519)

To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being. I should be unwilling to take the life of a lamb for the sake of the human body. –Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948)

We stopped eating meat many years ago. During the course of a Sunday lunch we happened to look out of the kitchen window at our young lambs playing happily in the fields. Glancing down at our plates, we suddenly realized that we were eating the leg of an animal who had until recently been playing in a field herself. We looked at each other and said, “Wait a minute, we love these sheep–they’re such gentle creatures. So why are we eating them?” It was the last time we ever did. –Linda and Paul McCartney (musicians)

“Those who, by their purchases, require animals to be killed have no right to be shielded from the slaughterhouse or any other aspect of the production of the meat they buy. If it is distasteful for humans to think about, what can it be like for the animals to experience it?” –Peter Singer

“My dream is that people will come to view eating an animal as cannibalism.” –Henry Spira

In every respect, vegans appear to enjoy equal or better health in comparison to both vegetarians and non-vegetarians. –T. Colin Campbell, PhD Professor of Nutrition, Cornell University (letter dated 3/29/98)

“Awareness is bad for the meat business. Conscience is bad for the meat business. Sensitivity to life is bad for the meat business. DENIAL, however, the meat business finds indispensable.” –John Robbins, Diet for a New America

“There will come a time…when civilised people will look back in horror on our generation and the ones that preceded it: the idea that we should eat other living things running around on four legs, that we should raise them just for the purpose of killing them! The people of the future will say “meat-eaters!” in disgust and regard us in the same way we regard cannibals and cannibalism” –Dennis Weaver

“The animals you eat are not those who devour others; you do not eat the carnivorous beasts, you take them as your pattern. You only hunger after sweet and gentle creatures who harm no one, which follow you, serve you, and are devoured by you as the reward of their service” –John Jacques Rousseau

“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.

“When we kill the animals to eat them, they end up killing us because their flesh, which contains cholesterol and saturated fat, was never intended for human beings.” –William C. Roberts, M.D., editor of The American Journal of Cardiology

“All red meat contains saturated fat. There is no such thing as truly lean meat. Trimming away the edge ring of fat around a steak really does not lower the fat content significantly. People who have red meat (trimmed or untrimmed) as a regular feature of their diets suffer in far greater numbers from heart attacks and strokes.” –Michael Klaper, M.D., Medical Director, EarthSave Foundation, Santa Cruz, California

“If you step back and look at the data, the optimum amount of red meat you eat should be zero.” –Walter Willett, M.D., of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, director of a study that found a close correlation between red meat consumption and colon cancer.

“Usually, the first thing a country does in the course of economic development is to introduce a lot of livestock. Our data are showing that this is not a very smart move and the Chinese are listening. They are realizing that animal-based agriculture is not the way to go…. We are basically a vegetarian species and should be eating a wide variety of plant food and minimizing our intake of animal foods…. “Once people start introducing animal products into their diet, that’s when the mischief starts.” –T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D., of Cornell University, director of a study of 6,500 Chinese that found a close correlation between meat consumption and the incidence of heart disease and cancer.

“The thousands of people who have suffered food poisoning after eating beef will, no doubt, appreciate that their beef was aesthetically acceptable, even though it made them ill. `Lovely to look at, dangerous to eat’ is not a standard that is likely to help beef sales.” –Carol Tucker Foreman, Assistant Secretary of Agriculture during the Carter administration, commenting on the inadequacy of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Streamlined (Meat) Inspection System (SIS).

If man wants freedom why keep birds and animals in cages? Truly man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds them. We live by the death of others. We are burial places! I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men. — Leonardo da Vinci

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

Men dig their graves with their own teeth and die by those fated instruments more than the weapons of their enemies. — Thomas Moffett

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

There is no fundamental difference between man and the higher animals in their mental faculties… The lower animals, like man, manifestly feel pleasure and pain, happiness, and misery. — Charles Darwin

When it comes to having a central nervous system, and the ability to feel pain, hunger, and thirst, a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. — Ingrid Newkirk

If experiments on animals were abandoned on grounds of compassion, mankind would have made a fundamental advance. — Richard Wagner

For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love. — Pythagoras

It were much better that a sentient being should never have existed, than that it should have existed only to endure unmitigated misery. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

What I think about vivisection is that if people admit that they have the right to take or endanger the life of living beings for the benefit of many, there will be no limit for their cruelty. — Leo Tolstoy

I said in mine heart concerning the estate of the sons of men, that God might manifest them, and that they might see that they themselves are beasts. For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity. — Ecclesiastes

Not to hurt our humble brethren is our first duty to them, but to stop there is not enough. — St. Francis of Assisi

I have no doubt that it is part of the destiny of the human race in its gradual improvement to leave off eating animals. — Henry David Thoreau

Your choice of diet can influence your long term health prospects more than any other action you might take. — Former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop

Until he extends the circle of compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace. — Albert Schweitzer

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 likewisewith their fellow men. — St. Francis of Assisi

Basically we should stop doing those things that are destructive to the environment, other creatures, and ourselves and figure out new ways of existing. — Moby

Plant life instead of animal food is the keystone of regeneration. Jesus used bread instead of flesh and wine in place of blood at the Lord’s Supper. — German Composer Richard Wagner

It is just like man’s vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions. –Mark Twain

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever does. — Margaret Mead

We consume the carcasses of creatures of like appetites, passions and organs with our own, and fill the slaughterhouses daily with screams of pain and fear. — Robert Louis Stevenson

To a man whose mind is free there is something even more intolerable in the sufferings of animals than in the suffering of man. For with the latter it is at least admitted that suffering is evil and that the man who causes it is a criminal. But thousands (now billions) of animals are uselessly butchered every day without a shadow of remorse. If any man were to refer to it, he would be thought ridiculous. And that is the unpardonable crime. — Romain Rolland–Nobel 1915

Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages. — Thomas Edison

To become vegetarian is to step into the stream which leads to nirvana. — Buddha

40 years ago on the set of Gunsmoke I read the book The Holy Science. Since then I have not eaten meat. — Dennis Weaver

Since visiting the abbatoirs of S. France I have stopped eating meat. — Vincent Van Gogh (in a letter to his brother Theodore)

The most energetic workers I have encountered in my world travels are the vegetarian miners of Chile. — Charles Darwin

I feel very deeply about vegetarianism and the animal kingdom. It was my dog Boycott who led me to question to right of humans to eat other sentient beings. — Cesar Chavez (pacifist head of the United Farm Workers)

Love animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled. Do not trouble their joy, don’t harass them, don’t deprive them of their happiness, don’t work against God’s intent. Man, do not pride yourself on superiority to animals; they are without sin, and you, with your greatness, defile the earth by your appearance on it, and leave the traces of your foulness after you-alas, it is true of almost every one of us! — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them, that’s the essence of inhumanity. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

It is man’s sympathy with all creatures that first makes him truly a man. — Dr. Albert Schweitzer–Nobel 1952

Gandhi on Vegeterianism ( Link)

We are the living graves of murdered beasts,Slaughtered to satisfy our appetites.We never pause to wonder at our feasts,If animals, like men, can possibly have rights.We pray on Sundays that we may have light,To guide our footsteps on the path we tread.We’re sick of war, we do not want to fight -The thought of it now fills our hearts with dread,And yet – we gorge ourselves upon the dead. Like carrion crows we live and feed on meat,Regardless of the suffering and the painwe cause by doing so, if thus we treatdefenceless animals for sport or gain,how can we hope in this world to attain,the PEACE we say we are so anxious for.We pray for it o’er hecatombs of slain,to God, while outraging the moral law,thus cruelty begets its offspring – WAR. – Living Graves – By George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

You put a baby in a crib with an apple and a rabbit. If it eats the rabbit and plays with the apple, I’ll buy you a new car. ~Harvey Diamond

Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them. ~Samuel Butler, Note-Books, 1912

Think of the fierce energy concentrated in an acorn! You bury it in the ground, and it explodes into an oak! Bury a sheep, and nothing happens but decay. ~George Bernard Shaw

How can you eat anything with eyes? ~Will Kellogg

Why does Sea World have a seafood restaurant? I’m halfway through my fishburger and I realize, Oh my God. I could be eating a slow learner. ~Lynda Montgomery

Animals are my friends… and I don’t eat my friends. ~George Bernard Shaw

I did not become a vegetarian for my health, I did it for the health of the chickens. ~Isaac Bashevis Singer, quoted in You Said a Mouthful edited by Ronald D. Fuchs

Vegetarianism is harmless enough though it is apt to fill a man with wind and self-righteousness. ~Robert Hutchison, address to the British Medical Association, 1930

Heart attacks… God’s revenge for eating his little animal friends. ~Author Unknown

Fork: An instrument used chiefly for the purpose of putting dead animals into the mouth. ~Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary

If you’re not vegan, you’re not vegetarian. ~V.L. Allineare

For the most part, we carnivores do not eat other carnivores. We prefer to eat our vegetarian friends. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

My perspective of veganism was most affected by learning that the veal calf is a by-product of dairying, and that in essence there is a slice of veal in every glass of what I had thought was an innocuous white liquid – milk. ~Rynn Berry, quoted in Joanne Stepaniak, The Vegan Sourcebook, 1998

Nothing spoils lunch any quicker than a rogue meatball rampaging through your spaghetti. ~Jim Davis

Vegetarians taste better. ~Author Unknown

Vegetarian – that’s an old Indian word meaning “lousy hunter.” ~Andy Rooney

The human body has no more need for cows’ milk than it does for dogs’ milk, horses’ milk, or giraffes’ milk. ~Michael Klaper

Recognize meat for what it really is: the antibiotic- and pesticide-laden corpse of a tortured animal. ~Ingrid Newkirk

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

We all love animals. Why do we call some “pets” and others “dinner?” ~k.d. lang

I won’t eat anything that has intelligent life, but I’d gladly eat a network executive or a politician. ~Marty Feldman

I am not a vegetarian because I love animals; I am a vegetarian because I hate plants. ~A. Whitney Brown

A mind of the calibre of mine cannot derive its nutriment from cows. ~George Bernard Shaw

A man of my spiritual intensity does not eat corpses. ~George Bernard Shaw

If vegetarians eat vegetables, what do humanitarians eat? ~Author Unknown

There is no substitute for mother’s milk. ~Martin H. Fischer

I’ve found without question that the best way to lead others to a more plant-based diet is by example – to lead with your fork, not your mouth. ~Bernie Wilke, quoted in Joanne Stepaniak, The Vegan Sourcebook, 1998

Truly man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds theirs. We live by the death of others: we are burial places! I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look on the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men. ~Leonardo da Vinci

I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other…. ~Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854

I venture to maintain that there are multitudes to whom the necessity of discharging the duties of a butcher would be so inexpressibly painful and revolting, that if they could obtain a flesh diet on no other condition, they would relinquish it forever. ~W.E.H. Lecky

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

While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth? ~George Bernard Shaw

I just could not stand the idea of eating meat – I really do think that it has made me calmer…. People’s general awareness is getting much better, even down to buying a pint of milk: the fact that the calves are actually killed so that the milk doesn’t go to them but to us cannot really be right, and if you have seen a cow in a state of extreme distress because it cannot understand why its calf isn’t by, it can make you think a lot. ~Kate Bush

I think if you want to eat more meat you should kill it yourself and eat it raw so that you are not blinded by the hypocrisy of having it processed for you. ~Margi Clark 60 Minutes, 19 September 1997

“Thou shalt not kill” does not apply to murder of one’s own kind only, but to all living beings; and this Commandment was inscribed in the human breast long before it was proclaimed from Sinai. ~Leo Tolstoy

As soon as I realized that I didn’t need meat to survive or to be in good health, I began to see how forlorn it all is. If only we had a different mentality about the drama of the cowboy and the range and all the rest of it. It’s a very romantic notion, an entrenched part of American culture, but I’ve seen, for example, pigs waiting to be slaughtered, and their hysteria and panic was something I shall never forget. ~Cloris Leachman

We manage to swallow flesh only because we do not think of the cruel and sinful thing that we do. Cruelty… is a fundamental sin, and admits of no arguments or nice distinctions. If only we do not allow our heart to grow callous, it protests against cruelty, is always clearly heard; and yet we go on perpetrating cruelties easily, merrily, all of us – in fact, anyone who does not join in is dubbed a crank. ~Rabindranath Tagore

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? ~Plutarch

It is only by softening and disguising dead flesh by culinary preparation that it is rendered susceptible of mastication or digestion, and that the sight of its bloody juices and raw horror does not excite intolerable loathing and disgust. ~Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab Notes

Vegetarianism can easily reach religious proportions. Refraining from meat on moral grounds serves to dignify feelings of guilt toward sad-eyed, furry creatures and substitutes righteousness for squeamishness. ~Bill Griffith, Griffith Observatory comic strip, 1977

To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being. I should be unwilling to take the life of a lamb for the sake of the human body. ~Mahatma Gandhi

A veteran USDA meat inspector from Texas describes what he has seen: “Cattle dragged and choked… knocking ‘em four, five, ten times. Every now and then when they’re stunned they come back to life, and they’re up there agonizing. They’re supposed to be re-stunned but sometimes they aren’t and they’ll go through the skinning process alive. I’ve worked in four large [slaughterhouses] and a bunch of small ones. They’re all the same. If people were to see this, they’d probably feel really bad about it. But in a packing house everybody gets so used to it that it doesn’t mean anything.” ~Slaughterhouse 1997

I eat everything that nature voluntarily gives: fruits, vegetables, and the products of plants. But I ask you to spare me what animals are forced to surrender: meat, milk, and cheese. ~Author Unknown

For that which you savor, did it give you something real, or could you taste the pain of my death in its flavor?~Wayne K. Tolson, from “Food Forethought”

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

Would you kill your pet dog or cat to eat it? How about an animal you’re not emotionally attached to? Is the thought of slaughtering a cow or chicken or pig with your own hands too much to handle? Instead, would hiring a hit-man to do the job give you enough distance from the emotional discomfort? What animal did you put a contract out on for your supper last night? Did you at least make sure that none went to waste and to take a moment to be grateful for its sacrifice? ~Anonymous

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Famous Vegan and Vegetarian Quotes