Quotations about Vegetarianism

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


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


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


If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian. ~Paul McCartney


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


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


How can you eat anything with eyes? ~Will Kellogg


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


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


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


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


Being a meat eater is really expensive, even if you don't count the cost of chemo. ~Snargleplexon.com


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


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


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, "Garfield" (Please note: In its original context, this is NOT about vegetarianism)


Vegetarians taste better. ~Author Unknown


Vegetarian - that's an old Indian word meaning "lousy hunter." ~Andy Rooney



Do vegetarians eat animal crackers? ~Author Unknown


If we aren't supposed to eat animals, then why are they made of meat? ~Author Unknown


I was a vegetarian until I started leaning toward the sunlight. ~Rita Rudner


Most vegetarians I ever see looked enough like their food to be classified as cannibals. ~Finley Peter Dunne


Vegetarian: A person who eats only side dishes. ~Gerald Lieberman


In the strict scientific sense we all feed on death - even vegetarians. ~Mr. Spock, Star Trek, "Wolf in the Fold"


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


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


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


Coexistence... what the farmer does with the turkey - until Thanksgiving. ~Mike Connolly


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


I never go without my dinner. No one ever does, except vegetarians and people like that. ~Oscar Wilde


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


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"


All normal people love meat. If I went to a barbeque and there was no meat, I would say, "Yo Goober! Where's the meat?" I'm trying to impress people here, Lisa. You don't win friends with salad. ~Matt Groening, The Simpsons, spoken by the character Homer Simpson


Truely 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


"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 (Thanks, Eric)


Think of me tonite
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


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


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