“To become vegetarian is to step into the stream which leads to nirvana.”
–Buddha
“One is dearest to God who has no enemies among the living beings, who is nonviolent to all creatures.”
–Bhagavad Gita
“He that slayeth an ox is as he that killeth a human.”
–Isaiah
“We should remember in our dealings with animals that they are a sacred trust to us from our heavenly Father. They are dumb and cannot speak for themselves.”
–Harriet Beecher Stowe
“I’m stopped. I’ll never eat another burger.”
–Oprah Winfrey, entertainment industry and activist
“Humans are the only hunters who kill when not hungry.”
–Steven Spielberg, filmmaker
“Once I was fishing and caught the hook in the fish’s eye. That was the last time I ate a killed creature.”
–Janet Barkas, editor of Grove Press
“The world’s environment can no longer handle beef.”
–Jeremy Rifkin, Beyond Beef
“Many things made me become a vegetarian—among them, the higher food yield as a solution to world hunger.”
–John Denver, musician and singer
“40 years ago on the set of Gunsmoke, I read the book The Holy Science. Since then I have not eaten meat.”
–Dennis Weaver, actor
“Being around all the animals in the film Dr. Doolittle made me one, too.”
–Samantha Eggar, actress
“So you are the people tearing down the Brazilian rainforest and breeding cattle.”
–Prince Philip to McDonald’s of Canada
“The awful cruelty and terror to which tens of thousands of animals killed for human food are subjected in traveling long distances by ship and rail and road to the slaughterhouses of the world. God disapproves of all cruelty, whether to man or beast. The occupation of slaughtering animals is brutalizing to those who are required to do the work. … I believe this matter is well worthy of the serious consideration of Christian leaders.”
–Mrs. Booth and General Bramwell Booth of the Salvation Army
“Charlie didn’t want to give up meat and smoking. Now he’s gone.”
–Lesley Stahl of CBS
“I would not want to get to know a pig very well if I intended to eat him.”
–Pat Leigh
“A human can 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
“The USDA recommendation of two servings of meat per day seems like too much.”
–Diane Rehm, First Lady of Broadcasting
“He is a heavy eater of beef. Me thinks it doth harm to his wit.”
–Shakespeare in Twelfth Night
“In all the round world there is no meat. There used to be. But now we cannot stand the thought of slaughterhouses.”
–H.G. Wells, from A Modern Utopia
“Martin Luther King taught us all nonviolence. I was told to extend nonviolence to the mother and her calf.”
–Dick Gregory
“I went snorkeling and noticed how gently the fish welcomed us into their world—as compared to the violence with which we welcomed them into ours. I became a vegetarian.”
–Syndee Brinkman
“Since visiting the abattoirs of South France, I have stopped eating meat.”
–Vincent Van Gogh
“Thousands of animals (now billions) are butchered [for food] every day without a shadow of remorse. It cries vengeance upon all the human race.”
–Romain Rolland
“More and more we realize that vegetarian diet is a good idea.”
–Dr. Edward Martin, head of Dept. of Defense Health
“We should live in harmony with Earth not conquer it or the animals. The other members of the National Football League say I’m in the minority, but they are. A majority of the world is vegetarian.”
–Glenn Scolnick, former Pittsburgh Steelers and NY Giants football player
“Some people are still going to want to eat meat. We do agree, though, that vegetarianism is a healthier diet.”
–David Stroud of the American Meat Institute
“For many years the media have been afraid of the Goliath power of the meat industry. But David is coming!”
–Pegeen Fitzgerald of WOR TV and Radio in NY
“I spoke often in Congress against the war in Vietnam. and commented on congresspersons hiding from the reality of war by saying ‘many eat the meat, but few go to the slaughterhouse.’ I said it so often, I became a vegetarian.”
Rep. Andrew Jacobs, formerly of Indianapolis
“In all the round world of Utopia there is no meat. There used to be, But now we cannot stand the thought of slaughterhouses. And it is impossible to find anyone who will hew a dead ox or pig. I can still remember as a boy the rejoicings over the closing of the last slaughterhouse.”
– H G Wells, A Modern Utopia
“Of what use are all your sacrifices to Me? I have had enough of the roasted carcasses of rams and of the fat of fattened beasts. I take no pleasure in the blood of calves, lambs, and goats. When you spread out your hands, I close My eyes to you; despite however much you pray, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood! Wash yourselves clean! Put away your misdeeds from before My eyes and stop doing evil.”
–Isaiah 1:11, 1:15-16
“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?”
“It is certainly not lions and wolves that we eat out of self-defense; on the contrary, we ignore these and slaughter harmless, tame creatures without stings or teeth to harm us, creatures that, I swear, Nature appears to have produced for the sake of their beauty and grace. But nothing abashed us, not the flower-like like tinting of the flesh, not the persuasiveness of the harmonious voice, not the cleanliness of their habits or the unusual intelligence that may be found in the poor wretches. No, for the sake of a little flesh we deprive them of sun, of light, of the duration of life to which they are entitled by birth and being.”
–Plutarch
“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 have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals.”
–Henry David Thoreau
“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
“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 Singer
“If any kid ever realized what was involved in factory farming they would never touch meat again. I was so moved by the intelligence, sense of fun, and personalities of the animals I worked with on Babe that, by the end of the film, I was a vegetarian.”
–James Cromwell, Actor
“There were no slaughterhouses in the Garden of Eden.”
–Unknown
“You’re thinking I’m one of those wiseass California vegetarians who is going to tell you that eating a few strips of bacon is bad for your health. I’m not. I say its a free country and you should be able to kill yourself at any rate you choose, as long as your cold dead body is not blocking my driveway.”
–Scott Adams, author of Dilbert
“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 and Linda McCartney
“I grew up in cattle country—that’s why I became a vegetarian. Meat stinks, for the animals, the environment, and your health.”
–K.D. Lang, musician and singer
“If you could see or feel the suffering you wouldn’t think twice. Give back life. Don’t eat meat.”
–Kim Basinger, actress
“I haven’t bought any leather articles for a very long time. My ideal is to be able to avoid all animal products, in food as well as clothing.”
–Martina Navratilova
“My respect and empathy towards animals includes sea dwellers, too–from dolphins to fish to lobsters. So, of course, I wouldn’t dream of eating them.”
–Alexandra Paul, actress
“Animals are my friends—and I don’t eat my friends.”
–George Bernard Shaw
“Compassion is the foundation of everything positive, everything good. If you carry the power of compassion to the marketplace and the dinner table, you can make your life really count.”
–Rue McClanahan, actress
“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 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.”
–Paul and Linda McCartney, musicians and singers
“How can you eat anything with eyes?”
–Will Kellogg
“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
“You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed In the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.”
–Ralph Waldo Emerson
“When I was old enough to realize all meat was killed, I saw it as an irrational way of using our power, to take a weaker thing and mutilate it. It was like the way bullies would take control of younger kids in the schoolyard. I’ve always felt somewhat out of place with other kids my own age. I was constantly reminded by people’s reaction to our names and our diet that we seemed weird to them.”
–River Phoenix, actor
“I think there will come a time, and this is down the road a great many years, when civilized people will look back in horror on our generation and the ones that have 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 that we regard cannibals and cannibalism.”
–Dennis Weaver, actor
“Do we, as humans, having an ability to reason and to communicate abstract ideas verbally and in writing, and to form ethical and moral judgments using the accumulated knowledge of the ages, have the right to take the lives of other sentient organisms, particularly when we are not forced to do so by hunger or dietary need, but rather do so for the somewhat frivolous reason that we like the taste of meat? In essence, should we know better?”
–Peter Cheeke
“Animal factories are one more sign of the extent to which our technological capacities have advanced faster than our ethics.”
–Peter Singer, author and teacher
“I don’t understand why asking people to eat a well-balanced vegetarian diet is considered drastic, while it is medically conservative to cut people open and put them on cholesterol-lowering drugs for the rest of their lives.”
–Dean Ornish, MD
“I don’t eat chicken anymore. I won’t eat it. I won’t allow it in my house.”
–Rodney Leonard, U.S. poultry inspector
“Based on my experience in Los Angeles, my advice to the public is not to eat meat.”
–Gregorio Natavidad, meat inspector
