quotations about vegetarianism
Were one to stop and think of what meat is, and what it was, it is doubtful if one could eat it. It is merely dead and decaying flesh -- flesh from the body of an animal.... Only by the fact that hey are covered up, and their true nature concealed by cooking, and basting, and pickling, and peppering and salting can we eat them at all. If we were natural carnivorous animals, we should delight in bloodshed and gore of all kind!... We should eat our flesh warm and quivering -- just as it comes from the cow!
HEREWARD CARRINGTON
The Natural Food for Man
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
If we each had to butcher our own meat, there would be a great increase in the number of vegetarians.
ERNEST HOWARD CROSBY
Tolstoy and His Message
It is a cruel folly to offer up to ostentation so many lives of creatures, as make up the state of our treats; as it is a prodigal one to spend more in sauce than in meat.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food.
ANTHONY BOURDAIN
Kitchen Confidential
Those who eat flesh are but eating grains and vegetables at second hand; for the animal receives from these things the nutrition that produces growth. The life that was in the grains and the vegetables passes into the eater. We receive it by eating the flesh of the animal. How much better to get it direct by eating the food that God provided for our use!
ELLEN WHITE
Health and Happiness
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", Vegetarian Times, November 1982
I did not become a vegetarian for my health, I did it for the health of the chickens.
ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER
attributed, Main Street Vegan
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
Refrain at all times from such foods as cannot be procured without violence and oppression.
THOMAS TRYON
attributed, Humanimal
You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
"Fate", Essays and Lectures
The repugnance I have come to feel about eating such animals is an extension of what I would feel about eating my pet cat rather than the product of some calculation of quanta of suffering.
THOMAS WELLS
"The Incoherence of Peter Singer's Utilitarian Argument for Vegetarianism", ABC Online, October 25, 2016
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
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
I tell vegetarians, "Hey, vegetables are living things too. They're just easier to catch."
KEVIN BRENNAN
attributed, The Mammoth Book of Comic Quotes
Vegetarianism -- You are what you eat, and who wants to be a lettuce?
PETER BURNS
attributed, The Book of Poisonous Quotes
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
attributed, Humanimal
We were all brainwashed to believe that the only source of protein was meat and cheese.
SUZANNE HAVALA
101 Reasons why I'm a Vegetarian
Thousands of people who say they "love" animals sit down once or twice a day to enjoy the flesh of creatures who have been utterly deprived of everything that could make their lives worth living and who endured the awful suffering and the terror of the abattoirs.
JANE GOODALL
The Ten Trusts
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
attributed, The Perfectly Contented Meat-eater's Guide to Vegetarianism