quotations about vegetarianism
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
Were all members of the animal kingdom, Leave your brothers and sisters in the sea.
PRINCE
"Animal Kingdom", The Truth
Sunday dinner isn't sunny
Easter feasts are just bad luck
When you see it from the viewpoint
Of a chicken or a duck.
SHEL SILVERSTEIN
"Point of View", Vegetarian Times, November 1982
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
You're thinking I'm one of those wise-ass 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
Stick to Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain!
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'm a postmodern vegetarian -- I eat meat ironically.
BILL BAILEY
Part Troll
Vegetarianism is not only optimally healthy for your body, but your environment and the planet's animals. It allows you to live more harmoniously with the world around you, which improves mental and emotional health accordingly.
WINGS OF SUCCESS
The Advantages of Being a Vegetarian
Some people think vegetarianism is an extremist suppression of sensual passion. That is an obstacle.
ZHANG SI
"Using Vegetarianism to Put Animal Welfare on the Table", Sixth Tone, April 7, 2017
Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.
BIBLE
Genesis 1:29
Nothing compares with a cafe that feels like home. But that kind of cafe can be tough to find when you're a vegetarian.
MYCHEL MATTHEWS
"Eating veggies in meat-and-potatoes country", Twin Falls Times-News, April 4, 2017
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
I was born into a family of carnivores, and I married into a family of carnivores -- I know through experience that the concept of vegetarianism is difficult to comprehend in meat-and-potatoes country.
MYCHEL MATTHEWS
"Eating veggies in meat-and-potatoes country", Twin Falls Times-News, April 4, 2017
Vegetarians, dropping meat, tend to fill up with too much starch. This leaves them no more healthy than meat-eaters, with constipation, indigestion, colds, catarrhs, coughs and chest complaints to plague them. Eating sparingly of breads, cakes, crackers, cookies, macaroni, spaghetti, anything largely starch, is a far step on the road to good health.
HELEN NEARING
Simple Food for the Good Life
Vegetarianism -- You are what you eat, and who wants to be a lettuce?
PETER BURNS
attributed, The Book of Poisonous Quotes
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
On Civil Disobedience
Men think it right to eat animals, because they are led to believe that God sanctions it. This is untrue. No matter in what books it may be written that it is not sinful to slay animals and to eat them, it is more clearly written in the heart of man than in any books that animals are to be pitied and should not be slain any more than human beings. We all know this if we do not choke the voice of our conscience.
LEO TOLSTOY
The Pathway of Life: Teaching Love and Wisdom
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
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
Actually, when we really think about it, we are all "grim reapers," inhabiting a planet where killing is the law. The big fish gobbles up the little fish, and where do all those hamburgers come from? Animals give their lives for us, and for each other, as the tiger eats the gazelle. Even vegetarians are killers though they might fool themselves into thinking they are not. Read The Secret Life of Plants, by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird, and empathize with the philodendron, hooked up to a polygraph machine. The polygraph went "wild" when a plant-destroying student walked by. The plants also responded to music and adapted to human wishes. Does that ripe, juicy tomato feel it when you take a bite? (By eating it, you are also practicing tomato "sprout" control by preventing its seeds from becoming future tomato plants.) To live on planet Earth, all must kill.
A. CARLSON WHALEN
Mother Earth and the Gene Machines