Vegetarianism Quotes

“The important measurement is not the distance from unattainable perfection, but from unforgivable inaction.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast

“Fish are divided from us by surfaces and silence.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals

“Cruelty: Not only the willful causing of unnecessary suffering, but the indifference to it.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals

“The power brokers of factory farming know that their business model depends on consumers not being able to see (or hear about) what they do.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals

“Peace filled the world—until some futile brain Envied the lions’ diet and gulped down A feast of flesh to fill his greedy guts.”
― Ovid

“Something I've never been able to adapt to, to understand, is how they can lavish such love and care on the animals and then see them sold for slaughter.”
― Robert James Waller, The Bridges of Madison County

“These factory farmers calculate how close to death they can keep the animals without killing them. That's the business model. How quickly can they be made to grow, how tightly can they be packed, how much or how little can they eat, how sick can they get without dying.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals

“Food habits may affect mind. But for connecting your soul to the power of nothingness, you have to detach both from the eater (your body-mind) and the eaten (your food). Compassion detaches you, but pride or guilt of having a particular food habit attaches you.”
― Shunya

“When I look into the eyes of our animal friends, I feel as if it’s the universe itself looking back at me, a profoundly beautiful, deep, and knowing presence. I sense this universal spirit is waiting to see how I will treat them, judging my worthiness of the gift of their companionship. I feel their beauty and purity in the very depths of my soul, and in the process of caring for them and trying to protect them from harm, my heart fills with a love that feels infinite…”
― Rai Aren

“I narrowed the focus of my research to examine a specific expression of the relational paradox: the psychosociology of eating animals, a phenomenon I named carnism. Seeking to understand how people who care about the well-being of nonhuman animals nevertheless consume (or kill) them, I conducted interviews and surveys, and coded and analyzed responses. I concluded that eating (certain) animals results from extensive social and psychological conditioning that causes naturally empathic and rational people to distort their perceptions and block their empathy so that they act against their values of compassion and justice without fully realizing what they're doing. In other words, carnism teaches us to violate the Golden Rule without knowing or caring that we're doing so.”
― Melanie Joy, Powerarchy: Understanding the Psychology of Oppression for Social Transformation

“we, Humans, ain't superior by harming other species; though we might qualify by living in harmony.”
― Kalpesh Jain

“If the body becomes a special focus for women's struggle for freedom then what is ingested is a logical initial locus for announcing one's independence. Refusing the male order in food, women practiced the theory of feminism thorugh their bodies and their choice of vegetarianism.”
― Carol J. Adams, The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory

“Ironically, the utterly unselective omnivore -- "I'm easy; I'll eat anything" -- can appear more socially sensitive than the individual who tries to eat in a way that is good for society. Food choices are determined by many factors, but reason (even consciousness) is not generally high on the list.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals

“Almost all our health concerns can be traced back to our belly. Ensure a healthy gut and the rest will take care of itself.”
― Behzad Azargoshasb, Rules of Health: Sustaining Optimal Health Through Safe Detoxification, Reaching a Healthy Weight, Managing Stress Effectively, and Achieving Deep Restorative Sleep

“She grew up in the days when lamps ran on whale blubber, guitars were strung with catgut, and pig brains were a delicacy. Imposing my pampered millennial morality on the situation would be an insult to her entire generation.”
― George Watsky

“The question of eating animals hits chords that resonate deeply with our sense of self—our memories, desires, and values. Those resonances are potentially controversial, potentially threatening, potentially inspiring, but always filled with meaning.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals

“Man, and the other animals whom he has afflicted with his malady or depraved by his dominion, are alone diseased. The Bison, the wild Hog, the Wolf, are perfectly exempt from malady, and invariably die either from external violence or from mature old age. But the domestic Hog, the Sheep, the Cow, the Dog, are subject to an incredible variety of distempers, and, like the corruptors of their nature, have physicians who thrive upon their miseries. The super-eminence of man is, like Satan’s, the super-eminence of pain; and the majority of his species doomed to poverty, disease and crime, have reason to curse the untoward event that, by enabling him to communicate his sensations, raised him above the level of his fellow animals.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley

“How much longer will man continue to pimp for the gluttony of death, his most insidious, implacable, and eternal foe?”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley

“Vegetarianism is the ethical corollary of evolution. It is simply the expansion of ethics to suit the biological revelations of Charles Darwin. Evolution has taught us the kinship of all creatures.”
― J. Howard Moore, Why I Am a Vegetarian: An Address Delivered Before the Chicago Vegetarian Society

“„Wir essen keinen Fisch.“
„Warum nicht?“
„Das sind lackende und fickende Lebewesen.“
„Hühner doch auch.“
„Die esse ich auch nicht.”
― Luna Darko, Vergessene Kinder

“Many people say to me, "Should I be a vegetarian or shouldn't I?" "Should I have sex or shouldn't I?" "Should I meditate forty minutes or shouldn't I?" People that meditate exactly the right number of minutes, eat exactly the right food, do all the things perfectly, can also be caught in the chain of gold, in the chain of righteousness and ritual. This is not liberation. But eventually one does perform the spiritual practices, not out of obligation, not out of guilt, but because we've got to do it. Because it's demanded of us by us. We end up going through hell in meditation to quiet our minds, not because someone says, "You ought to quiet your mind," but because our agitated minds are driving us up the wall, and it's keeping us from getting on with it. We'll learn how to pray, and read holy books, and practice devotional acts and chants, opening our hearts and asking Christ to fill us with love, not because we're good, but because with a closed heart we know we cannot come into the flow of the universe.”
― Ram Dass, Grist for the Mill: The Mellow Drama, Dying: An Opportunity for Awakening, Freeing the Mind, Karmuppance, God & Beyond

“¿Por qué hemos llegado a la situación de ridiculizar a quien intenta hacerlo mejor? ¿A la práctica de buscar el resquicio, una pequeña grieta en lo ajeno, la incoherencia en alguien que ha dado ciertos pasos hacia un objetivo? La sociedad del siglo XXI no está preparada para aquellos que siempre hacen un esfuerzo, los exprimen, les exigen más... y en lugar de mirarse y analizar qué hacen ellos por cambiar el mundo, buscan cómo los otros no llevan al extremo sus convicciones. Así no, así no es como avanzamos colectivamente como sociedad.
[Cita de Aitor Sánchez en el prólogo del libro]”
― Lucía Martínez Argüelles, Vegetarianos con ciencia

“The theory behind vegetarian eating as the highest form of purity led me to campaign tirelessly for animal rights. Many times I considered animal rights to be more important than human priorities. I didn't realize until years later that I was developing an attitude towards animals I had rejected growing up in India. Some animals were becoming sacred in my eyes. And I was placing their value well above that of human beings.”
― Caryl Matrisciana

“During World Wars I and II, wartime food restrictions that virtually eliminated meat consumption in Scandinavian countries were followed by a decline in the mortality rate (by ≈2 deaths/1000) that returned to prewar levels after the restriction was lifted (7–12).”
― Pramil Singh

“It's entirely possible that self-aware
beings have more value than those that
are not self-aware, but that doesn't mean
to say that those that are not
self-aware have no value. And when we are
speaking about just desires - you want to
satisfy a desire to eat flesh - then you
don't have a good reason for overriding
the value that animal life has. It
has all the value that animal sees
in it. That life is all that animal has
and it cares a great deal about it, even
if not as much as you do about your life.”
― David Benatar

“It is quite ironical that it took many ages of eating protein-rich meat to evolve the brains that now poke us to become vegetarian.”
― Rajesh`, Random Cosmos

“She once told the entire class that her dog, one of those little living-accessory dogs that spends most of its life in a pleather handbag, hung itself by slipping through the beams of her deck after securing the other end of the leash beneath one of the patio chairs. She said it was proof that even animals could think and feel. I think she wanted us to become vegetarians.”
― Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Friday Black

“Ogni pezzo di carne ha avuto un volto. Chi vuole la carne deve tener conto della morte. Chi non vuole, può farne a meno.”
― Claudia Schreiber, Emmas Glück

“There hath been a slaughter for the sacrifice
And slaying for the meat, but henceforth none
Shall spill the blood of life, nor taste of flesh,
Seeing that knowledge grows, and life is one,
And mercy cometh to the merciful.”
― Edwin Arnold, The Light of Asia

“Food should be eaten fresh. Food is not only physical substance but shakti, or energy, a manifestation of Consciousness in living beings. (p. 72)”
― James Swartz, Meditation: Inquiry Into the Self