Some great, some funny, quotes about vegetarianism

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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, M.D.

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

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's apt to give a person wind
and self-righteousness. ~Robert Hutchinson

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

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

Nothing spoils lunch any quicker than a rogue meatball rampaging
through your spaghetti. ~Jim Davis

Do vegetarians eat animal crackers? ~Author Unknown

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

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

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, M.D., author
of Vegan Nutrition: Pure & Simple

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, National
Director of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

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 a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian 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

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 (Thank
you, 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