Best 160 quotes in «vegetarianism quotes» category

The are two types of vegetarians: (1) those who have beef with chicken; and (2) those who are too chicken to have beef.

The Butcher’s Shop The pigs are strung in rows, open-mouthed, dignified in martyrs’ deaths. They hang stiff as Sunday manners, their porky heads voting Tory all their lives, their blue rosettes discarded now. The butcher smiles a meaty smile, white apron stained with who knows what, fingers fat as sausages. Smug, woolly cattle and snowy sheep prance on tiles, grazing on eternity, cute illustrations in a children’s book. What does the sheep say now? Tacky sawdust clogs your shoes. Little plastic hedges divide the trays of meat, playing farms. playing farms. All the way home your cold and soggy paper parcel bleeds.

The persistence of the story of animal consent into the contemporary era tells of a human appreciation of the stakes, and a desire to do the right thing.

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.

There is convincing evidence that vegetarians have lower rates of coronary heart disease, largely explained by low LDL cholesterol, probable lower rales of hypertension and diabetes mellitus, and lower prevalence of obesity. Overall, their cancer rates appear to be moderately lower than others living in the same communities, and life expectancy appears to be greater.

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.

The choice-obsessed modern West is probably more accommodating to individuals who choose to eat differently than any other culture has ever been, but 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.

The Chinese food arrives. Delicious saliva fills his mouth. He really hasn't had any since Texas. He loves this food that contains no disgusting proofs of slain animals, a bloody slab of cow haunch, a hen's sinewy skeleton; these ghosts have been minced and destroyed and painlessly merged with the shapes of insensate vegetables, plump green bodies that invite his appetite's innocent gusto. Candy.

The "civilized" man of today ridicules the idolatry of bygone ages, but he does not realize that he is a far worse idolater than the idolaters of the past. In former times, men set up images of various animals and adored them; today they slaughter those animals and worship their putrefied carcasses.

The horse and the cow, the rabbit and the cat, the deer and the hare, the pheasant and the lark, please us better as friends than as meat.

The main finding was that vegan and lacto-ovo vegetarian diets were associated with a nearly one-half reduction in risk of type 2 diabetes compared with the risk associated with nonvegetarian diets after adjustment for a number of socioeconomic and lifestyle factors, as well as low BMI, that are typically associated with vegetarianism. Pesco- and semi-vegetarian diets were associated with intermediate risk reductions: between one-third and one-quarter. These data indicate that vegetarian diets may in part counteract the environmental forces leading to obesity and increased rates of type 2 diabetes, though only vegan diets were associated with a BMI in the optimal range. Inclusion of meat, meat products, and fish in the diet, even on a less than weekly basis, seems to limit some of the protection associated with a vegan or lacto-ovo vegetarian diet. These findings may be explained by adverse effects of meat and fish, protective effects of typical constituents of vegan and lacto-ovo vegetarian diets, other characteristics of people who choose vegetarian diets, or a combination of these factors.

The repugnance to animal food is not the effect of experience, but it is instinct.

There's plenty of food, other than non-vegetarian, here, on this earth. So, don't hurt, kill and eat animals to increase your girth

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.

The statement by Paul McCartney that, although he was a pacifist, he couldn’t be at this time of war. Which is as daft as being a vegetarian between meals.

Through knowing death we can hold a beacon of love for every moment that has just passed, for every friend who has lost a friend, for every child who has lost a parent, for every parent who has lost a child; for any suffering anywhere.

There is no place left for the buffalo to roam. There’s only corn, wheat, and soy. About the only animals that escaped the biotic cleansing of the agriculturalists are small animals like mice and rabbits, and billions of them are killed by the harvesting equipment every year. Unless you’re out there with a scythe, don’t forget to add them to the death toll of your vegetarian meal. They count, and they died for your dinner, along with all the animals that have dwindled past the point of genetic feasibility.

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.

This is dreadful! Not the suffering and death of the animals, but that man suppresses in himself, unnecessarily, the highest spiritual capacity—that of sympathy and pity toward living creatures like himself—and by violating his own feelings becomes cruel. And how deeply seated in the human heart is the injunction not to take life!

To kill an animal in order to satisfy your nutritional desires, not your nutritional needs, that seems to me to be completely unacceptable.

vegetarians and vegans had significantly lower mortality than regular meat eaters for pancreatic cancer and digestive diseases, and fish eaters had significantly lower colorectal cancer mortality than regular meat eaters (Supplemental Table 2). Further adjustment for BMI left these associations largely unchanged.

We can’t talk about our own health without understanding our place in our environment, because in order to fulfill our potential we have to live in the context of our surroundings. We have to know our place in the ecosystem of which we are a part, and this means living 'consciously': being aware of nature and how it affects us and how we, in turn, affect nature.

Vegetarianism is harmless enough, though it is apt to fill a man with wind and self-righteousness.

We perhaps know more than we care to admit, keeping it down in the dark places of our memory-disavowed. When we eat factory-farmed meat we live, literally, on tortured flesh. Increasingly, that tortured flesh is becoming our own.

We think of dogs as being more like people than pigs; but pigs are highly intelligent animals and if we kept pigs as pets and reared dogs for food, we would probably reverse our order of preference. Are we turning persons into bacon?

When we lift our forks, we hang our hats somewhere. We set ourselves in one relationship or another to farmed animals, farm-workers, national economies, and global markets. Not making a decision--eating 'like everyone else'--is to make the easiest decision, a decision that is increasingly problematic.

Who are we to say dogs and cats have more rights than cows and pigs. They're all conscious. They feel the same. They hurt the same. God help us understand!

What struck me, in reading the reports from Sri Lanka, was the mild disgrace of belonging to our imperfectly evolved species in the first place. People who had just seen their neighbors swept away would tell the reporters that they knew a judgment had been coming, because the Christians had used alcohol and meat at Christmas or because ... well, yet again you can fill in the blanks for yourself. It was interesting, though, to notice that the Buddhists were often the worst. Contentedly patting an image of the chubby lord on her fencepost, a woman told the New York Times that those who were not similarly protected had been erased, while her house was still standing. There were enough such comments, almost identically phrased, to make it seem certain that the Buddhist authorities had been promulgating this consoling and insane and nasty view. That would not surprise me.

Whether we change our lives or do nothing, we have responded. To do nothing is to do something.

Will you dance for me? Let your breasts roam for a moment -- I need to see how they dance.' 'Okay.' She danced, and as she danced, she tried to think of the most delicious salads she could imagine -- with artichokes and sundried tomato and blue cheese dressing, and beets, lots of beets.

You humans drink our milk and eat the eggs of the chickens and the ducks. Isn't that enough for you? Isn't it enough that we give you our children and what's meant for our children? And if not, when is it enough? All you humans do is take, take, take from the earth and its beautiful creatures, and what do you give back? Nothing. I know humans consider it a grave insult to be called an animal. Well, I would never give a human the fine distinction of being called an animal, because an animal may kill to live but an animal never lives to kill. Humans have to earn the right to be called animals again.

We might treat a rabbit as a pet or become emotionally attached to a goose, but we had come from cities and supermarkets, where flesh was hygienically distanced from any resemblance to living creatures. A shrink-wrapped pork chop has a sanitized, abstract appearance that has nothing whatever to do with the warm, mucky bulk of a pig. Out here in the country there was no avoiding the direct link between death and dinner.

While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth?

Although I have been prevented by outward circumstances from observing a strictly vegetarian diet, I have long been an adherent to the cause in principle. Besides agreeing with the aims of vegetarianism for aesthetic and moral reasons, it is my view that a vegetarian manner of living by its purely physical effect on the human temperament would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind.

You do not see anything when you experience pure consciousness; you become everything.

As long as man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings he will never know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other.

Alas, what wickedness to swallow flesh into our own flesh, to fatten our greedy bodies by cramming in other bodies, to have one living creature fed by the death of another!

Basically we should stop doing those things that are destructive to the environment, other creatures, and ourselves and figure out new ways of existing.

How can you eat anything with eyes?

Every man who has ever been earnest to preserve his higher or poetic faculties in the best condition, has been particularly inclined to abstain from animal food

Food affects the mind. For the practice of any kind of yoga, vegetarianism is absolutely necessary since it makes the mind more pure and harmonious.

I became a vegetarian because I was persuaded that life is as valid for other creatures as it is for humans. I do not need dead animal bodies to keep me alive, strong and healthy. Therefore, I will not kill for food.

He who has renounced all violence towards all living beings, weak or strong, who neither kills nor causes others to kill - him I do call a holy man.

I can't think of anything better in the world to be but a vegan.

If a man can control his body and mind and thereby refrains from eating animal flesh and wearing animal products, I say he will really be liberated.

If there would come a voice from God saying, 'I'm against vegetarianism!' I would say, 'Well, I am for it!' This is how strongly I feel in this regard.

If you step back and look at the data, the optimum amount of red meat you eat should be zero.

I abhor vivisection with my whole soul. All the scientific discoveries stained with innocent blood I count as of no consequence.

I don't teach vegetarianism; it is a by-product of meditation. Wherever meditation has happened, people have become vegetarian, always, for thousands of years.

If you declare that you are naturally designed for such a diet, then first kill for yourself what you want to eat. Do it, however, only through your own resources, unaided by cleaver or cudgel or any kind of ax