Best 160 quotes in «vegetarianism quotes» category

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!

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.

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

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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?

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

How can you eat anything with eyes?

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

In every country in the world, killing human beings is condemned. The Buddhist precept of non-killing extends even further, to include all living beings.

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

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.

It is not how we breed, keep and kill animals for human consumption that has been the impetus for vegetarianism for thousands of years. It is that we breed, keep and kill animals for human consumption. Throughout the centuries the common thread in the arguments against eating animals is the fact that since we have no nutritional requirement for the flesh or fluids of animals, killing them to simply satisfy our taste-buds or habits or customs amounts to senseless slaughter, and senseless slaughter is no small thing.

It is necessary to correct the error that vegetarianism has made us weak in mind, or passive or inert in action. I do not regard flesh-food as necessary at any stage

I've been a vegetarian for years and years. I'm not judgemental about others who aren't, I just feel I cannot eat or wear living creatures.

It is the fate of every truth to be an object of ridicule when it is first acclaimed.

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

My dream is that people will come to view eating an animal as cannibalism.

Male and female have the power to fuse into one solid, both because both are nourished in both and also because soul is the same thing in all living creatures, although the body of each is different.

Many things made me become a vegetarian, among them the higher food yield as a solution to world hunger.

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.

Recognize meat for what it really is: the antibiotic- and pesticide-laden corpse of a tortured animal.

Plant life instead of animal food is the keystone of regeneration. Jesus used bread instead of flesh and wine in place of blood at the Lord's Supper.

Since I first went to India twenty some years ago, there's been a palpable change. There's now pizza everywhere, meat is much more popular than it's ever been. Vegetarianism is "that quaint thing our parents did.

The animals you eat are not those who devour others; you do not eat the carnivorous beasts, you take them as your pattern. You only hunger for the sweet and gentle creatures which harm no one, which follow you, serve you, and are devoured by you as the reward of their service.

The eating of meat extinguishes the seed of Great Kindness.

The beef industry has contributed to more American deaths than all the wars of this century, all natural disasters, and all automobile accidents combined.

The man who regards his own life and that of his fellow-creatures as meaningless is not merely unfortunate but almost disqualified for life.