- “Before you rush off trying to see everything you can, educate yourself.” ― Jonathan Safran Foer
- “In the racist, sexist United States, nonwhite racialized minorities—and women in particular—are subjected to more than their share of horrific violence, but no human being would wish to trade places with nonhuman animals in factory farms or laboratories. . . .The legal status of women and nonwhite racializedminorities has improved markedly in the past fifty years; matters have grown considerably worse for nonhuman animals.” ― Lisa Kemmerer, Sister Species: Women, Animals and Social Justice
- “It is my view that the vegetarian manner of living, by its purely physical effect on the human temperament, would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind.” ― Albert Einstein
- “My hope is that we can navigate through this world and our lives with the grace and integrity of those who need our protection. May we have the sense of humor and liveliness of the goats; may we have the maternal instincts and protective nature of the hens and the sassiness of the roosters. May we have the gentleness and strength of the cattle, and the wisdom, humility, and serenity of the donkeys. May we appreciate the need for community as do the sheep and choose our companion as carefully as do the rabbits. May we have the faithfulness and commitment to family as the geese, and adaptability and affability of the ducks. May we have the intelligence, loyalty, and affection of the pigs and the inquisitiveness, sensitivity, and playfulness of the turkeys.My hope is that we learn from the animals what it is we need to become better people.” ― Colleen Patrick-Goudreau, Vegan’s Daily Companion: 365 Days of Inspiration for Cooking, Eating, and Living Compassionately
- “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? … It is certainly not lions and wolves that we eat out of self-defense; on the contrary, we ignore these and slaughter harmless, tame creatures without stings or teeth to harm us, creatures that, I swear, Nature appears to have produced for the sake of their beauty and grace. But nothing abashed us, not the flower-like tinting of the flesh, not the persuasiveness of the harmonious voice, not the cleanliness of their habits or the unusual intelligence that may be found in the poor wretches. No, for the sake of a little flesh we deprive them of sun, of light, of the duration of life to which they are entitled by birth and being.” ― Plutarch, Moralia
- “Ethics is in its unqualified form extended responsibility with regard to everything that has life.” ― Brenda Davis R D
- “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
- “If it is justifiable to assume that other human beings feel pain as we do, is there any reason why similar inference should be unjustifiable in the case of other animals?” ― Peter Singer, Animal Liberation
- “Animals who are exploited for “organic” foods are raised, maintained, transported, and slaughtered just like their nonorganic” counterparts: They are debeaked, dehorned, detoed, castrated, and/or branded, and they are kept, transported, and slaughtered in the same deplorable conditions.” ― Lisa Kemmerer, Speaking Up for Animals: An Anthology of Women’s Voices
- “Love is at the heart of the world, just as it is at the heart of your life. Your relationships with your lover, your family, your friends, and the world around you define the quality of your emotional wholeness and reflect your relationship with yourself.” ― Sebastian Pole, Discovering the True You with Ayurveda: How to Nourish, Rejuvenate, and Transform Your Life
- “Perhaps in the back of our minds we already understand, without all the science I’ve discussed, that something terribly wrong is happening. Our sustenance now comes from misery. We know that if someone offers to show us a film on how our meat is produced, it will be a horror film. 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.” ― Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals
- “Any serious social, political, and economic change must include veganism.” ― GaryLFrancione
- “High animal protein in take was positively associated with mortality and high plant protein intake was inversely associated with mortality, especially among individuals with at least 1 lifestyle risk factor. Substitution of plant protein for animal protein, especially that from processed red meat, was associated with lower mortality, suggesting the importance of protein source.” ― Mingyang Song
- “There are some animal advocates who say that to maintain that veganism is the moral baseline is objectionable because it is “judgmental,” or constitutes a judgment that veganism is morally preferable to vegetarianism and a condemnation that vegetarians (or other consumers of animal products) are “bad” people. Yes to the first part; no to the second. There is no coherent distinction between flesh and other animal products. They are all the same and we cannot justify consuming any of them. To say that you do not eat flesh but that you eat dairy or eggs or whatever, or that you don’t wear fur but you wear leather or wool, is like saying that you eat the meat from spotted cows but not from brown cows; it makers no sense whatsoever. The supposed “line” between meat and everything else is just a fantasy–an arbitrary distinction that is made to enable some exploitation to be segmented off and regarded as “better” or as morally acceptable. This is not a condemnation of vegetarians who are not vegans; it is, however, a plea to those people to recognize their actions do not conform with a moral principle that they claim to accept and that all animal products are the result of imposing suffering and death on sentient beings. It is not a matter of judging individuals; it is, however, a matter of judging practices and institutions. And that is a necessary component of ethical living.” ― GaryLFrancione
- “As told by Kafka’s close friend Max Brod:”Suddenly he began to speak to the fish in their illuminated tanks. ‘Now at least I can look at you in peace, I don’t eat you anymore.’ It was the time he turned strictly vegetarian.” ― Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals
- “The food we eat masks so much cruelty. The fact that we can sit down and eat a piece of chicken without thinking about the horrendous conditions under which chickens are industrially bred in this country is a sign of the dangers of capitalism, how capitalism has colonized our minds. The fact that we look no further than the commodity itself, the fact that we refuse to understand the relationships that underly the commodities that we use on a daily basis. And so food is like that.” ― Angela Y. Davis
- “The repugnance to animal food is not the effect of experience, but it is instinct.” ― Henry David Thoreau, Walden
- “Any serious social, political, and economic change must include veganism.” ― GaryLFrancione
- “For every ten tuna, sharks, and other large predatory fish that were in our oceans fifty to a hundred years ago, only one is left.” ― Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals
- “Mankind does not have dominion over the Earth, mankind has a relationship with the Earth.” ― J.Adam Snyder
- “I love animals, especially with barbeque sauce.” ― J. Richard Singleton
- “I’ll stop eating steak when you stop killing spiders.” Absurdity: comparing cows to spiders. Arachnids are pure evil. They’re like a cigarette manufacturer or a terrorist. They’re organized religion on eight legs.” ― Davey Havok, Pop Kids
- “Human beings are important only to the survival of the human race.” ― Mokokoma Mokhonoana
- “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
- “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.Sunday dinner isn’t sunny. Easter feasts are just bad luck. When you see it from the viewpoint of a chicken or a duck. Oh how I once loved tuna salad Pork and lobsters, lamb chops too Till I stopped and looked at dinner From the dinner’s point of view.” ― Shel Silverstein
- “Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace.” ― Albert Schweitzer
- “So why does the National Chicken Council feel it’s important that Americans eat chickens who are infected with cancer?” ― Thom Hartmann
- “Some studies have shown that hypertension occurs less frequently among vegetarians than among nonvegetarians, regardless of body weight or sodium intake. Intake of red meat has been linked to a higher risk of colorectal cancer. Vegetarians, including lacto-ovo and vegan, have reduced incidences of diabetes and lower rates of cancer than nonvegetarians, particularly for gastrointestinal cancer.47,48 Vegetarian-style diet patterns are associated with lower all-cause mortality.49 Vegetarian-style eating patterns are being used for the prevention and therapeutic dietary treatment of numerous chronic conditions, including overweight and obesity, cardiovascular disease (hyperlipidemia, ischemic heart disease, and hypertension), diabetes, cancer, and osteoporosis.50” ― Melissa Bernstein
- “Despite the fact that an Indonesian island chicken has probably had a much more natural life than one raised on a battery farm in England, people who wouldn’t think twice about buying something oven-ready become much more upset about a chicken that they’ve been on a boat with, so there is probably buried in the Western psyche a deep taboo about eating anything you’ve been introduced to socially.” ― Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See
- “For all the types of pain that can lead to suffering there is a solution. Through opening our hearts with compassion to the pain that life brings, we can truly cure our pain and avoid our suffering. Then we can walk in the valley of love and experience the vast space within our heart.” ― Sebastian Pole, Discovering the True You with Ayurveda: How to Nourish, Rejuvenate, and Transform Your Life