VEGETARIANISM QUOTES II
quotations about vegetarianism
It is usually assumed that moral vegetarians are obliged to prove a number of difficult claims. These include the claim that animals are not automata; that animals suffer or experience pain; that killing animals harms them; that killing or causing them pain matters to animals in a way that should make an ethical difference to us; that animals have some kind of moral status; that we have positive or negative obligations to nonhuman animals; or, more ambitiously, that animals possess rights that, in turn, call for these negative/positive obligations. This way of framing the debate and its major stepping-stones has a strong hold on the philosophical literature on vegetarianism. Yet it is a misleading framework. The error lies in confusing between justifying widely shared beliefs and drawing the moral consequences that are plausibly implied by such beliefs given the fact that they are shared.
TZACHI ZAMIR
Ethics and the Beast: A Speciesist Argument for Animal Liberation
In all the round world of Utopia there is no meat. There used to be. But now we cannot stand the thought of slaughter-houses. And, in a population that is all educated, and at about the same level of physical refinement, it is practically impossible to find anyone who will hew a dead ox or pig. We never settled the hygienic question of meat-eating at all. This other aspect decided us. I can still remember, as a boy, the rejoicings over the closing of the last slaughter-house.
H. G. WELLS
A Modern Utopia
People of the future will say, "meat-eaters!" in disgust and regard us in the same way that we regard cannibals and cannibalism.
DENNIS WEAVER
attributed, Vegetarian Food for Thought
I have seen the very men who have thus boasted of their tenderness, at the same time devouring the flesh of six different animals tossed up in a fricassee. Strange contrariety of conduct! They pity, and they eat the objects of their compassion!
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
The Citizen of the World
It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favour of vegetarianism, while the wolf remains of a different opinion.
WILLIAM RALPH INGE
"Patriotism", Outspoken Essays
Political economists tell us that the produce of an acre of land in wheat, corn, potatoes, and other vegetables, and in fruits, will sustain animal life sixteen times as long as when the produce of the same acre is converted into flesh, by feeding and fattening animals upon it.
WILLIAM A. ALCOTT
Vegetable Diet
Vegetarianism preserves life, health, peace, the ecology, creates a more equitable distribution of resources, helps to feed the hungry, encourages nonviolence for the animal and human members of the planet, and is a powerful aid for the spiritual transformation of the body, emotions, mind, and spirit.
GABRIEL COUSENS
Conscious Eating
I am not a complete vegetarian. I eat only animals that have died in their sleep.
GEORGE CARLIN
attributed, Sunbeams: A Book of Quotations
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
The butcher with his bloody apron incites bloodshed, murder. Why not? From cutting the throat of a young calf to cutting the throat of our brothers and sisters is but a step. While we are ourselves the living graves of murdered animals, how can we expect any ideal conditions on the earth?
ISADORA DUNCAN
My Life
How will Man, that sanguinary Tyrant, be able to excuse himself from the charge of those innumerable cruelties inflicted on his unoffending subjects, committed to his care, and placed under his authority, by their common father?
SOAME JENYNS
On Cruelty to Animals
Vegetarians eat vegetables. What do humanitarians eat?
BOB PHILLIPS
Phillips' Treasury of Humorous Quotations
I, for my part, wonder what sort of feeling, mind or reason that man was possessed who was first to pollute his mouth with gore, and allow his lips to touch the flesh of a murdered being; who spread his table with the mangled form of dead bodies, and claimed as daily food and dainty dishes what but now were beings endowed with movement, with perception and with voice.
PLUTARCH
Moralia
Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace.
ALBERT SCHWEITZER
attributed, Living Vegan for Dummies
The biblical case for vegetarianism does not rest on the view that killing may never be allowable in the eyes of God, rather on the view that killing is always a grave matter. When we have to kill to live we may do so, but when we do not, we should live otherwise.
ANDREW LINZEY
"Vegetarianism as a Biblical Ideal", Religious Vegetarianism
Don't kid yourself, Jimmy. If a cow ever got the chance, he'd eat you and everyone you care about!
TROY MCCLURE
"Lisa the Vegetarian", The Simpsons
Meat is one of the biggest causes of greenhouse gases. Hence Bill Gates and Google's latest big idea -- a meat-free burger made in a laboratory from plants, but which bleeds and sizzles.
NICK RUFFORD
"Can the Meat-free Impossible Burger Save the World?", STmag, April 19, 2017
By eating meat we share the responsibility of climate change, the destruction of our forests, and the poisoning of our air and water. The simple act of becoming a vegetarian will make a difference in the health of our planet.
THICH NHAT HANH
The World We Have: A Buddhist Approach to Peace and Ecology
People often say that humans have always eaten animals, as if this is a justification for continuing the practice. According to this logic, we should not try to prevent people from murdering other people, since this has also been done since the earliest of times.
ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER
attributed, You Don't Need Meat
It is right to say that to be a vegetarian is a personal choice. But when our diet relates directly to the lives of animals, the utilization of resources, and environmental protection, being vegetarian is not a private affair.
ZHANG SI
"Using Vegetarianism to Put Animal Welfare on the Table", Sixth Tone, April 7, 2017