"Isn't man an amazing animal? He kills wildlife -- birds, kangaroos, deer, all kinds of cats, coyotes, beavers, groundhogs, mice and foxes by the million--in order to protect his domestic animals and their feed. Then he kills his domestic animals by the billion and eats them. This in turns kills men by the million, because eating all those animals leads to degenerative--and fatal--health conditions like heart disease, kidney disease, and cancer. So then man tortures and kills millions more animals to look for cures to these diseases. Elsewhere, millions of other human beings are being killed by hunger and malnutrition because food they could eat is being used to fatten domestic animals. Meanwhile, some people are dying of sad laughter at the absurdity of man, who kills so easily and so violently, and once a year sends out cards praying for 'Peace on Earth'" - C. David Coats
"Religious and spiritual convictions, eithical concerns over the right to kill animals when alternatives exist, and just plain compassion for other living beings compels many to pass on meat." - Frankie Avalon Wolfe, M.H.H., Ph. D., R.N.C.P.
"Violence begins with a fork." - Ghandi
"The astronomical number of animals being raised and killed for food makes it essentially impossible to treat the animals in any fashion that the average person would consider humane. Nevertheless, you should also reflect on whether you would consider it accpetable to be eaten even if someone promised to treat you better before killing you." - Nedim C. Buyukmihci, V.M.D., when asked the question "I don't want to give up meat. Couldn't we just treat the animals better?"
"Animals are my friends...and I don't eat my friends."- George Bernard Shaw
"The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that's the essence of inhumanity." - G. B. Shaw
"Oh, come! That boot is on the other leg. Why should you call me to account for eating decently? If I battened on the scorched corpses of animals, you might well ask me why I did that." - G.B. Shaw when asked why he was a vegetarian
"While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth?" - G.B. Shaw
"Blood sacrifices are not in my line." - G.B. Shaw
"I look my age; and I am my age. It is the other people who look older than they are. What can you expect from people who eat corpses and drink spirits?" - G.B. Shaw
"When a man wants to murder a tiger, it's called sport; when the tiger wants to murder him it's called ferocity." - G.B. Shaw
"Darwin popularized Evolution generally, as well as making his own special contribution to it. Now the general conception of Evolution provides the humanitarian with a scientific basis, because it establishes the fundamental equality of all living things. It makes the killing of an animal murder in exactly the same sense as the killing of a man is murder. is . . . this sense of the kinship of all forms of life is all that needed to make Evolution not only a conceivable theory, but an inspiring one. St Anthony was ripe for the Evolution theory when he preached to the fishes, and St Francis when he called the birds his little brothers. Our vanity, and our snobbish conception of Godhead as being, like earthly king- ship, a supreme class distinction instead of the rock on which Equality is built, has led us to insist on God offering us special terms by placing us apart from and above all the rest of his creatures. Evolution took that conceit out of us; and now, though we may kill a flea without the smallest remorse, we at all events know that we are killing our cousin. No doubt it shocks the flea when the creature that an almighty Celestial Flea created expressly for the food of fleas, destroys the jumping lord of creation with his sharp and enormous thumbnail; but no flea will ever be so foolish as to preach that in slaying fleas Man is applying a method of Natural Selection which will finally evolve a flea so swift that no man can catch him, and so hardy of onstitution that Insect Powder will have no more effect on him than strychnine on an elephant." - G.B. Shaw
"Atrocities are not less atrocities when they occur in laboratories and are called medical research." - G.B. Shaw
"Public support of vivisection is founded almost wholly on the assurances of the vivisectors that great public benefits may be expected from the practice. Not for a moment do I suggest that such a defence would be valid even if proved. But when the witnesses begin by alleging that in the cause of science all the customary ethical obligations (which include the obligation to tell the truth) are suspended, what weight can any reasonable person give to their testimony? I would rather swear fifty lies than take an animal which had licked my hand in good fellowship and torture it. If I did torture the dog, I should certainly not have the face to turn round and ask how any person dare suspect an honourable man like myself of telling lies. Most sensible and humane people would, I hope, flatly reply that honourable men do not behave dishonourably even to dogs." - G.B. Shaw
"The eating of rneat extinguishes the seed of great compassion." - Mahaparinirvana
"To serve the creatures is to serve the Buddha." - Indian Proverb
"Several conditions are linked to a diet high in aniaml products, and many are trying to avoid them by going meatless. There are also conditions for which doctors will advise staying away from meat, inculding irritable bowel syndrome, poor digestive capacity, other colon-related conditions, stroke, heart disease, high cholesterol, gout, arthritis, osteoporosis, obesity, acne, kidney disease, and liver disease." - Frankie Avalon Wolfe, M.H.H., Ph. D., R.N.C.P.
"There is no reason to drink cow's milk at any time in your life. It was designed for calves, not humans, and we should all stop drinking it today." -Dr. Frank A. Oski, former director of pediatrics, Johns Hopkins University
"Changing your diet isn't nearly as inconvenient as enduring a heart bypass operation, suffering from a stroke or facing chemotherapy and radiation treatments for cancer!" - PETA
"The flesh of fish can accumulate toxins up to 9 million times as concentrated as those in the waters that they live in, and the flesh of some sea animals, like shrimp and scallops, contains more cholesterol than beef. Fish on farms are also fed antibiotics that are passed along to humans, impairing the immune system. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 325,000 people get sick and some die every year in the U.S. from eating contaminated fish and other sea animals." - Dr. Neal Barnard
"Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet." - Albert Einstein
"I was told that my diet was so poor that I could not repair the bones that were broken and operated on. So I have just had an Xradiograph taken; and lo! perfectly mended solid bone so beautifully white that I have left instructions that, if I die, a glove stretcher is to be made of me and sent to you as a souvenir." - George Bernard Shaw
"If man wants freedom why keep birds and animals in cages? Truly man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds them. We live by the death of others. We are burial places! I have since an early age abjured the use of meat." - Leonardo da Vinci
"Flesh eating is simply immoral, as it involves the performance of an act which is contrary to moral feeling: killing. By killing, man suppresses in himself, unnecessarily, the highest spiritual capacity, that of sympathy and pity towards living creatures like himself and by violating his own feelings becomes cruel." - Leo Tolstoy
"Flesh eating is unprovoked murder." - Benjamin Franklin
"I do feel that spiritual progress does demand at some stage that we should cease to kill our fellow creatures for the satisfaction of our bodily wants." - Gandhi
"Maim not the brute beasts...Whoever is kind to the lesser creatures is kind to himself...He who takes pity (even) on a sparrow and spares its life. Allah will be merciful on him on the day of judgement." - Prophet Mohammed
"There is just no reason why animals should be slaughtered to serve as human diet when there are so many substitutes. Man can live without meat." - The Dalai Lama
"To avoid causing terror to living beings, let the disciple refrain from eating meat...the food of the wise is that which is consumed by the sadhus (holy men), it does not consist of meat... There may be some foolish people in the future who will say I permitted meat-eating and that I partook of meat myself, but meat-eating I have not permitted to anyone, I do not permit, I will not permit meat-eating in any form in future, in any manner and in any place. It is unconditionally prohibited for all." - Buddha
"...He who gives permission, he who kills the animal, he who sells the slaughtered animal, he who cooks the animal, he who administers the distribution of the flesh, and at last he who eats the flesh are all murderers and all of them are punishable under the law of karma." - The Laws of Manu (5:55)
"I am full of the burnt offering of rams and the fat of fed beasts. I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of goats...Bring no more vain offerings... When you spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes though you make many prayers, and I will not hear you. For your hands are full of blood..." - (Isaiah 1:11-15)
"He that kill an ox is like him who kills a man; he that sacrifices a lamb, like him who breaks a dog's neck; he who presents a cereal offering, like him who offers swine's blood...yea they have chosen their own ways, and their soul delights in their abominations." - (Isaiah 66:3)
"...Ethics has not only to do with mankind but with the animal creation as well. This is witnessed in the purpose of St. Francis of Assisi. Thus we shall arrive that ethics is reverence for all life. This is the ethic of love widened universally. It is the ethic of Jesus now recognized as a necessity of thought...Only a universal ethic which embraces every living creature can put us in touch with the universe and the will which is there manifest..." - Albert Schweitzer
"The steam of meat darkens the light of the spirit...One hardly can have virtue when one enjoys meat meals and feasts..." - St. Basil (AD 320 - 79)
"Destroy not the work of God for the sake of food...It is good neither to drink wine or eat flesh..." - (Roman 14:20,21)
"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." - Plutarch
"For my part I rather wonder both by what accident and in what state of mind the first man touched his mouth to gore and brought his lips to the flesh of a dead creature, 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 sores of others and sucked juices and serums from mortal wounds? It is certainly not lions or 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. 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 in his essay On Eating Flesh
"To be non-violent to human beings and to be a killer or enemy of poor animals is Satan's philosophy. In this age there is always enmity against animals, and therefore the poor creatures are always anxious. The reaction of the poor animals is being forced on human society, and therefore there is always the strain of cold or hot war between men, individually, collectively or nationally... "The earth affords a lavish supply of riches, of innocent foods, and offers you banquets that involve no bloodshed or slaughter; only beasts satisfy their hunger with flesh, and not even all of those, because horses, cattle, and sheep live on grass. As long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seeds of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love." - Pythagoras
"Killing is a denial of love. To kill or to eat what another has killed is to rejoice in cruelty. And cruelty hardens our hearts and blinds our vision, and we are unable to see that they whom we kill are our fellow brothers and sisters in the One Family of Creation." - G.L. Rudd, author of Why Kill For Food?
"If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men." - St. Francis of Assisi
"How can man be possessed of kindness who, to increase his own flesh, eats the flesh of other creatures. As those possess no property who do not take care of it, so those possess no kindness who feed on flesh." "Like the (murderous) mind of him who carries a weapon (in his hand), the mind of him who feasts with pleasure on the body of another (creature), has no regard for goodness." "Man did not weave the web of life: he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. To harm the earth is to heap contempt on its creator." - Red Indian Chief (1854)
"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." - German Composer Richard Wagner (1813)
"Cruelty to animals is as if man did not love God." - Cardinal John H. Newman
"We pray on Sundays that we may have light/To guide our footsteps on the path we tread;/We are sick of war, we don't want to fight,/And yet we gorge ourselves upon the dead." - George Bernard Shaw
"Vegetarian food leaves a deep impression on our nature. If the whole world adopts vegetarianism, it can change the destiny of humankind." - Albert Einstein
"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." - Henry David Thoreau
"You need to hunt something that can shoot back at you to really classify yourself as a hunter. You need to understand the feeling of what it's like to go into the field and know your opposition can take you out. Not just go out there and shoot Bambi." - Gov. Jesse Ventura
"I have developed a deep respect for animals. I consider them fellow living creatures with certain rights that should not be allowed to be violated any more than those of humans." - Jimmy Stewart
"A jerk on one end of the line waiting for a jerk on the other end of the line." - Michael Palin on fishing
"People get offended by animal rights campaigns. It's ludicrous. It's not as bad as mass animal death in a factory." - Richard Gere
"Animals and humans suffer and die alike. Violence causes the same pain, the same spilling of blood, the same stench of death, the same arrogant, cruel, and brutal taking of life." - Dick Gregory
"It was just a guilt thing. I'm the kind of person, as soon as I get something in my head, I feel guilty about it, so I did it to get peace of mind and then once I was vegetarian, I started to doubt whether I should be consuming any animal products at all, so I did the whole thing." - Daniel Johns
"If you could feel or see the suffering you wouldn't think twice. Give back life. Don't eat meat." - Kim Basinger
"I find it particularly telling that the milk industry only claims that drinking cow's milk is necessary to prevent osteoporosis in its advertising, which is subject to more lax FTC regulations, and not on any cow's milk cartons, which are subject to stricter FDA regulations. If industry believes the claim that milk protects bones was truthful and not in violation of FDA regulations, why haven't they also made the claim on their milk cartons?" - (A Letter to the FTC by Alicia Silverstone)
"Fur is really ridiculous. It's outrageous. We're not living in igloos. We don't need to trade pelts anymore. There is this diabolical idea that fur is fashionable. It's not. It's death. There's no excuse for it." - Margaret Cho
"I've always felt that animals are the purest spirits in the world. They don't fake or hide their feelings, and they are the most loyal creatures on Earth. And somehow we humans think we're smarter? What a joke." - Pink
"But for the use of physical punishment by, and fear of their oppressors, animals would never be a part of a circus." - Richard Pryor
"If any kid realized what was involved in factory farming, they would never touch meat again. I was so moved by the intelligence, sense of fun, and personality of the animals I worked with on Babe that by the end of the film I was a vegetarian." - James Cromwell
"The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for whites or women for men." - Alice Walker
"My animals are my life! They remind me always of unconditional love and to just be in the moment." - Christina Applegate
"I have from an early age abjured from the use of meat, and 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 am in favour of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being." - Abraham Lincoln
"Humans are the only hunters who kill when not hungry." - Steven Spielberg
"I am not interested to know whether vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn't. The pain which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity toward it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further." - Mark Twain
"We consume the carcasses of creatures of like appetites, passions and organs with our own, and fill the slaughterhouses daily with screams of pain and fear" - Robert Louis Stevenson
When I was old enough to realize all meat was killed, I saw it as an irrational way of using our power, to take a weaker thing and mutilate it. It was like the way bullies would take control of younger kids in the schoolyard." - River Phoenix
