Vegetarianism

"The philosophy of nonviolence, which I learned from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., during my involvement in the civil rights movement was first responsible for my change in diet. ... Under the leadership of Dr. King I became totally committed to nonviolence, and I was convinced that nonviolence meant opposition to killing in any form. I felt the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” applied to human beings not only in their dealings with each other—war, lynching, assassination, murder and the like—but in their practice of killing animals for food or sport. 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."

"For fear of causing terror to living beings, Mahāmati, let the Bodhisattva who is disciplining himself to attain compassion, refrain from eating flesh."

"The food of the wise, Mahāmati, is what is eaten by the Rishis; it does not consist of meat and blood."

"Again, Mahāmati, there may be some unwitted people in the future time, who, beginning to lead the homeless life according to my teaching, are acknowledged as sons of the Śākya, and carry the Kāshāya robe about them as a badge, but who are in thought evilly affected by erroneous reasonings. They may talk about various discriminations which they make in their moral discipline, being addicted to the view of a personal soul. Being under the influence of the thirst for [meat-] taste, they will string together in various ways some sophistic arguments to defend meat-eating. They think they are giving me an unprecedented calumny when they discriminate and talk about facts that are capable of various interpretations. Imagining that this fact allows this interpretation, [they conclude that] the Blessed One permits meat as proper food, and that it is mentioned among permitted foods and that probably the Tathagata himself partook of it. But, Mahāmati, nowhere in the sutras is meat permitted as something enjoyable, nor it is referred to as proper among the foods prescribed [for the Buddha's followers]."

"... all [meat-eating] in any form, in any manner, and in any place, is unconditionally and once for all, prohibited for all. Thus, Mahāmati, meat-eating I have not permitted to anyone, I do not permit, I will not permit. Meat-eating, I tell you, Mahāmati, is not proper for homeless monks."

"There is no meat to be regarded as pure in three ways: not premeditated, not asked for, and not impelled; therefore, refrain from eating meat."

"That it is easily possible to sustain life on the products of the vegetable kingdom needs no demonstration for physiologists, even of the majority of the human race were not constantly engaged in demonstrating it; and my researches show, not only that it is possible, but that it is infinitely preferable in every way, and produces superior powers, both of mind and body."

"It is strange to hear people talk on humanitarianism, who are members of societies for prevention of cruelty to children and animals, and who claim to be God-loving men and women, but who, nevertheless, encourage by their patronage the killing of animals merely to gratify the cravings of appetite."

"Even if man were created a carnivorous animal, is there no way for him to outgrow it as he becomes more intelligent?"

"Some people seem to think that if the animals were not eaten they would multiply so rapidly as to overrun the earth. Is it not true that the more beef there is consumed the more there is raised? These people do not understand that there are men in the business who have made an effort to increase their stock by forced means."

"Based on the fossil record one big spurt in hominid cranial capacity seems to have occurred with the appearance of Homo erectus approximately 1.75 million years ago, long before red meat could have been a regular part of hominid diets."

"With respect to animal diet, let it be considered, that taking away the lives of animals, in order to convert them into food, does great violence to the principles of benevolence and compassion. This appears from the frequent hard-heartedness and cruelty found amongst those persons whose occupations engage them in destroying animal life, as well as from the uneasiness which others feel in beholding the butchery of animals."

"Among other dreadful and disgusting images which Custom has rendered familiar, are those which arise from eating animal food. He who has ever turned with abhorrence from the skeleton of a beast which has been picked whole by birds or vermin, must confess that habit alone could have enabled him to endure the sight of the mangled bones and flesh of a dead carcase which every day cover his table. And he who reflects on the number of lives that have been sacrificed to sustain his own, should enquire by what the account has been balanced, and whether his life is become proportionately of more value by the exercise of virtue and by the superior happiness which he has communicated to [more] reasonable beings."

"I was always bothered by the idea of hitting a beautiful, living, innocent animal over the head, cutting him up into pieces, then shoving the pieces into my mouth. I finally made my decision to stop eating animals when I came upon a ritual slaughter scene during a visit to Israel. My experiences in the during the Nazi Holocaust had a profound impact on my subsequent life choices. I felt some guilt that I lived when so many others didn't, and a sense of duty to redeem my survival by assuming their share of responsibility for making this planet a better place to live for all its inhabitants."

"Human beings imagine they can do as they please with all the lower kingdoms--savaging the forests, polluting the seas and rivers, bloating themselves on the cadavers of animals--and that these actions will have no consequence... But everything in the earth realm comes with a price-tag, and every debt has its day of reckoning."

"I was born a vegetarian, I think. Since infancy I never liked meat, never ate it, never ate turkey, chicken, fish or eggs. ... I'm so healthy it's embarrassing. If I felt any better I'd have to see a doctor. ... I truly believe that fruit is the body's cleanser, vegetables are the body's healer, and meat is the body's premature aging agent and the cause of all diseases except virus disease."

"I had negative eating a bacon sandwich and listening to a solo Ferry album, which turned me vegetarian."

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

"Christians eat meat, drink alcohol, smoke tobacco; and Christianity exalts personality... teaches that God feels anger and approves the persecution of heretics. It's the same with Jews and the Moslems. Kosher and an indignant Jehovah. Mutton and beef and personal survival among the houris, avenging Allah and holy wars. Now look at the Buddhists. Vegetables and water... They don't exalt personality; they try to transcend it... What worlds away from Jehovah... ! The fact is, of course, that we think as we eat. ... You poison yourself with too much animal protein. ... What's the greatest enemy of Christianity today? Frozen meat... Even the poor can afford to poison themselves..."

"Being vegetarian was to inform everything, the course of my destiny. I was baffled that the entire hippie nation hadn't become vegetarian en masse. It made no sense as eating meat went against the whole dialogue. Were the hippies just as hypocritical as the rest of them?"

"The unbeliever who prohibits the slaughtering of an animal [for no reason but] to achieve the interest of the animal is incorrect because in so doing he gives preference to a lower, khasis, animal over a higher, nafis, animal."

"According to Islamic Law there are no grounds upon which one can argue that animals should not be killed for food. The Islamic legal opinion on this issue is based on clear Qur'anic verses. Muslims are not only prohibited from eating certain food, but also may not choose to prohibit themselves food that is allowed by Islam. Accordingly vegetarianism is not permitted unless on grounds such as unavailability or medical necessity. Vegetarianism is not allowed under the pretext of giving priority to the interest of animals because such decisions are God's prerogative."

"Like my friend, the doctor, I have lived temperately, eating little animal food, and that not as an aliment, so much as a condiment for the vegetables, which constitute my principal diet."

"Diogenes maintains that tyrants do not bring about revolutions in cities, and foment wars civil or foreign for the sake of a simple diet of vegetables and fruits, but for costly meats and the delicacies of the table. And, strange to say, Epicurus, the defender of pleasure, in all his books speaks of nothing but vegetables and fruits; and he says that we ought to live on cheap food because the preparation of sumptuous banquets of flesh involves great care and suffering, and greater pains attend the search for such delicacies than pleasures the consumption of them. ... Persons who feed on flesh want also gratifications not found in flesh. But they who adopt a simple diet do not look for flesh. ... The soul greatly exults when you are content with little: you have the world beneath your feet, and can exchange all its power, its feasts, and its lusts, the objects for which men rake money together, for common food, and make up for them all with a sack-cloth shirt."

"Dicæarchus in his book of Antiquities, describing Greece, relates that under Saturn, that is in the Golden Age, when the ground brought forth all things abundantly, no one ate flesh, but every one lived on field produce and fruits which the earth bore of itself. ... Xenocrates the philosopher writes that at Athens out of all the laws of Triptolemus only three precepts remain in the temple of Ceres: respect to parents, reverence for the gods, and abstinence from flesh. Orpheus in his song utterly denounces the eating of flesh. I might speak of the frugality of Pythagoras, Socrates, and Antisthenes to our confusion: but it would be tedious, and would require a work to itself."

"Twenty years ago I thought: "What's the difference between eating a bloody steak and killing my dog, slitting him open and roasting him?" I've always loved animals but it was around the late 80s that I realised I had to go vegetarian. A lot of things converged in my life then – musically, emotionally – but mainly it was my love of animals and spending so much time touring that made me decide I had to change my diet."

"Some yoga teachers say that a vegetarian diet is not necessary. : [laughing] Oh ... a new method! Many Indians and Westerners eat meat. : They are not practicing yoga. Meat eating makes you stiff. What is the most important yogic practice in this time? : Vegetarian diet is the most important practice for yoga."

"What I've found is that, because most people are deeply disturbed by and feel guilty about eating meat, and yet at the same time fear not eating it, they defend themselves from having to acknowledge such conflicting feelings. These psychological defenses include denial (“Animals don't really suffer when they're raised and killed for meat.”); justification (“Animals are meant to be eaten by humans.”); dichotomization (“I'd never eat a dog, but I love bacon.”); avoidance (“Don't tell me that; you'll ruin my meal.”); and, most importantly, dissociation (“If I think about the animal when I'm eating meat I feel disgusted.”). ... When people break through their dissociation, the feelings that typically emerge are empathy—and therefore disgust. That's why people tend to be disgusted by the idea of eating “unusual” animals, such as dogs and gorillas; they haven't learned to dissociate from these kinds of meat. It's also why vegetarians usually find all meats disgusting."

"The human flesh and the flesh of beasts is similar and their crimson blood is also the same."

"It is interesting to note that scientific men all over the world are awakening to the fact that the flesh of animals as food is not a pure nutriment, but is mixed with poisonous substances, excrementitious in character, which are the natural results of animal life."

"The vegetable stores up energy. It is from the vegetable world—the coal and the wood—that the energy is derived which runs our steam engines, pulls our trains, drives our steamships, and does the work of civilization. It is from the vegetable world that all animals, directly or indirectly, derive the energy which is manifested by animal life through muscular and mental work. The vegetable builds up, the animal tears down. The vegetable stores up energy; the animal expands energy. Various waste and poisonous products result from the manifestation of energy, whether by the locomotive or the animal. The working tissues of the animal are enabled to continue their activity only by the fact that they are continually washed clean by the blood, a never-ceasing stream flowing through and about them, carrying away the poisonous products resulting from their work as rapidly as they are formed. The venous blood owes its character to these poisons, which are removed by the kidneys, lungs, skin and bowels. The flesh of a dead animal contains a great quantity of these poisons, the elimination of which ceases at the instant of death, although their formation continues for some time after death. An eminent French surgeon recently remarked that ‘beef tea is a veritable solution of poisons.’"

"A dead cow or sheep lying in a pasture is recognised as carrion. The same sort of a carcass dressed and hung up in a butcher's stall passes as food! Careful microscopic examination may show little or no difference between the fence corner carcass and the butcher shop carcass. Both are swarming with colon germs and redolent with putrefaction."

"How many times, for instance, have we not heard people speak with all the authority of conviction about the “canine teeth” and “simple stomach” of man, as certain evidence of his natural adaptation for a flesh diet! At least we have demonstrated one fact; that if such arguments are valid, they apply with even greater force to the anthropoid apes—whose “canine” teeth are much longer and more powerful than those of man ... And yet, with the solitary exception of man, there is not one of these last which does not in a natural condition absolutely refuse to feed on flesh! M. Pouchet observes that all the details of the digestive apparatus in man, as well as his dentition, constitute “so many proofs of his frugivorous origin”— an opinion shared by Professor Owen, who remarks that the anthropoids and all the quadrumana derive their alimentation from fruits, grains, and other succulent and nutritive vegetable substances, and that the strict analogy which exists between the structure of these animals and that of man clearly demonstrates his frugivorous nature. This is also the view taken by Cuvier, Linnæus, Professor Lawrence, Charles Bell, Gassendi, Flourens, and a great number of other eminent writers."

"Not long ago, vegetarians were viewed by many people as weird, wary crusaders for carrot juice who ran around in tennis shoes rather than wear the leather off some animal's back. As a result, many vegetarians kept their eating habits to themselves. But nowadays, they are much more open and vocal ... more and more people—especially the young—are giving up “flesh foods” in favor of a vegetarian way of life."

"The free movement of the moral impulse to establish justice for animals generally and the claim of their rights from mankind are hidden in a natural psychic sensibility in the deeper layers of the . In the ancient value system of humanity ... the moral sense had risen to a point of demanding justice for animals. ... Just as the democratic aspiration will reach outward through the general intellectual and moral perfection ... so will the hidden yearning to act justly towards animals emerge at the proper time. What prepares the ground for this state is the commandments, those intended specifically for this area of concern. There is indeed a hidden reprimand between the lines of the Torah in the sanction to eat meat."

"With the possible exception of sex, there is no more basic human activity than eating, rendering it an appropriate candidate for Jewish rituals designed to maintain our focus on Godliness. The table is seen as an altar, and the concern with extends to removing knives, instruments of war, from the table during the Birkat HaMazon (blessing after the meal). Tsaar baalei khayim, the concern for the pain of all living things and the reverence for life, is another essential aspect of kashrut. Vegetarianism is clearly the Torah's ideal; the is a vegetarian society."

"Vegetarianism is an ideal way to actualize the Torah's vision of a world in which the divine spark in all creation is respected and revered."

"People try to excuse their brutality by saying that it is the custom; but a crime does not cease to be a crime because many commit it. Karma takes no account of custom; and the karma of cruelty is the most terrible of all. In India at least there can be no excuse for such customs, for the duty of harmlessness is well-known to all. The karma of cruelty is the most terrible of all. The fate of the cruel must fall also upon all who go out intentionally to kill God's creatures, and call it "sport"."

"Think of the awful slaughter produced by the superstition that animals should be sacrificed, and by the still more cruel superstition that man needs flesh for food."

"The cow doesn't grow fast enough for man / So through his greed he makes a faster plan / He has drugs to make the cow grow quicker / Through the stress the cow gets sicker / Twenty-one different drugs are pumped / Into the cow in one big lump / So just before it dies, it cries / In the slaughterhouse full of germs and flies / Off with the head, they pack it, drain it, and cart it / And there it is, in your local supermarket / Red and bloody, a corpse, neatly packed / And you wonder about heart attacks?"

"Perhaps a man hitched to the cart of a Martian or roasted on the spit by inhabitants of the Milky Way will recall the veal cutlet he used to slice on his dinner plate and apologize (belatedly) to the cow."

"The following pages were written in the Concentration Camp in Dachau, in the midst of all kinds of cruelties. They were furtively scrawled in a hospital barrack where I stayed during my illness, in a time when Death grasped day by day after us, when we lost twelve thousand within four and a half months ... “You asked me why I do not eat meat and you are wondering at the reasons of my behavior … I refuse to eat animals because I cannot nourish myself by the sufferings and by the death of other creatures. I refuse to do so, because I suffered so painfully myself that I can feel the pains of others by recalling my own sufferings … I am not preaching … I am writing this letter to you, to an already awakened individual who rationally controls his impulses, who feels responsible, internally and externally, for his acts, who knows that our supreme court is sitting in our conscience … I have not the intention to point out with my finger … I think it is much more my duty to stir up my own conscience … That is the point: I want to grow up into a better world where a higher law grants more happiness, in a new world where God's commandment reigns: You shall love each other.”"

"My staff does a great job of alerting people that I don't eat meat, but if they've forgotten or the people seating me have forgotten, I just put the meat aside, cover it with salad, and pretend that I have really enjoyed my main course."

"My mother was convinced, and on this head I have retained her firm belief, that to kill animals for the purpose of feeding on their flesh is one of the most deplorable and shameful infirmities of the human state; that it is one of those curses cast upon man either by his fall, or by the obduracy of his own perversity. She believed, and I am of the same belief, that these habits of hard-heartedness towards the gentlest animals, our companions, our auxiliaries, our brethren in toil and even in affection here below; that these immolations, these sanguinary appetites, this sight of palpitating flesh, are calculated to brutalize the instincts of the heart and make them ferocious. She believed, and I am of the same belief, that this nurture, which is seemingly much more succulent and much more energetic, contains in itself active causes of irritation and putridity, which sour the blood and shorten the days of mankind. In support of these ideas of abstinence, she quoted the innumerable gentle and pious tribes of India who deny themselves all that has had life; and the strong and healthy races of the shepherds and even of the laboring classes of our fields."

"My mother took me to town with her, and made me pass, as if by accident, through the yard of a slaughter-house. I saw some men, their arms naked and besmeared with blood, knocking a bull in the head; others cutting the throats of calves and sheep, and separating their still heaving limbs. Streams of smoking gore ran along the pavement. An intense feeling of pity, mingled with horror, seized upon me. I asked to be led away quickly. The thought of these scenes, the necessary preliminaries of one of those dishes of meat which I had so often seen on the table, made me take a disgust to animal food and inspired me with a horror for butchers."

"Until the age of twelve, then, I only lived on bread, milk-food, vegetables, and fruit. My health was not less robust on this account, nor my growth less rapid, and it was to this diet, perhaps, that I was indebted for that purity of feature, that exquisite sensibility of feeling, and that serene gentleness of humor and character which I had preserved up to that period."

"We all love animals, but why do we call some ‘pets’ and others ‘dinner’? If you knew how meat was made, you'd probably lose your lunch. I know. I'm from cattle country. That's why I became a vegetarian."

"Yet many Americans who have reluctantly given up their gas-guzzling cars would never think of questioning the resource costs of their grain-fed-meat diet. So let me try to give you some sense of the enormity of the resources flowing into livestock production in the United States. The consequences of a grain-fed-meat diet may be as severe as those of a nation of Cadillac drivers."

"We got hooked on grain-fed meat just as we got hooked on gas-guzzling automobiles. Big cars “made sense” only when oil was cheap; grain-fed meat “makes sense” only because the true costs of producing it are not counted."

"I read that a young woman, who does much philanthropic work in the neighborhood of these pest-houses declares that what most impresses her about the children is that they seem to have no games except games of killing, that they have no conception of any relation to animals except the relation of the slaughter to the victim. This is the education which so-called Christians are giving to the children of the slaughterhouse —a daily education in murder; and then they express surprise at the number and brutality of the murders in that district. Yet your Christian public goes on serenely saying its prayers and singing its psalms and listening to its sermons, as if no such outrages were being perpetrated against God’s children in that sink-hole of pestilence and crime. Surely the habit of eating dead flesh has produced a moral apathy among us."