"The only justification for killing animals is the fact that man can keep a knife or an ax in his hands and is shrewd enough and selfish enough to do slaughter for what he thinks is his own good. The Old Testament has many passages where the passion for meat is considered to be evil. According to the Bible, it was only a compromise with so-called human nature that God has allowed people to eat meat."

"Vegetarianism is my religion. I became a consistent vegetarian some twenty-three years ago. Before that, I would try over and over again. But it was sporadic. Finally, in the mid-1960s, I made up my mind. And I've been a vegetarian ever since. ... This is my protest against the conduct of the world. To be a vegetarian is to disagree—to disagree with the course of things today. Nuclear power, starvation, cruelty—we must make a statement against these things. Vegetarianism is my statement. And I think it's a strong one."

"Becoming a vegetarian is not merely a symbolic gesture. Nor is it an attempt to isolate oneself from the ugly realities of the world, to keep oneself pure and so without responsibility for the cruelty and carnage all around. Becoming a vegetarian is a highly practical and effective step one can take toward ending both the killing of nonhuman animals and the infliction of suffering upon them."

"Those who claim to care about the wellbeing of human beings and the preservation of our environment should become vegetarians for that reason alone. They would thereby increase the amount of grain available to feed people elsewhere, reduce pollution, save water and energy, and cease contributing to the clearing of forests; moreover, since a vegetarian diet is cheaper than one based on meat dishes, they would have more money available to devote to famine relief, population control, or whatever social or political cause they thought most urgent. ... when nonvegetarians say that “human problems come first” I cannot help wondering what exactly it is that they are doing for human beings that compels them to continue to support the wasteful, ruthless exploitation of farm animals."

"Quite rightly, we do not normally take the behaviour of animals as a model for how we may treat them. We would not, for example, justify tearing a cat to pieces because we had observed the cat tearing a mouse to pieces. Carnivorous fishes don't have a choice about whether to kill other fish or not. They kill as a matter of instinct. Meanwhile, humans can choose to abstain from killing or eating fish and other animals. Alternatively, the argument could be made that is part of natural order that there are predators and prey, and so it cannot be wrong for us to play our part in this order. But this “argument from nature” can justify all kinds of inequities, including the rule of men over women and leaving the weak and the sick to fall by the wayside."

"It may indeed be doubted whether butchers' meat is anywhere a necessary of life. Grain and other vegetables, with the help of milk, cheese, and butter, or oil where butter is not to be had, it is known from experience, can, without any butchers' meat, afford the most plentiful, the most wholesome, the most nourishing, and the most invigorating diet."

"You do not believe that souls are assigned, first to one body and then to another, and that our so-called death is merely a change of abode? You do not believe that in cattle, or in wild beasts, or in creatures of the deep, the soul of him who was once a man may linger? You do not believe that nothing on this earth is annihilated, but only changes its haunts? And that animals also have cycles of progress and, so to speak, an orbit for their souls, no less than the heavenly bodies, which revolve in fixed circuits? Great men have put faith in this idea; therefore, while holding to your own view, keep the whole question in abeyance in your mind. If the theory is true, it is a mark of purity to refrain from eating flesh; if it be false, it is economy. And what harm does it do to you to give such credence? I am merely depriving you of food which sustains lions and vultures."

"Further, it should be clear that meat in itself as protein is not much superior to eggs or nuts and could not alter the evolution of the brain – if this were so, this miracle food would have continued to enlarge humans' brain size in succeeding years when much greater amounts of meat were consumed."

"We used to recommend meat, poultry, and fish for children because they are rich in protein and iron. However, we now know that there are harmful effects of a meaty diet, particularly changes in the arteries and weight problems, and that these changes begin in childhood. When children develop a taste for meats, it is hard to break this habit later on. It turns out that children can get plenty of protein and iron from vegetables, beans, and other plant foods that avoid the fat and cholesterol that are in animal products."

"There is no logical basis to support the theory that plants feel pain. The dubious possibility that they might, however, is no justification for killing obviously sentient beings. Any rational person understands the striking difference between slitting the throat of a sentient animal and plucking a fruit or vegetable. ... Vegans and vegetarians are commonly baited by nonvegetarians with “what if” scenarios that typically have no relevance to or bearing on most people's real-life situations."

"Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases. It puts enormous pressure on the world's resources. A vegetarian diet is better. ... I think it's important that people think about what they are doing and that includes what they are eating."

"Nothing more strongly arouses our disgust than cannibalism, nothing so surely unmortars a society; nothing, we might plausibly argue, will so harden and degrade the minds of those that practice it. And yet we ourselves make much the same appearance in the eyes of the Buddhist and the vegetarian. We consume the carcasses of creatures of like appetites, passions, and organs with ourselves; we feed on babes, though not our own; and the slaughter-house resounds daily with screams of pain and fear. We distinguish, indeed; but the unwillingness of many nations to eat the dog, an animal with whom we live on terms of the next intimacy, shows how precariously the distinction is grounded."

"I was born a vegetarian. ... I feel there is no need to cause another living thing pain or harm. There are so many other things we can eat. I have never eaten meat in my life, and I'm 5 foot 10 and not exactly wasting away. A wise man once said, ‘Animals are my friends, and I’m not in the habit of eating my friends.’ That is exactly how I feel."

"The Tiger, the Lion, in short, all flesh-eating animals seized their prey, running, swimming, or flying, and tore it in pieces with their teeth or talons, devouring it there and then upon the spot. Man cannot catch other animals this way, or tear them in pieces, and devour them as they are... Besides he has higher and not merely animal impulses."

"Chemistry is not antagonistic to Vegetarianism, any more than biology is. Flesh food is certainly not necessary to supply the nitrogenous products required for the repair of tissues; therefore a well-selected diet from the vegetable kingdom is perfectly right, from the chemical point of view, for the nutrition of men."

"Widespread vegetarianism in Hinduism is a practical expression of this jīva-dayā, of the sense of larger unity."

"I saw, all of a sudden, an odd-looking bird making its way through the water to the opposite bank, followed by a great commotion. I found it was a domestic fowl which had managed to escape impending doom in the galley by jumping overboard and was now trying frantically to win across. It had almost gained the bank when the clutches of its relentless pursuers closed on it, and it was brought back in triumph, gripped by the neck. I told the cook I would not have any meat for dinner. I really must give up animal food. We manage to swallow flesh only because we do not think of the cruel and sinful thing we do. There are many crimes which are the creation of man himself, the wrongfulness of which is put down to their divergence from habit, custom, or tradition. But cruelty is not of these. It is a fundamental sin, and admits of no argument or nice distinctions. If only we do not allow our heart to grow callous, its protest against cruelty is always clearly heard; and yet we go on perpetrating cruelties easily, merrily, all of us ⎯ in fact, any one who does not join in is dubbed a crank. ... if, after our pity is aroused, we persist in throttling our feelings simply in order to join others in their preying upon life, we insult all that is good in us. I have decided to try a vegetarian diet."

"Non-vegetarianism is a basic feature of Semitic religions. While Christianity did not retain the Judaic system of ritualistic slaughter of animals, Islam not only retained it, but even made it compulsory. However, so far as vegetarianism is concerned, the concept is as alien to Christianity as it is to Judaism and Islam. Islam, in fact, specifically prohibits vegetarianism alongwith celibacy and physical austerity. And both Islam and Christianity require that a convert from another religion be compelled to eat the flesh of the particular animal prohibited by his earlier religion, in order to set the seal on his conversion. Hinduism, on the other hand (including its major sects like Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism, and barring only some minor sects and cults) considers vegetarianism to be a major virtue... The concept of vegetarianism has deeper connotations. It is based on a basic respect and reverence for all forms of life. Along with the zoomorphic aspects of Hinduism, and the concept of transmigration of souls into animals and plants, it represents a practical manifestation of the basic Hindu philosophy of Pantheism, which is anathema to Semitic religions. These religions believe in a man-centered creation, devoid of inherent divinity, with the plant and animal kingdoms, in fact the whole of nature, created by God for use and exploitation by man."

"I do not mean here absolute want of food, but want of healthful nutriment. How to provide good and plentiful food is, therefore, a most important question of the day. On the general principles the raising of cattle as a means of providing food is objectionable, because, in the sense interpreted above, it must undoubtedly tend to the addition of mass of a "smaller velocity.""

"It is certainly preferable to raise vegetables, and I think, therefore, that vegetarianism is a commendable departure from the established barbarous habit. That we can subsist on plant food and perform our work even to advantage is not a theory, but a well-demonstrated fact. Many races living almost exclusively on vegetables are of superior physique and strength. There is no doubt that some plant food, such as oatmeal, is more economical than meat, and superior to it in regard to both mechanical and mental performance. Such food, moreover, taxes our digestive organs decidedly less, and, in making us more contented and sociable, produces an amount of good difficult to estimate. In view of these facts every effort should be made to stop the wanton and cruel slaughter of animals, which must be destructive to our morals."

"I went vegetarian after watching Earthlings. I had no idea how intense and how horrible factory farms are. I have such a love for animals that I can't justify having their heads cut off for me. And the slavery of the dairy industry motivates me to go more vegan. I can't justify animal slavery for my enjoyment. ... I feel stronger than I've ever been, mentally, physically, and emotionally. My plant-based diet has opened up more doors to being an athlete. It's a whole other level that I'm elevating to. I stopped eating animals about a year ago, and it's a new life. I feel like a new person, a new athlete."

"It is a vulgar error to regard meat in any form as necessary to life. All that is necessary to the human body can be supplied by the vegetable kingdom. The vegetarian can extract from his food all the principles necessary for the growth and support of the body, as well as for the production of heat and force. It must be admitted as a fact beyond all question that some persons are stronger and more healthy who live on that food. I know how much of the prevailing meat diet is not merely a wasteful extravagance, but a source of serious evil to the consumer."

"One farmer says to me, "You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones with"; and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying his system 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."

"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, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized."

"How can he practice true compassion"

"He who feasts on a creature's flesh and he who wields a weapon."

"If you ask, "What is kindness and what is unkindness?""

"If the world did not purchase and consume meat,"

"All life will press palms together in prayerful adoration"

"I had wished to visit a slaughter-house, in order to see with my own eyes the reality of the question raised when vegetarianism is discussed. But at first I felt ashamed to do so, as one is always ashamed of going to look at suffering which one knows is about to take place, but which one cannot avert; and so I kept putting off my visit. But a little while ago I met on the road a butcher ... I asked him whether he did not feel sorry for the animals that he killed. He gave me the usual answer: 'Why should I feel sorry? It is necessary.' But when I told him that eating flesh is not necessary, but is only a luxury, he agreed; and then he admitted that he was sorry for the animals."

"And see, a kind, refined lady will devour the carcasses of these animals with full assurance that she is doing right, at the same time asserting two contradictory propositions: First, that she is, as her doctor assures her, so delicate that she cannot be sustained by vegetable food alone, and that for her feeble organism flesh is indispensable; and, secondly, that she is so sensitive that she is unable, not only herself to inflict suffering on animals, but even to bear the sight of suffering. Whereas the poor lady is weak precisely because she has been taught to live upon food unnatural to man; and she cannot avoid causing suffering to animals—for she eats them."

"We are not ostriches, and cannot believe that if we refuse to look at what we do not wish to see, it will not exist. This is especially the case when what we do not wish to see is what we wish to eat. If it were really indispensable, or, if not indispensable, at least in some way useful! But it is quite unnecessary ... And this is continually being confirmed by the fact that young, kind, undepraved people — especially women and girls — without knowing how it logically follows, feel that virtue is incompatible with beefsteaks, and, as soon as they wish to be good, give up eating flesh."

"Men think it right to eat animals, because they are led to believe that God sanctions it. This is untrue. No matter in what books it may be written that it is not sinful to slay animals and to eat them, it is more clearly written in the heart of man than in any books that animals are to be pitied and should not be slain any more than human beings. We all know this if we do not choke the voice of our conscience."

"After looking carefully into the matter, and after some years' experience in its non-use, I can state without hesitancy that, contrary to the prevailing opinion, the flesh of animals is not necessary as an article of food. ... We shall find numerous articles of food, as we study the matter, that, so far as body nourishing, building, and sustaining qualities are concerned, contain twice, and in some cases over twice, as much as any flesh food that can be mentioned."

"The only really consistent humanitarian is the one who is not a flesh-eater; and great, I am satisfied, will be the results, both to the human family and to the animal race, as children are wisely taught and judiciously directed along this line."

"I cannot kill. Unfortunately, there are so many who can and do kill. As I cannot kill I cannot authorize others to kill. Do you see? If you are buying from a butcher you are authorizing him to kill—kill helpless, dumb creatures, which neither I nor you could kill ourselves. So that I am for that reason a vegetarian, as most Russians are. For nine years I have been a vegetarian, and I shall be one—mind, I am a man with strong convictions—to the end of my life."

"Refrain at all times such Foods as cannot be procured without violence and oppression. For know, that all the inferior Creatures when hurt do cry and send forth their Complaints to their Maker or grand Fountain whence they proceeded. Be not insensible that every Creature doth bear the Image of the great Creator according to the Nature of each, and that he is the Vital Power in all things. Therefore let none take pleasure to offer violence to that Life, lest he awaken the fierce wrath, and bring danger to his own Soul."

"... far greater Advantages would come to pass amongst Christians, if they would cease from Contention, Oppression, and (what tends and disposes them thereunto,) the killing of Beasts, and eating their Flesh and Blood; and in a short time humane murthers, and devilish feuds and cruelties among each other, would abate, and perhaps scarce have a being amongst them."

"Our deep urge to evolve to a more spiritually mature level of understanding and living, and to create a social order that promotes more justice, peace, freedom, health, sanity, prosperity, sustainability, and happiness, absolutely requires us to stop viewing animals as food objects to be consumed and to shift to a plant-based way of eating."

"A vegetarian diet, by reason of its low content of saturated fatty acids, cholesterol, and animal proteins, and its high concentrations of folic acids, antioxidants, and phytoestrogens—shown to be effective in inhibiting the growth or in promoting the regression of serious coronary pathologies—constitutes a barrier against a number of chronic degenerative diseases, cancer among them. And that is not all. Fruits and vegetables—besides contaminating us much less than some other foods—are troves of precious substances that enable the neutralization of carcinogenic agents and that 'dilute' the concentration of diseased cells and reduce their proliferation. All of these advantages, as well as many others, emerged from studies on populations in the last century."

"(Of the mouth of man which is a tomb) there shall come forth loud noises out of the tombs of those who have died by an evil and violent death."

"Though nature has given sensibility to pain to such living organisms as have the power of movement, in order thereby to preserve the members which in this movement are liable to diminish and be destroyed, the living organisms which have no power of movement do not have to encounter opposing objects, and plants consequently do not need to have a sensibility to pain, and so it comes about that if you break them they do not feel anguish in their members as do the animals."

"The future is with the vegetarians."

"Abstain rigorously from eating the flesh of cows and all beneficent animals, lest you be made to face a strict reckoning in this world and the next; for by eating the flesh of cows and other domestic animals, you involve your hand in sin, and thereby think, speak, and do what is sinful; for though you may eat but a mouthful, you involve your hand in sin, and though a camel be slain by another person in another place, it is as if you who eat its flesh had slain it with your own hand."

"No set diet could be entirely correct for a group of people on differing rays, of different temperaments and equipment and at various ages. Individuals are every one of them unlike on some points; they require to find out what it is that they, as individuals, need, in what manner their bodily requirements can best be met, and what type of substances can enable them best to serve. Each person must find this out for himself. There is no group diet. No enforced elimination of meat is required or strict vegetarian diet compulsory. There are phases of life and sometimes entire incarnations wherein an aspirant subjects himself to a discipline of food, just as there may be other phases or an entire life wherein a strict celibacy is temporarily enforced. But there are other life cycles and incarnations wherein the disciple's interest and his service lie in other directions. There are later incarnations where there is no constant thought about the physical body, and a man works free of the diet complex and lives without concentration upon the form life, eating that food which is available and upon which he can best sustain his life efficiency. In preparation for certain initiations, a vegetable diet has in the past been deemed essential. But this may not always be the case..."

"I had been a vegetarian ever since coming across the Theosophical teaching. My children had never tasted meat or chicken or fish and I suffered from the normal superiority complex which is often an outstanding characteristic of a vegetarian.... I have definitely come to the conclusion that it is better to eat beefsteak and have a kind tongue than to be a strict vegetarian and, from a pedestal of superiority, look down upon this world. Again, I would point out that generalizations are inexact. I have known many vegetarians who were lovely and sweet and kind and good."

"To produce 1 lb. of feedlot beef requires 7 lbs. of feed grain, which takes 7,000 lbs. of water to grow. Pass up one hamburger, and you'll save as much water as you save by taking 40 showers with a low-flow nozzle. Yet in the U.S., 70% of all the wheat, corn and other grain produced goes to feeding herds of livestock. Around the world, as more water is diverted to raising pigs and chickens instead of producing crops for direct consumption, millions of wells are going dry. ... In the U.S., livestock now produce 130 times as much waste as people do. Just one hog farm in Utah, for example, produces more sewage than the city of Los Angeles. These megafarms are proliferating, and in populous areas their waste is tainting drinking water. In more pristine regions, from Indonesia to the Amazon, tropical rain forest is being burned down to make room for more and more cattle. ... We, at least, have the flexibility—the omnivorous stomach and creative brain—to adapt. We can do it by moving down the food chain: eating foods that use less water and land, and that pollute far less, than cows and pigs do. In the long run, we can lose our memory of eating animals, and we will discover the intrinsic satisfactions of a diverse plant-based diet, as millions of people already have."

"We must change our diet. The planet can’t support billions of meat-eaters."

"O teeth! You eat rice, you eat barley, you gram and you eat sesame. These cereals are specifically meant for you. Do not kill those who are capable of being fathers and mothers."

"Oh violent man! It is the most heinous sin To kill the innocent creatures, Kill not our cows Our horses and our men."