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.
I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men.
Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.
Animals are my friends... and I don't eat my friends.
Truly man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds them. We live by the death of others. We are burial places.
A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite.
Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.
A human can be healthy without killing animals for food.
If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian.
To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being.
We are the living graves of murdered beasts.
We don't need to eat anyone who would run, swim, or fly away if he could.
A vegetarian is a person who won't eat anything that can have children.
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.
I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being.
The first man . . . 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?
We manage to swallow flesh, only because we do not think of the cruel and sinful thing we do.
We manage to swallow flesh only because we do not think of the cruel and sinful thing that 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, anyone who does not join in is dubbed a crank.
I can't think of anything better in the world to be but a vegan.
It is only by softening and disguising dead flesh by culinary preparation that it is rendered susceptible of mastication or digestion, and that the sight of its bloody juices and raw horror does not excite intolerable loathing and disgust.
or simply: