ethical vegetarianism Quotes

I'm a vegetarian. I believe that we're all equal. I ain't got no right to kill. Say a fly comes in my house, I tolerate that little a**hole.

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?

But for the sake of some little mouthful of flesh we deprive a soul of the sun and light, and of that proportion of life and time it had been born into the world to enjoy.

If we are prepared to take the life of another being merely in order to satisfy our taste for a particular type of food, then that being is no more than a means to our end.

Gert: Wake me when the fight scene's over. Kitty Pryde: Oy, tell me about it. Hey, I'm Kitty. You the token pacifist of your group? Gert: Not exactly. Pacifists are like vegans, I'm more of a vegetarian. I enjoy fish and occasional maulings.

I think there will come a time when civilized people will look back in horror on our generation and the ones that have preceded it; the idea that we should eat other living things running around on four legs, that we should raise them just for the purpose of killing them! The people of the future will say 'meat-eaters' in disgust and regard us in the same way that we regard cannibals and cannibalism.

There slowly grew up in me an unshakable conviction that we have no right to inflict suffering and death on another living creature, unless there is some unavoidable necessity for it.

I, for my part, wonder of what sort of feeling, mind or reason that man was possessed who was first to pollute his mouth with gore, and to allow his lips to touch the flesh of a murdered being: who spread his table with the mangled forms of dead bodies, and claimed as daily food and dainty dishes what but now were beings endowed with movement, perception and with voice. …but for the sake of some little mouthful of flesh, we deprive a soul of the sun and light, and of that portion of life and time it had been born in to the world to enjoy.

My ahimsa is my own. I am not able to accept in its entirety the doctrine of non-killing of animals.

As often as Herman had witnessed the slaughter of animals and fish, he always had the same thought: in their behavior toward creatures, all men were Nazis.

This brings me back to the image of Kafka standing before a fish in the Berlin aquarium, a fish on which his gaze fell in a newly found peace after he decided not to eat animals. Kafka recognized that fish as a member of his invisible family- not as his equal, of course, but as another being that was his concern.

I venture to maintain that there are multitudes to whom the necessity of discharging the duties of a butcher would be so inexpressibly painful and revolting, that if they could obtain a flesh diet on no other condition, they would relinquish it forever.

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.

Vegetarianism as a moral position is no more coherent than saying that you think it morally wrong to eat meat from a spotted cow but not morally wrong to eat meat from a non-spotted cow.

I think once you start eating people you should stop claiming to be a vegetarian, even if you only eat bad people.