Food Morality Quotes

In order to satisfy one human stomach, so many lives are taken away. We must promote vegetarianism. It is extremely important.

Eating bad food does not make you a bad person.

When you look at food as an ethical issue in the Christian tradition, you don't find very much about it. You don't find, as you do in the Jewish or Islamic or Hindu traditions, a lot of restrictions saying you can eat this but you can't eat that.

... man was not born a carnivorous animal, but born to live on the fruits and herbs that the earth grows. I know we must all err. I would give up milk if I could, but I cannot. I have made that experiment times without number. I could not, after a serious illness, regain my strength, unless I went back to milk. That has been the tragedy of my life. But the basis of my vegetarianism is not physical, but moral. If anybody said that I should die if I did not take beef tea or mutton, even on medical advice, I would prefer death. That is the basis of my vegetarianism.

Vegetarians are people who cannot hear tomatos screaming.

Seriously, I think everybody needs to be more disciplined; nobody needs any meat. But from a perspective of how many animals suffer, it's probably better to kill and eat one whale than it is to eat fish, chickens, cows, lambs and eggs.

There really is no ethical difference between eating a cat or a chicken, a dog or a pig.

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.

The kind of funny irony is that a lot of people talk about ethical meat eating as if it's a way to care about things, but also not to alienate yourself from the rest of the world. But it's so much more alienating than vegetarianism.

I don't eat friggin' lobster or anything like that. Because they're alive when you kill it.

If modern civilization man had to kill the animals he eats, the number of vegetarians would rise astronomically.

I think all chefs who pursue great flavor have good ethics.

There is no difference between sitting around the pit watching dogs fight and sitting around a summer barbecue roasting the corpses of tortured animals or enjoying the dairy or eggs from tortured animals.

Understand, when you eat meat, that something did die. You have an obligation to value it - not just the sirloin but also all those wonderful tough little bits.

Almost always when I told someone I was writing a book about "eating animals", they assumed, even without knowing anything about my views, that it was a case for vegetarianism. It's a telling assumption, one that implies not only that a thorough inquiry into animal agriculture would lead one away from eating meat, but that most people already know that to be the case.

What's the meaning of all the pious clamor, condemning cocks and hens? Those who have no teeth are the greatest meat-haters.

We don't usually think of what we eat as a matter of ethics. Stealing, lying, hurting people - these acts are obviously relevant to our moral character. In ancient Greece and Rome, ethical choices about food were considered at least as significant as ethical choices about sex.

Food is art, I believe. If you are going to be serving a living thing, you have to honor that living thing with some kind of care and thought and preparation to rationalize the taking of that life in some way.

There shouldn't be an announcement that divides our food between what tastes good and what is good for us.

Maybe one day the world will change, that we'll be in a luxurious position of being able to debate whether or not it's inherently wrong to eat animals, but the question doesn't matter right now.

The main point for me is moral; animals are sentient beings. I know for some this is a hard argument to accept, but we're not built to eat a lot of meat.

I was in a sushi bar and it dawned on me - how could I discriminate between a cow and a fish?

Some people, if you eat a carrot, you're killing it.

To eat steak rare... represents both a nature and a morality.

There's no such thing as 'bad' food or 'good' food.