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Vegan, Vegetarian & Fruitarian Quotes On Universal Or Dietary Nonviolence

 
(Thank you to the Akron Summit County Public Library in Ohio for first publicizing this compilation in the late 1990's and to Postpoems.org for first publicizng these quotes 2 decades ago. Indybay.org also published them.)
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There are approximately 60 square feet of rainforest per burger
 
Genesis l:29 Behold I have given you herbyielding seed. To you it shall be for meat.

Quran: There is no beast on earth nor bird which flieth..but the same is a people like unto you. All God's creatures are God's family.

Matthew 21: 12 And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the
money changers, and the seats of them that sold doves

Buddha: To become vegetarian is to step into the stream which leads to nirvana.

Bhagavad Gita: One is dearest to God who has no enemies among the living beings, who is nonviolent to all creatures. (Sanskrit word ahimsa means nonharm to all life)

Isaiah: He that slayeth an ox is as he that killeth a human. (for 40 or 50 quotes from the Bible go to the Spirit file no. 8)

Mahavira, founder of the Jain religion: May all that have life be delivered from suffering.

Siuh, Malaysian woman lab technician: If I follow Kwon Yin (Chinese Divine Mother Deity of Mercy) I guess I should become vegetarian.

Upton Sinclair in The Jungle (written after his investigation of Hormel in Austin Minnesota): The shriek was followed by another, louder and yet more agonizing..for once started upon that journey, the hog never came back. One by one the men hooked up the hogs and slit their throats. There was a line of hogs with squeals and lifeblood ebbing away.. until at last each vanished into a huge vat of boiling water (some still alive). The hogs were so innocent. They came so very trustingly. They were so very human in their protests. They had done nothing to deserve it.

Mark Braunstein: When one eats cow's tongue, who is tasting whom? (He is the author of "Radical Vegetarianism")

Oprah Winfrey, was sued by Amarillo cattle ranchers for saying: "I'm stopped. I'll never eat another burger". (paraphrased) (Twice the 5th Circuit Court upheld her, saying the truth is not libel.)

Harriet Beecher Stowe: We should remember in our dealings with animals that they are a sacred trust to us from our heavenly Father. They are dumb and cannot speak for themselves.

Ralph Nader on ABC re the 13 states with veggie libel laws (such as Texas Cattlemen's Beef Assn tried unsuccessfully twice to use against Oprah): These laws are designed to chill free speech.

Howard Lyman, former cattle rancher: (paraphrased from his appearances on more than l show) 100,000 cows in the U.S. are alive at night and dead in the morning. These cows on the ground are ground into feed, making their fellows not only carnivores but cannibals. Europe after Mad Cows' Disease has banned this practice. The U.S has not yet.

Leonardo Da Vinci: One day the world will look upon research upon animals as it now looks upon research on human beings. (DaVinci a fruitarian)

Steven Spielberg screenwriter Koepp: Humans are the only hunters who kill when not hungry.

Lester Brown World Watch Inst. annual State of the World: Since 1950 demand for lumber (trees) has doubled. Fossil fuel consumption has quadrupled. China's desire for grain-fed beef.. (adds even more pressure)

Jan Yager: Once I was fishing and caught the hook in the fish's eye. That was the last time I ate a killed creature (paraphrased).

Morton Downey: Oprah has power because Oprah is believable. People do not believe the beef industry. Shouldn't we be concerned about the first amendment rather than protecting powerful agribusiness?

Mayor Koch, now Judge Koch: Tree killing is arborcide.

Mrs. Greenthumb: Plant in the city.

Harm no being.

If China were to double its egg production the grain of 15 developing nations would be required

Jeremy Rifkin of Beyond Beef: paraphrased: The world's environment can no longer handle beef.

Kcbs helicopter pilot: The physical fitness man (paid by the meat lobby) would supposedly swim miles with a boat rope in his teeth.. jump out of the water in San Francisco and say "I owe it all to red meat". But I saw that he did not put the rope in his mouth until he was in sight of the shore.

John Denver: on the Larry King Show (paraphrased): Many things made me become a vegetarian, among them. the higher food yield as a solution to world hunger.

Jim R: Hunters are to the arms industry what smokers are to the tobacco industry. Smokers get a nicotine rush. Hunters get an adrenalin rush from killing a living being. (This does not include those hunters who kill only to feed their families or themselves.)

Ali MacGraw: Cruelty to animals can become violence to humans. (Hsus psa)

Maynard Clark:: Irradiation does not protect consumers from contaminated meat. It kills only selected pathogens. ..It does nothing to hardy pathogens such as the hepatitis virus or to those inside a large slab of meat or to those added during subsequent processing.

Fox News Jan 15th Kathy Wolff: A Univ of NC study linked hot dogs to childhood leukemia.

Buddhist phrenologist in an unsolicited reading of writer: Your short ear lobes indicate many lives as a carnivore.

Catherine Crier, former Texas prosecutor quoting Robin Williams: Hitchcock said he viewed actors as cattle.. but some were free range.

Pat Robertson who has quoted Isaiah 65 on 700 Club: Mercy trumps justice. (CBN no longer takes animal flesh ads)

Dennis Weaver: 40 years ago on the set of Gunsmoke I read the book The Holy Science. Since then I have not eaten meat.

Semantha Eggar: paraphrased: Dr. Dolittle is a reluctant but dedicated vegetarian. Being around all the animals in the film made me one too.

Governor Jerry Brown of California, son of a former governor of California: Check out my web site, wtp.org, to see what fast food did to 2 people in England. (C Span: Dec 22nd)

Cleveland Amory on NPR Dec 4th: The National Park Service shot a mule in the face. He survived but had trouble swallowing and often food came out of his nose.

Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Russian poet re zoo animals: Those who are used to a cage will weep for a cage.

Prince Philip to McDonald's of Canada: So you are the people tearing down the Brazilian rainforest and breeding cattle. (according to a letter by the head of McKey's, McDonald's beef suppliers, about a 1983 cocktail party which the Prince attended)

Mrs. Booth and General Bramwell Booth of the Salvation Army (daughter in law and son of the founder of the SA): The awful cruelty and terror to which tens of thousands of animals killed for human food are subjected in traveling long distances by ship and rail and road to the slaughterhouses of the world.. God disapproves of all cruelty.. whether to man or beast. The occupation of slaughtering animals is brutalising to those who are required to do the work.... I believe this matter is well worthy of the serious consideration of Christian leaders.

Beastmaster to cobra: I mean you no harm.

Sun Bear and Jaya Bear: All creation has the same right to life.

Lesley Stahl of CBS: Charlie didn't want to give up meat and smoking. Now he's gone. (re the much missed Charles Kuralt)

Pat Leigh: I would not want to get to know a pig very well if I intended to eat him.

Joni Mitchell: They pave paradise and put in a parking lot.

Dan Ryan, Youngstown talk show host: Why not just put sterilization hormones in the deer food rather than killing them?

The following passed on by Aaron Sarghi and his mother: George Carlin: If a lobster didn't look like a scifi monster, people would be less able to drop him alive into boiling water.

Leo Tolstoy: A human can 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.

Diane Rehm, talk show host: The Usda recommendation of 2 servings of meat per day seems like too much.

Shakespeare in "Twelfth Night": He is a heavy eater of beef. Methinks it doth harm to his wit.

Benjamin Franklin: The eagle does not make his living honestly. It would be better to have something else as the national symbol.

Jan 26, 1874 letter Joan Baez singing Dona Dona: On a wagon bound for market lay a cow with 2 mournful eyes... lay a cow with 2 mournful eyes. (If one passes slaughterhouse trucks on Rt 80 bound for Manhattan or the slaughterhouses of S Phily, in winter, with the freezing wind from mountain passes ripping through the slats, one sees their noses pressed to the bars, and their sad and frightened eyes.)

E Thomas re Thich Nhat Hanh: Harm no person, animal, plant or mineral.

James Coburn's friends: He is a Buddhist and will not harm even a fly.

Shik Po Chih: Whenever we cause suffering or death to any other being, we cause suffering to the Great Life Force.

Julia Child: (Nov 27, 1997) Today I am the vegetable walla and have brought potatoes. (Craig Claiborne brought pumpkin soup).

Phil Donahue (whose wife Marlo Thomas is a vegetarian) to a vegetarian guest, a coffee drinker nervous because on tv, who still had a 64 beats per minute heart beat to his 76: "Will you remember me when I'm gone?"

Jack Kemp: joking with Jewish supporters at the New Orleans 1988 convention: I played football.. my football was kosher.. no pigskin.

SS: Sometimes children's cries in the library disturb concentration. This one's pierced the heart... it was so full of powerlessness, injustice, pain and confinement.

H.G. Wells (from Utopia): In all the round world there is no meat. There used to be. But now we cannot stand the thought of slaughterhouses.

Diana, Princess of Wales: I decline to go fox hunting (nor did she want her sons William and Harry to be involved in hunting).

Albert Einstein.. took a tiny bite of meat once a year on a Jewish holiday to mollify his wife.

Re the Roshi: (If he were a Buddhist who believed he'd eaten thousands of mammals in past lives.. none of that has import. Only today. Only now)

A&E documentary of the Odessa navy mutiny which was a factor in the Russian revolution: Sailors refusing to eat meat filled with maggots were threatened with the firing squad. This sparked the mutiny.

Dick Gregory: Martin Luther King taught us all nonviolence. I was told to extend nonviolence to the mother and her calf.
Syndee Brinkman: I went snorkeling and noticed how gently the fish welcomed us into their world.. as compared to the violence with which we welcomed them into ours. I became a vegetarian.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr: GE is the biggest polluter of the Hudson.. years ago they killed all the fish dumping millions of lbs. of pcb's into our waterways. Now let's make them pay for the cleanup. (NPR Oct 22 97)

Jane Snow, food editor of the Beacon Journal: Items containing raw or uncooked egg should be avoided so as not to contact a certain strain of salmonella (It used to be thought that only broken eggs could transmit salmonella ... now it is known that the mother passes salmonella through the egg.) (There is more incidence of food poisoning from eggs than from meat, fish, or milk.)

Walt Disney: (paraphrased) When I was poor living in a garage in Kansas I began to draw the mice who scampered over my desk. That is how Mickey and Minnie were born. (Walt would not like animals advertised on his network as hamburgers)

Bill Hall, Wnir Radio: Meat has nitrosamines (carcinogenic) (formed by sodium nitrate food agents interating with animal amino acids in the stomach) (Sat. Aug 30 97)

Mary Lu Henner, herself a vegetarian because of Danny DeVito's example, star of Taxi, asked by Larry King.. "Is that true... that Danny DeVito won't harm cockroaches on the set of Taxi?" replied "No Larry and he doesn't eat them either".

Buddha: May all that have life be delivered from suffering.
Winston Churchill: Please put the ladybug outside without harming her. (to his butler)

Oscar Wilde about foxhunting: The unspeakable in full pursuit of the inedible.

Mayor White of Cleveland: I have no intention of eating a fish from the East River. They're not safe to eat.

A Society of Three Legged Animals: for those who love meat but don't want to kill.

Wayne Dyer per John J Price: God brings millions of flowers to bloom without force.

Suzanne Hamlin, food writer for the New York Times: Leftover eggs are a potential cause of food poisoning.

Alex Hershaft, concentration camp survivor and coordinator of The Great American Meatout 1 800 Meatout: The last thing my father told me before he was taken to his death... was to love all creation.

Enriqueta Barrera, an associate professor of geology at the Univ. of Akron: The deer study data is incomplete and should not be used to justify killing the deer. (Sara Debanne, assoc. professor at Cwru agrees.)

Issac Bashevis Singer (Nobel Prize winner in literature): Every body resisted (the slaughterer) in its own fashion, tried to escape and seemed to argue with the Creator to its last breath.
SS: May those who oppose capital punishment for humans extend that protection to animals as well. May those who oppose germ and other biological warfare work to end the unconscious biological warfare unwittingly waged on those who eat animal products. Those who are prolife would logically become vegetarian. Those who are prochoice would not want to impose their wills upon the body of a cow, sheep or pig.

Herb Newman, husband of Atty Diane Newman: We are instructed by the Torah to feed our animals before we feed ourselves.
Secretary Pena of the U.S. Dept. of Energy: Many trees planted around a home reduce the need for air conditioning (and are better winter insulation). (Jim Bohannon Show Mutual Network Oct 27, 97)

Charismatic comedian Bob Cummings about his great energy level as a senior: I never eat anything white.. no white sugar, salt, bread, flour, milk, eggs.

Frank Purdu of Purdu's Chicken (factory farmer): When I was 6 my father killed my pet chicken. (That changed his life.)

J Aislin (who takes care of stray people and animals in Washington): I dreamt that spiders were weaving messages of love to us.

Annie Besant, around a century ago: In a 50 mile radius around Chicago one can see the red aura of pain, agony, teerror, anger from all the animals being butchered there. (May the Cubs and White Sox break the 80 odd years of drought by working for change.)

Scott Bauer Associated Press: So a hamburger can kill you. So what?

Burgess Meredith, who left for God on Sept 9th of this year: It's been dead a while and I don't want to eat it (From the movie "Full Moon in Blue Water")

Women's Studies head at Skidmore College near Albany and writer of a book which seeks to justify hunting: Wheverer a deer falls to his death is holy ground.

Constantina Salamone: To say food for humans and feed for animals is one of thousands of examples of human chauvinism in our vocabulary.

When Clint Eastwood was making Westerns, he worked hard to end the trip wiring of horses (invisible wires stretched across the road to make it appear a horse fell in battle etc.) These tripwires often broke horses' legs. As mayor of Carmel he promoted pure food.

Vincent Van Gogh: in a letter to his brother Theodore wrote: Since visiting the abbatoirs of S. France I have stopped eating meat.

Romain Rolland: Thousands of animals (now billions) are butchered every day without a shadow of remorse. It cries vengeance upon all the human race.

Brooke Medicine Wheel: We don't notice the harm right away in cutting down a tree.

Benjamin Franklin (who was a vegetarian most of his life until as an elder statesman he traveled to Paris): Venison and venery defeated me.

Geoffrey Rudd, anthropologist: Cows when not bred for passivity so that they will go meekly to slaughter.. revert to their acute intelligence, and can live easily in the wild.

Sathya Sai Baba: A person who loves is a theist, whether he goes to a temple or church or not. You have to proceed from the known to the unknown. Then the love expands in ever widening circles until it covers all nature, until even plucking a leaf from a tree affects you so painfully that you dare not injure it.

Dr. Edward Martin, head of Dept. of Defense Health: More and more we realize that vegetarian diet is a good idea (NPR Oct 27)

Colman McCarthy, former Trappist, peace studies activist and columnist for the Washington Post quoting historian Will Durant: Caesar's armies marched on vegetarian foods.

Time Magazine August 97: Methionine in meat becomes homocysteine. High homecysteine levels quadruple the chance of heart attack. (A Finnish hospital study)

Dept. of Defense Health Director Dr. Edward Martin, MD: The transfatty acids (found in animal products and cooked oils) are a factor in breast cancer. (National Public Radio and CNN Nov 1st)

Charles Darwin: The most energetic workers I have encountered in my world travels are the vegetarian miners of Chile.

Tom Brazaitis, Washington bureau chief for the Cleveland Plain Dealer: There is massive environmental disruption underway in the Buckeye state.

K Redder: My husband has a cholesterol problem, so for Thanksgiving I gave him a virtual turkey. (a turkey portrait)

Kilmer McCully, former Harvard researcher, subject of a NY Times Mag. Aug 10, 1997 article for his groundbreaking research: Arteriosclerosis can be considered a disease of protein intoxication.

Joe Finan (Nov 9, 97 in the context that nearly all religion's scriptures promote vegetarian diet): If one talks the talk he should walk the walk.

Marlo J: When I was little I shot a squirrel with my beebee gun. As I watched him die I felt bad about what I'd done.

Michael Fox, DVM of the Humane Soc. of the US: Animals arrive at the slaughterhouse, many, in a 4D state (dead, diseased, dying, debilitated.) (These animals sometimes go into the pet food tankers).

Aviva Cantor writing in MS Magazine in 1983: It is a surprisingly close progression from hunting animals to hunting and torturing people.. catching and lynching blacks or smoking out Jews during the Holocaust.

Dalya Massachi writing for the Columbus Dispatch: Karma means.. what goes around comes around.
Vathsala: I'm a vegetarian. I eat peace.

Ingrid Newkirk, cofounder of Peta: They are fishes, not fish. (The word fish objectifies these creatures who are often suffocated to death.)

Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald's to Paul Obis, founder of Vegetarian Times: I have 40 cows.. they're not for meat. I can see you believe in what you're doing.. it's important to strongly believe in what you're doing. I think you'll do alright.

Art Margolis: With each egg we eat (since possibly 90% of all eggs come from factory farms) we imprison a chicken 25 to 32 hours in a cage.

John F. Seiberling, whose legislation created the Cuyahoga Valley National Recreation Area: (at a Colman McCarthy speech): I don't eat mammals. I don't eat birds.(Rep. Seiberling was one of many 1976 co-sponsors of a Congressional vegetarian dinner.)

Ernest Crosby: We are humans who see clearly the barbarity of all ages except our own.

Vic Sussman, former Washington Post columnist and Internet Director for American On Line, author of The Vegetarian Alternative: "I love to shell English peas tdo a Grade B movie"

Lao Tsu: Those who embody the Tao embrace all things.
James Marcus: I have an animal friendly Bible (no leather)

* Hot dogs are made of chicken's lips and fish feet (as well as snouts and intestinal linings)

Rabbi Noach Valley: My father with a stroke of his doodling pen bestowed noble lineage, complete with coats of arms, on the mongrels he adopted. (despite the fact their parents mated without benefit of a shadchan {matchmaker})

Schopenhauer: I know of no more beautiful prayer than that which the Hindus of old used in closing: May all that have life be delivered from suffering.
Richard Ryder: I do not believe that any of the suffering I have caused to laboratory animals has helped humanity in the slightest.

Former Pittsburgh Steeler and NY Giant football Player Glenn Scolnick: We should live in harmony with Earth not conquer it.. or the animals. The other members of the National Football League say I'm in the minority.. but they are. A majority of the world is vegetarian.

Nat Hentoff of the Village Voice about Cardinal Bernardin's philosophy: There is a seamless web to life.. all life is sacred..

David Stroud of the American Meat Institute in a debate in Detroit: Some people are still going to want to eat meat.. we do agree though that vegetarianism is a healthier diet.

Pegeen Fitzgerald of WOR TV and Radio in NY: For many years the media have been afraid of the Goliath power of the meat industry. (But David is coming!)

Greenpeace Global Warming Coordinator: These rightwing thinktanks (such as Heritage, Cato, Rutherford) I like to call skeptic tanks.

Elizabeth Dole's first case as a lawyer involved defending the rights of a lion at the Washiongton Zoo and many Republicans in Washington secretly fund animal rights efforts.

Fruitarian Network: The equation 8:4::4:2.. or eight is to four as four is to two.. as we would have God be with us.. we shall be to the smaller, the weaker.
Victoria Moran: Gandhi was a David with no material weapon.. not even a slingshot.

Paul Obis, founder in his early 20's of Vegetarian Times, which now has a subscription of 350,000: Everything is sacred, even meat.

FN: There are vibrations to every food. Meat is the densest, the most gross, the slowest, then dairy, then vegetables. Fruit vibrates closest to pure light.

Gina Jones of the API: Mother Earth does not read government documents.

Larry L. Miller: Do not judge the uninitiated (who have not yet universal compassion).

John Joseph Price: I am a baker and a candlestick maker, but have no desire for butchering.

Isaiah 65: The wolf shall lie down with the lamb. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord.

Jesus: Feed The Hungry. (In a world of 5 to 6 billion people drought, famine, and flood are prevented by fruit tree groves.)

Cleveland Amory, Harvard Crimson editor, Parade columnist:If I'm lucky enough to get to heaven I might find that God is a beaver or a burro. What a sad world it would be if only the two-legged were here. We have established a Let's Hunt The Hunters Club.. and we have certain rules: a. we're only doing it for their good.. to cull the herd b. we don't interfere with their mating season in parked cars c. we don't encourage anyone to mount a hunter on the hood d. in wall mounting you may include the cap and the jacket.

Cesar Chavez, pacifist head of the United Farm Workers: I feel very deeply about vegetarianism and the animal kingdom. It was my dog Boycott who led me to question to right of humans to eat other sentient beings.

Milt Radney (who before his death gave, with his wife Gene over a million dollars to the causes of children's mental health) When I was a New York City cab driver for several years I maintained a vegetarian diet which made me feel better.

James Kuntsler on NPR: We don't need gold plated highways. We don't need zoning commissions which penalize offices at home and promote car commutes. (paraphrased)

Saint of Shirdi: In accepting meat put into his begging bowl, Buddha failed to put his teaching into practice. His teaching was ahimsa: total nonviolence to all creatures.

Crazy Horse: Great Spirit gave us this land. White men came and killed our animals and destroyed our land, then told us to go to work for a living. We don't want what they call civilization.
Swami Shankarananda of Maryland: Holy communion is to feel one with the One in all beings and creations.

Margaret Lytz: Assisting in heart operations, one sees the cholesterol firsthand.. as thick ropes of glue which make the blood redwhite rather than red.

James Marcus: I watched a nature film in which there were wall to wall seals in the Pribilofs. One little seal got separated from his mother. A bull threw him into the ocean.. every time he crawled out the bull threw him back in again. (May God make this a kinder world.)

Arthur Schlesinger Jr: (on NPR): Theodore Roosevelt is not remembered for the many bears he killed, but for the bear cub he saved. She wandered into camp after her mother had been killed.. his party lifted their guns and he interceded.

Henry Kissinger met a woman wearing a Love Animals Don't Eat Them tshirt. He said "I get the point. I just don't want to think about it." Shortly after, he had a quintuple bypass.