The heart of vegetarians is healed sooner than those of flesh-eaters.

You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity,―expensive races,―race living at the expense of race.

I have a lot of time for vegetarians (though apparently not all of them have a lot of time for me), and that’s because I respect anyone with principles about food.

Jīvaka, I say that there are three instances in which meat should not be eaten: when it is seen, heard, or suspected [that the living being has been slaughtered for oneself]. I say that meat should not be eaten in these three instances. I say that there are three instances in which meat may be...

Even as a junkie I stayed true [to vegetarianism] – ‘I shall have heroin, but I shan’t have a hamburger.’ What a sexy little paradox.

It can be challenge enough to have to eat with myself.

Meditation is both the symbol and expression of our intention to grow. Sitting still, alone with our thoughts and feelings, we can honor missed opportunities, passing desires, remembered disappointments, as well as our inner strength, personal wisdom, and ability to forgive and love.

People often say that humans have always eaten animals, as if this is a justification for continuing the practice. According to this logic, we should not try to prevent people from murdering other people, since this has also been done since the earliest of times.

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.

Well, then, Otter, of course I don’t like Bundt cake. It has eggs in it. Baby chicken eggs. You don’t see chickens standing outside of maternity wards waiting to get our babies to make their Bundt cake, do you?

He soon acquired the forlorn look that one sees in vegetarians.

I made the choice to be vegan because I will not eat (or wear, or use) anything that could have an emotional response to its death or captivity. I can well imagine what that must feel like for our non-human friends – the fear, the terror, the pain – and I will not cause such...

Before you rush off trying to see everything you can, educate yourself.

We can’t talk about our own health without understanding our place in our environment, because in order to fulfill our potential we have to live in the context of our surroundings.We have to know our place in the ecosystem of which we are a part, and this means living ‘consciously’: being aware of nature and...

The thought of two thousand people crunching celery at the same time horrified me.

The symbolism of meat-eating is never neutral. To himself, the meat-eater seems to be eating life. To the vegetarian, he seems to be eating death. There is a kind of gestalt-shift between the two positions which makes it hard to change, and hard to raise questions on the matter at all without becoming embattled.

God loves and cares for creation and has the right to expect this loving care be replicated by humans. Creation exists, not for the glory of humanity, but for the glory of God. God has the right to see that earthly creatures are free to live according to their nature and without unnecessary abuse, exploitation,...

Scientific studies and government records suggest that virtually all (upwards of 95 percent of) chickens become infected with E. coli (an indicator of fecal contamination) and between 39 and 75 percent of chickens in retail stores are still infected. Around 8 percent of birds become infected with salmonella (down from several years ago, when at...

A peculiarity of the nature of your mind is that, in contrast to your physical constitution (dosha) that is fixed from birth, it can be altered through discrimination and choice.

While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth?

This for many people is what is most offensive about hunting—to some, disgusting: that it encourages, or allows, us not only to kill but to take a certain pleasure in killing. It’s not as though the rest of us don’t countenance the killing of tens of millions of animals every year. Yet for some reason...

You can judge a man’s true character by the way he treats his fellow animals.

If slaughterhouses had glass walls, the whole world would be vegetarian.

Humans do have authority over creation—but it is a delegated authority to care for animals as God would and not to destroy them. All life still belongs to the Creator of life, as it did the in the beginning.

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.

Perhaps in the back of our minds we already understand, without all the science I’ve discussed, that something terribly wrong is happening. Our sustenance now comes from misery. We know that if someone offers to show us a film on how our meat is produced, it will be a horror film. We perhaps know more...

Through knowing death we can hold a beacon of love for every moment that has just passed, for every friend who has lost a friend, for every child who has lost a parent, for every parent who has lost a child; for any suffering anywhere.

No consciousness that we would recognize as consciousness. Not awareness, as far as we can make out, of a self with a history. What I mind is what tends to come next. They have no consciousness therefore. Therefore what? Therefore we are free to use them for our own ends Therefore we are free to...

Meat isn’t murder, it’s delicious.

To expect life to treat you good is foolish as hoping a bull won’t hit you because you are a vegetarian.

Will you dance for me? Let your breasts roam for a moment — I need to see how they dance.”Okay.’ She danced, and as she danced, she tried to think of the most delicious salads she could imagine — with artichokes and sundried tomato and blue cheese dressing, and beets, lots of beets.

The lamb misused breeds public strifeAnd yet forgives the butcher’s knife.

Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace.

Do you eat chicken because you are familiar with the scientific literature on them and have decided that their suffering doesn’t matter, or do you do it because it tastes good?

Thanksgiving dinner’s sad and thankless. Christmas dinner’s dark and blue. When you stop and try to see it From the turkey’s point of view.Sunday dinner isn’t sunny. Easter feasts are just bad luck. When you see it from the viewpoint of a chicken or a duck. Oh how I once loved tuna salad Pork and...

These folk are hewers of trees and hunters of beasts; therefore we are their unfriends, and if they will not depart we shall afflict them in all ways that we can.

The Chinese food arrives. Delicious saliva fills his mouth. He really hasn’t had any since Texas. He loves this food that contains no disgusting proofs of slain animals, a bloody slab of cow haunch, a hen’s sinewy skeleton; these ghosts have been minced and destroyed and painlessly merged with the shapes of insensate vegetables, plump...

When it’s all said and done we will lose a piece to a carnivorous vegetarian

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. And to act so is immoral.

Because we cannot scrub our inner body we need to learn a few skills to help cleanse our tissues, organs, and mind. This is the art of Ayurveda.

Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.

Humans are the only animals that have children on purpose, keep in touch (or don’t), care about birthdays, waste and lose time, brush their teeth, feel nostalgia, scrub stains, have religions and political parties and laws, wear keepsakes, apologize years after an offense, whisper, fear themselves, interpret dreams, hide their genitalia, shave, bury time capsules,...

It may be considered folly by common opinion but this refusal to destroy life unnecessarily, this reverence for it, must become a deeply implanted part of his ethical standard.

Despite the fact that an Indonesian island chicken has probably had a much more natural life than one raised on a battery farm in England, people who wouldn’t think twice about buying something oven-ready become much more upset about a chicken that they’ve been on a boat with, so there is probably buried in the...

Understand: the task of an activist is not to negotiate systems of power with as much personal integrity as possible–it’s to dismantle those systems.

Hindus and Westerners alike see in the meat-eating taboos of India a triumph of morals over appetite. This is a dangerous misrepresentation of cultural processes. Hindu vegetarianism was a victory not of spirit over matter but of reproductive over productive forces.

Love is at the heart of the world, just as it is at the heart of your life. Your relationships with your lover, your family, your friends, and the world around you define the quality of your emotional wholeness and reflect your relationship with yourself.

I don’t believe vegans (or vegetarians) who still get their (packaged, preservative/chemical-ridden) food from industrial food systems have any righteous ground to stand on, nor do I think a deep look at the sentient life of plants or the true environmental impact of agriculture permits them any comfortable distance from cruelty. Everything in this world...

Whether we change our lives or do nothing, we have responded. To do nothing is to do something.

My view [is] that what morality boils down to is, ‘Don’t harm, and do help.’ And now the question is, ‘Can creatures like chickens and cows be harmed?’ And the answer is, ‘Of course they can.’ Consequently, I think it’s immoral to harm them. And that seems to me to provide a very strong moral...