WVA Notable Quotations

HISTORICAL

I have from an early age abjured the use of meat and the time will come when men such as I will look on the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men.

Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.

I am conscious that flesh eating is NOT in accordance with the finer feelings and I abstain from it.

I 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.

And there are the ideas of the future ... of freeing the slaves, of giving equality to women, [and] of ceasing to use flesh food.

If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegetarian. 

Being vegan, for me, is about lessening suffering and working for animal liberation as efficiently as possible. It has nothing to do with personal purity or my ego. . . .If, by some bizarre twist, eating a burger (or, better yet, a triple-cheese Uno's pizza :-) ) were to advance animal liberation significantly, then I would do it.

I don't understand why asking people to eat a well-balanced vegetarian diet is considered drastic, while it is medically conservative to cut people open or put them on powerful cholesterol-lowering drugs for the rest of their lives.

Thus, although we think we are one and we act as if we are one, human beings are not natural carnivores. When we kill animals to eat them, they end up killing us because their flesh, which contains cholesterol and saturated fat, was never intended for human beings, who are natural herbivores.

Last updated: September 2012