Some fo the greatest minds of all time saw the fallacy of the "food chain" theory:
"Our task must be to free ourselves . . . by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty."
Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel Prize 1921
My refusing to eat flesh occasioned an inconveniency, and I was frequently chided for my singularity, but, with this lighter repast, I made the greater progress, for greater clearness of head and quicker comprehension.
Ben Franklin
"Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances of survival for life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet."
Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel Prize 1921
"I am not interested to know whether vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn't...The pain which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity toward it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further."
Mark Twain, author
"Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages."
Thomas Edison, inventor
"For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love."
Pythagoras, mathematician
"The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men."
Leonardo da Vinci, artist and scientist
"I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being."
Abraham Lincoln, 16th U.S. President
"You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity."
Ralph Waldo Emerson, essayist
"As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields." Leo Tolstoy
"What I think about vivisection is that if people admit that they have the right to take or endanger the life of living beings for the benefit of many, there will be no limit to their cruelty."
Leo Tolstoy author
"If a group of beings from another planet were to land on Earth -- beings who considered themselves as superior to you as you feel yourself to be to other animals -- would you concede them the rights over you that you assume over other animals?"
George Bernard Shaw, playwright, Nobel Prize 1925
"To a man whose mind is free there is something even more intolerable in the sufferings of animals than in the sufferings of man. For with the latter it is at least admitted that suffering is evil and that the man who causes it is a criminal. But thousands of animals are uselessly butchered every day without a shadow of remorse. If any man were to refer to it, he would be thought ridiculous. And that is the unpardonable crime."
Romain Rolland, author, Nobel Prize 1915
"What is it that should trace the insuperable line? ...The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?"
Jeremy Bentham, philosopher
"In their behavior toward creatures, all men are Nazis. Human beings see oppression vividly when they're the victims. Otherwise they victimize blindly and without a thought."
Isaac Bashevis Singer, author, Nobel Prize 1978
"I cannot fish without falling a little in self-respect...always when I have done I feel it would have been better if I had not fished."
Henry David Thoreau, author
"While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth?"
"Atrocities are not less atrocities when they occur in laboratories and are called medical research."
George Bernard Shaw
"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."
"To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being."
Mahatma Gandhi, statesman and philosopher
To become vegetarian is to step into the stream which leads to nirvana.
-Buddha
"You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity."
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The most violent weapon on earth is the table fork."
~Mahatma Gandhi
"While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth?"
~George Bernard Shaw
"I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals."
~Henry David Thoreau
"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."
~Leo Tolstoy
We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.
Immanuel Kant
By all that is sacred in our hope for the human race, I conjure those who love happiness and truth to give a fair trial to the vegetable system!
Percy Bysshe Shelley
We are all God's creatures; that we pray to God for mercy and justice while we continue to eat the flesh of animals that are slaughtered on our account is not consistent.
Isaac Bashevis Singer
We declare, then, that it is absurd for them to say that the practice of flesh eating is based on nature. If you declare that you are naturally designed for such a diet, then first kill for yourself what you want to eat. Do it, however, only through your own resources, unaided by cleaver or cudgel or any kind of ax.
Plutarch
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