Quotes about meat
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Florence Nightingale photo

“Christ Himself was the first true Mystic. "My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me and to finish His work."”

Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing

Notes from Devotional Authors of the Middle Ages (1873-1874)
Context: That Religion is not devotion, but work and suffering for the love of God; this is the true doctrine of Mystics — as is more particularly set forth in a definition of the 16th century: "True religion is to have no other will but God's." Compare this with the definition of Religion in Johnson's Dictionary: "Virtue founded upon reverence of God and expectation of future rewards and punishments"; in other words on respect and self-interest, not love. Imagine the religion which inspired the life of Christ "founded" on the motives given by Dr. Johnson!
Christ Himself was the first true Mystic. "My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me and to finish His work." What is this but putting in fervent and the most striking words the foundation of all real Mystical Religion? — which is that for all our actions, all our words, all our thoughts, the food upon which they are to live and have their being is to be the indwelling presence of God, the union with God; that is, with the Spirit of Goodness and Wisdom.

Jerome photo
Stephen Vincent Benét photo

“This is he.
This is the man they ate at the green table
Putting their gloves on ere they touched the meat.
This is the fruit of war, the fruit of peace,
The ripeness of invention, the new lamb,
The answer to the wisdom of the wise.
And still he hangs, and still he will not die
And still, on the steel city of our years
The light falls and the terrible blood streams down.”

Stephen Vincent Benét (1898–1943) poet, short story writer, novelist

Litany for Dictatorships (1935)
Context: For the man crucified on the crossed machine guns
Without name, without resurrection, without stars,
His dark head heavy with death and his flesh long sour
With the smell of his many prisons — John Smith, John Doe,
John Nobody — oh, crack your mind for his name!
Faceless as water, naked as the dust,
Dishonored as the earth the gas-shells poison
And barbarous with portent.
This is he.
This is the man they ate at the green table
Putting their gloves on ere they touched the meat.
This is the fruit of war, the fruit of peace,
The ripeness of invention, the new lamb,
The answer to the wisdom of the wise.
And still he hangs, and still he will not die
And still, on the steel city of our years
The light falls and the terrible blood streams down.

James Cameron photo

“You're going to radiate health. You're going to have a better sex drive. That's what shifting away from meat and dairy does”

James Cameron (1954) Canadian film director

Interview http://www.mensjournal.com/health-fitness/nutrition/james-cameron-why-i-eat-a-vegan-diet-20150915 with John Gaudiosi in Men's Journal (15 September 2015)
Context: [About veganism] You're going to be healthier, you're going to live longer, you're going to look better. You're going to have fewer zits. You're going to be slimmer. You're going to radiate health. You're going to have a better sex drive. That's what shifting away from meat and dairy does. My whole family did this, and we're doing spectacularly well from a health standpoint. I have not had a single sniffle, not a flu, not a cold, nothing that's taken me offline as much as an hour in three and a half years.

Robert Hunter (author) photo

“Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.”

Robert Hunter (author) (1874–1942) American sociologist, author, golf course architect

Source: Why We Fail as Christians (1919), p. 93-94
Context: Simple, direct, and clear as they [these words] are, Jesus later in the day undertook to make them more vivid.... that no one should doubt them or lack in fully understanding them, Jesus, after leaving the Temple, went to the Mount of Olives, and there explained the meaning of his words by a picture of the Day of Judgment.... He says that when the Son of Man shall come in his glory to the judgment seat, all the nations shall be gathered before him, "and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me." …And Jesus answers them "Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me" …Surely it is worthy of note that Jesus does not indicate that the sheep will be questioned as to their sect or creed.... Moreover, the sheep are not even spoken of as the faithful or as the believers; they are simply those who love their fellow-men and therefore they are unconsciously righteous. Turning to the goats, he does not ask them either as to their faith, but as they had not fed the hungry, nor given drink to the thirsty, nor taken any stranger in, they are condemned to "everlasting fire."

Mary Midgley photo

“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.”

Mary Midgley (1919–2018) British philosopher and ethicist

Animals and Why They Matter https://books.google.it/books?id=uE7lNzbN7wEC&pg=PA0 (1983), ch. 2, 4.
Context: 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.

P. J. O'Rourke photo
Bill Bailey photo
Jerome photo
Thomas Jefferson photo

“A man has a right to use a saw, an axe, a plane, separately; may he not combine their uses on the same piece of wood? He has a right to use his knife to cut his meat, a fork to hold it; may a patentee take from him the right to combine their use on the same subject?”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to Oliver Evans (16 January 1814); published in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (1905) Vol. 13, p. 66
1810s
Context: A man has a right to use a saw, an axe, a plane, separately; may he not combine their uses on the same piece of wood? He has a right to use his knife to cut his meat, a fork to hold it; may a patentee take from him the right to combine their use on the same subject? Such a law, instead of enlarging our conveniences, as was intended, would most fearfully abridge them, and crowd us by monopolies out of the use of the things we have.

Aleister Crowley photo

“I believe in the communion of Saints.
And, forasmuch as meat and drink are transmuted in us daily into spiritual substance, I believe in the Miracle of the Mass.”

Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) poet, mountaineer, occultist

III Of the Ceremony of the Introit, "Creed of the Gnostic Catholic Church".
Liber XV : The Gnostic Mass (1913)
Context: I believe in the communion of Saints.
And, forasmuch as meat and drink are transmuted in us daily into spiritual substance, I believe in the Miracle of the Mass.
And I confess one Baptism of Wisdom, whereby we accomplish the Miracle of Incarnation.
And I confess my life one, individual and eternal that was, and is, and is to come.

Epictetus photo

“Let thy speech of God be renewed day by day, aye, rather than thy meat and drink.”

Epictetus (50–138) philosopher from Ancient Greece

Fragment xxi.
Golden Sayings of Epictetus, Fragments

Edna St. Vincent Millay photo

“Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain”

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) American poet

Sonnet XXX from Fatal Interview (1931)
Context: Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.

Dwight D. Eisenhower photo

“The fruit of success in all these tasks would present the world with the greatest task, and the greatest opportunity, of all. It is this: the dedication of the energies, the resources, and the imaginations of all peaceful nations to a new kind of war. This would be a declared total war, not upon any human enemy but upon the brute forces of poverty and need. The peace we seek, founded upon decent trust and cooperative effort among nations, can be fortified, not by weapons of war but by wheat and by cotton, by milk and by wool, by meat and timber and rice.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

1950s, The Chance for Peace (1953)
Context: The details of such disarmament programs are manifestly critical and complex. Neither the United States nor any other nation can properly claim to possess a perfect, immutable formula. But the formula matters less than the faith -- the good faith without which no formula can work justly and effectively. The fruit of success in all these tasks would present the world with the greatest task, and the greatest opportunity, of all. It is this: the dedication of the energies, the resources, and the imaginations of all peaceful nations to a new kind of war. This would be a declared total war, not upon any human enemy but upon the brute forces of poverty and need. The peace we seek, founded upon decent trust and cooperative effort among nations, can be fortified, not by weapons of war but by wheat and by cotton, by milk and by wool, by meat and timber and rice. These are words that translate into every language on earth. These are the needs that challenge this world in arms.

Bill Bailey photo
Erik Naggum photo

“Travel is a meat thing.”

Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer

Usenet signatures

Henry Fielding photo
Greta Thunberg photo
Daniel Abraham photo
Mahatma Gandhi photo
Alice A. Bailey photo
Simon Cowell photo
Melanie Joy photo

“There is a vast mythology surrounding meat, but all the myths are in one way or another related to what I refer to as the Three Ns of Justification: eating meat is normal, natural, and necessary.”

The Three Ns have been invoked to justify all exploitative systems … When an ideology is in its prime, these myths rarely come under scrutiny. However, when the system finally collapses, the Three Ns are recognized as ludicrous.
Source: Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows (2010), pp. 96-97

Yehudi Menuhin photo
Nick Cave photo
Richard Wrangham photo
Dotsie Bausch photo
Jacy Reese photo

“A big reason for optimism about the end of animal farming is that it doesn't have to be the end of meat.”

Jacy Reese (1992) American social scientist

The End of Animal Farming: How Scientists, Entrepreneurs, and Activists Are Building an Animal-Free Food System (2018)

Thomas Merton photo
Jayapala photo

“You have heard and know the nobleness of Indians - they fear not death or destruction… In affairs of honour and renown we would place ourselves upon the fire like roast meat, and upon the dagger like the sunrays.”

Jayapala (964–1001) Ruler of the Kabal Shabi

Message to Subuktigin, in Utbi, Kitab Yamini. quoted in Misra, R. G. (2005). Indian resistance to early Muslim invaders up to 1206 A.D. p.41

Swami Sivananda photo
Stephen Vincent Benét photo
Stephen Vincent Benét photo
Izabella Miko photo
J. Howard Moore photo
Sam Peckinpah photo
Brent Weeks photo

“It may be deeply uncomfortable to reflect on eating savvy creatures who express their emotions. My strong suspicion—which I hope will be tested as a hypothesis—is that some people will decrease their meat and fish intake as they learn more about who they are consuming.”

Barbara J. King (1956) American anthropologist and primatologist

The Inner Lives of "Food Animals" https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/the-inner-lives-of-food-animals/ (March 16, 2017)

Bruce Friedrich photo

“We don't want to disrupt the meat industry, we want to transform it. We need their economies of scale, their global supply chain, their marketing expertise and their massive consumer base.”

Bruce Friedrich (1969) Member of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

TED Talk: The next global agricultural revolution https://www.ted.com/talks/bruce_friedrich_the_next_global_agricultural_revolution/, 2019

Bruce Friedrich photo

“We need to change the meat, because we aren’t going to change human nature.”

Bruce Friedrich (1969) Member of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

Quoted in Nathaniel Popper, This Animal Activist Used to Get in Your Face. Now He’s Going After Your Palate. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/technology/bruce-friedrich-animal-activist.html, New York Times, March 2019

Bruce Friedrich photo

“To remake meat is how we solve climate change. Remaking meat is how we prevent the next pandemic. Remaking meat is how we take antibiotics out of the food system.”

Bruce Friedrich (1969) Member of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

Quoted in Jonathan Kauffman, Meet the Innovator Behind the Plant-Based Meat Movement https://www.eatingwell.com/article/7905892/bruce-friedrich-plant-based-meat/, Eating Well Magazine, 2021

Viktor Yanukovych photo

“Speaking of the agriculture, we should at least stop selling grain but instead we should process it, for example, into meat or meat products.”

Viktor Yanukovych (1950) Ukrainian politician who was the President of Ukraine

Source: * Янукович: Перерабатывать зерно в мясо ** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAmDEwlydIw ** en ** 2022-06-12 ** 2009-12-25

Kim Sharma photo

“I decided to give up meat and fish for ethical reasons. And a vegetarian diet is very healthy for all ages.”

Kim Sharma (1980) Indian actress

"Kim Sharma: New vegan on the block" https://web.archive.org/web/20140113154535/http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2009-08-12/news-interviews/28205180_1_vegetarian-diet-kim-sharma-bollywood-stars, The Times of India (12 August 2009).