Quotes about nutrition (75 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“Nutrition seems to mock the achievements of economic development”

Bertil Ohlin (1899–1979) Swedish economist and politician

Ohlin (1977, p. 201); as cited in: Larry Lev (1981) The effect of cash cropping on food consumption adequacy among the Meru of northern Tanzania. p. 1.
1970s

“How many times, for instance, have we not heard people speak with all the authority of conviction about the "canine teeth" and "simple stomach" of man, as certain evidence of his natural adaptation for a flesh diet! At least we have demonstrated one fact; that if such arguments are valid, they apply with even greater force to the anthropoid apes—whose "canine" teeth are much longer and more powerful than those of man … And yet, with the solitary exception of man, there is not one of these last which does not in a natural condition absolutely refuse to feed on flesh! M. Pouchet observes that all the details of the digestive apparatus in man, as well as his dentition, constitute "so many proofs of his frugivorous origin"—an opinion shared by Professor Owen, who remarks that the anthropoids and all the quadrumana derive their alimentation from fruits, grains, and other succulent and nutritive vegetable substances, and that the strict analogy which exists between the structure of these animals and that of man clearly demonstrates his frugivorous nature. This is also the view taken by Cuvier, Linnæus, Professor Lawrence, Charles Bell, Gassendi, Flourens, and a great number of other eminent writers.”

Anna Kingsford (1846–1888) English physician, activist and feminist

The Perfect Way in Diet (London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1881), pp. 13 https://archive.org/stream/perfectwayindie00kinggoog#page/n34-14.

People , Nature , Time , Animals

“We have taller buildings but shorter tempers; wider freeways but narrower viewpoints; we spend more but have less; we buy more but enjoy it less; we have bigger houses and smaller families; more conveniences, yet less time; we have more degrees but less sense; more knowledge but less judgment; more experts, yet more problems; we have more gadgets but less satisfaction; more medicine, yet less wellness; we take more vitamins but see fewer results. We drink too much; smoke too much; spend too recklessly; laugh too little; drive too fast; get too angry; stay up too late; get up too tired; read too seldom; watch TV too much and pray too seldom.
We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values; we fly in faster planes to arrive there quicker, to do less and return sooner; we sign more contracts only to realize fewer profits; we talk too much; love too seldom and lie too often. We've learned how to make a living, but not a life; we've added years to life, not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor. We've conquered outer space, but not inner space; we've done larger things, but not better things; we've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul; we've split the atom, but not our prejudice; we write more, but learn less; plan more, but accomplish less; we make faster planes, but longer lines; we learned to rush, but not to wait; we have more weapons, but less peace; higher incomes, but lower morals; more parties, but less fun; more food, but less appeasement; more acquaintances, but fewer friends; more effort, but less success. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but have less communication; drive smaller cars that have bigger problems; build larger factories that produce less. We've become long on quantity, but short on quality.
These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion; tall men, but short character; steep in profits, but shallow relationships. These are the times of world peace, but domestic warfare; more leisure and less fun; higher postage, but slower mail; more kinds of food, but less nutrition. These are the days of two incomes, but more divorces; these quick trips, disposable diapers, cartridge living, throw-away morality, one-night stands, overweight bodies and pills that do everything from cheer, to prevent, quiet or kill. It is a time when there is much in the show window and nothing in the stock room.”

Bob Moorehead

"The Paradox of Our Age"; these statements were used in World Wide Web hoaxes which attributed them to various authors including George Carlin, a teen who had witnessed the Columbine High School massacre, the Dalai Lama and Anonymous; they are quoted in "The Paradox of Our Time" at Snopes.com http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/paradox.asp
Words Aptly Spoken (1995)

Love , Life , Men , Lie

“With the right of the scientist to investigate most aspects of the material universe, most persons will agree; but there are some who have questioned the applicability of scientific methods to an investigation of human sexual behavior…. It is as though the dietician and biochemist were denied the right to analyze foods and the processes of nutrition, because the cooking and proper serving of food may be rated a fine art, and because the eating of certain foods has been considered a matter for religious regulation.”

Alfred Kinsey (1894–1956) American scientist (1894–1956)

page 8
Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953)

Food , Art , Behavior , Question

“Looking good and feeling good go hand in hand. If you have a healthy lifestyle, your diet and nutrition are set and you're working out, you're going to feel good.”

Jason Statham (1967) English actor, film producer, martial artist and former diver

Feeling

“I have the right to do whatever I wish with my property. If I own a pile of wood, I can set fire to it even if it is currently nailed together in the shape of a barn. Cigarettes may not be healthy for me in the long run, but I have the freedom to smoke them anyway. Drinking alcohol may or may not have negative side effects, but even if it does, the government has no authority to prohibit you from consuming it, even if it is "in your own best interest." Since when do we let the government decide what is or isn't good for us? What the hell does Congress know about nutrition, anyway? (For that matter, what does Congress know about the Constitution?) If the government can use force whenever something is "in our best interest" then government should force everyone to wake up at 6am every morning for calisthenics in the front yard. Fast food establishments should be torn down and replaced with bars that serve carrot juice and alfalfa sprouts, since - "it's in your best interest."”

Michael Badnarik (1954) American software engineer

This paternalistic attitude that "the government knows best" and that you are merely a helpless child is insulting and reprehensible. Hitler used the same attitude to persuade the Germans to subjugate themselves to the "Fatherland."
Source: Good to be King (2004)

Alcohol , Food , Hell , Drink

“I came to the understanding that individually we are responsible for the way in which we live and for the care of our human frame by good nutrition, proper exercise and a balanced lifestyle. It is this, together with a strong focused mind, that enables us to draw from our vast inner resources and strength to make the most of our time on this planet. The changes in my life came by way of a massive physical and psychological shock and were implemented for the purpose of healing and motivating my recovery. A change in our diet and lifestyle of course can be started at any time, and is of interest to anybody wishing to maximise their health and vitality, leading to a more fulfilling life. This was how I discovered the benefits of cutting meat and dairy from my diet and then taking the correct care of my body’s nutritional requirements to help heal my mind, body and soul.”

Heather Mills (1968) former glamour model, activist

"Discovering Veganism", in heathermills.org (2016) http://www.heathermills.org/veganism/

Life , Health , Way , Exercises

“As opposed to [megatechnics], an organic system directs itself to qualitative richness, amplitude, spaciousness, free from quantitative pressure and crowding, since self-regulation, self-correction, and self-propulsion are as much an integral property of organisms as nutrition, reproduction, growth, and repair. Balance, wholeness, completeness, continuous interplay between inner and outer, the subjective and the objective aspects of existence are identifying characteristics of the organic model; and the general name for an economy based on such a model is an economy of plenitude.”

Lewis Mumford book The Myth of the Machine

The Myth of the Machine (1967-1970), The Pentagon of Power (1970)

“Just as modern man consumes both too many calories and calories of no nutritional value, information workers eat data both in excess and from the wrong sources.”

Timothy Ferriss book The 4-Hour Workweek

The 4-Hour Workweek (2007)

“Frances Egan, the school nurse, left her nutrition charts long enough to tell me there was nothing that could have been done. "Evelyn had a rough time with her father," she said. "Once she came in beaten black and blue."
"What did you do for her?"
"I gave her a cup of tea."
"Tea? Why tea, for heaven's sake?"
"Why? Because I know all about it," she said, shaking with anger. "I know more than anyone here what goes on outside — poverty, disease, dope, degeneracy — yet I'm not supposed to give them even a band-aid. I used to plead, bang on my desk, talk myself hoarse arguing with kids, parents, welfare, administration, social agencies. Nobody really heard me. Now I give them tea. At least, that's something."
"But you're a nurse," I said helplessly.
She showed me the Directive from the Board posted on her wall: THE SCHOOL NURSE MAY NOT TOUCH WOUNDS, GIVE MEDICATION, REMOVE FOREIGN PARTICLES FROM THE EYE…
Are we, none of us, then, allowed to touch wounds? What is the teacher's responsibility? And if it begins at all, where does it end?”

Bel Kaufmanová book Up the Down Staircase

Part V, ch. 26 (Sylvia Barrett)
Up the Down Staircase (1965)

Disease , School , Parent , Teachers

“Poetry and the arts can’t exist in America. Mere exposure to the arts does nothing for a mentality which is incorrigibly dialectical. The vital tensions and nutritive action of ideogram remain inaccessible to this state of mind.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Letter to Ezra Pound (21 December 1948)
1940s

Art

“Chewing transforms even toxins into nutritive substances.”

George Ohsawa (1893–1966) twentieth century Japanese philosopher

Ohsawa used this as metaphor to describe how to read books.
Source: Essential Ohsawa - From Food to Health, Happiness to Freedom - Understanding the Basics of Macrobiotics (1994), p. 97

“Identical in the physical processes by which he originates—identical in the early stages of his formation—identical in the mode of his nutrition before and after birth, with the animals which lie immediately below him in the scale—Man, if his adult and perfect structure be compared with theirs, exhibits, as might be expected, a marvellous likeness of organization. He resembles them as they resemble one another—he differs from them as they differ from one another.—And, though these differences and resemblances cannot be weighed and measured, their value may be readily estimated; the scale or standard of judgment, touching that value, being afforded and expressed by the system of classification of animals now current among zoologists.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

Source: 1860s, Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature (1863), Ch.2, p. 83

Lie , Birth , Animals , Perfection

“All mammals nurse their young, and breast milk benefits a newborn infant in ways above and beyond nutrition. In fact, until 1 to 2 years of age, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the World Health Organization, the Institute of Medicine and more promote breast-feeding as optimal. Unfortunately, breast-feeding until that age is often difficult, if not impossible, because mothers have to return to work, and children go off to preschool or day care. So we often replace human milk with the milk of cows or other animals. But at a certain point, we have to acknowledge that we are the only mammals on the planet that continue to consume milk after childhood, often in great amounts. More and more evidence is surfacing, however, that milk consumption may not only be unhelpful, it might also be detrimental. … there’s very little evidence that most adults need it. There’s also very little evidence that it’s doing them much good.”

Aaron Carroll American pediatrician

"Got Milk? Might Not Be Doing You Much Good", in The New York Times (17 November 2014) http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/18/upshot/got-milk-might-not-be-doing-you-much-good.html?_r=0

Children , Health , Age , World

“Life to each individual is a scene of continued feasting in a region of plenty; and when unexpected death arrests its course, it repays with small interest the large debt which it has contracted to the common fund of animal nutrition, from whence the materials of its body have been derived. Thus the great drama of universal life is perpetually sustained; and though the individual actors undergo continual change, the same parts are filled by another and another generation; renewing the face of the earth and the bosom of the deep with endless successions of life and happiness.”

William Buckland (1784–1856) English clergyman, geologist and palaeontologist

Geology and Mineralogy Considered with Reference to Natural Theology (1841), p. 109

Life , Death , Universe , Change

“One of the first applications of the simplex algorithm was to the determination of an adequate diet that was of least cost. In the fall of 1947, Jack Laderman of the Mathematical Tables Project of the National Bureau of Standards undertook, as a test of the newly proposed simplex method, the first large-scale computation in this field. It was a system with nine equations in seventy-seven unknowns. Using hand-operated desk calculators, approximately 120 man-days were required to obtain a solution. … The particular problem solved was one which had been studied earlier by George Stigler (who later became a Nobel Laureate) who proposed a solution based on the substitution of certain foods by others which gave more nutrition per dollar. He then examined a "handful" of the possible 510 ways to combine the selected foods. He did not claim the solution to be the cheapest but gave his reasons for believing that the cost per annum could not be reduced by more than a few dollars. Indeed, it turned out that Stigler's solution (expressed in 1945 dollars) was only 24 cents higher than the true minimum per year $39.69.”

George Dantzig (1914–2005) American mathematician

cited in: John J. O'Connor & Edmund F.; Robertson (2003) " George Dantzig http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Dantzig_George.html". in: MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of St Andrews.
Linear programming and extensions (1963)

Food , Way , Mathematics , Problem

“There's probably no subject with quite so many conflictin' opinions about it as there are about food, and 'tis better to swap bubble gum with a rabid bulldog than challenge a single one o' the varyin' beliefs your average human holds about nutrition.”

Tom Robbins book Jitterbug Perfume

Jitterbug Perfume (1984)

Food

“I no longer recommend dairy products after the age of two years. … Of course, there was a time when cow's milk was considered very desirable. But research, along with clinical experience, has forced doctors and nutritionists to rethink this recommendation. It is an area where there are still disagreements among scientists, but there are several points that most everyone agrees on. First of all, other calcium sources offer many advantages that dairy products do not have. Most green leafy vegetables and beans have a form of calcium that is absorbed as well as or even a bit better than that in milk. Along with this calcium come vitamins, iron, complex carbohydrates, and fiber. Calcium-enriched soy or rice drinks are just as tasty on cereal as cow's milk (once you get used to them), and they are free of animal proteins and cholesterol. These beverages, as well as calcium-enriched orange and other juices, provide as much calcium, ounce per ounce, as cow's milk. Vegetables and legumes can provide a healthy source of calcium, along with many other nutritional advantages.”

Benjamin Spock (1903–1998) American pediatrician and author of Baby and Child Care

Source: Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care (1945), Seventh edition (1998), pp. 331-332

Age , Drink , Time , Animals

“For all the advances of modern societies, traditional tribal communities may have better served the essential needs of people for emotional support, nutrition, and exercise than does contemporary society. We don’t need to return to the ways of our ancestors, but we do need to learn from them.”

David Korten (1937) writer, sustainability advocate

People , Way , Exercises , Communication

“Growing up, my diet was pretty easy and simple — I was raised on a vegetarian diet. … When I was 15, I watched the documentary Glass Walls [by PETA] and read The China Study [by T. Colin Campbell], and then it became quite clear to me why I wanted to be vegetarian and why I wanted to adopt a vegan lifestyle. After doing my research, I chose to go vegan and have been dedicated to a vegan diet for four years now. … I feel healthier on a clean, whole foods diet that is very simple — especially during competition. And since a plant-based diet is less calorically dense than other diets, I need to make sure I’m eating enough food so I up my portions a lot. I think of veggies as nutrition and water, not a food where I can get energy so I don’t even count veggies when I’m counting calories and nutrition. For energy, I go to potatoes, whole grains, and starchy veggies. I’m obsessed with carrots and sweet potatoes.”

Tia Blanco (1997)

"Why Surfer Tia Blanco Is Vegan" https://web.archive.org/web/20170315222610/http://www.mensjournal.com:80/health-fitness/articles/why-surfer-tia-blanco-is-vegan-w471552, interview with Men's Journal (March 2017).

Food , Feeling , Thinking , Study

“As a physician I am embarrassed by the lack of initiative and obstructionist policies of my own medical profession toward healthier lifestyles. This is not surprising. Physicians lack training and knowledge of nutrition and are self-serving when they proclaim “patients won't follow plant-based nutrition.” Having counseled patients with severe coronary artery heart disease for over twenty years, I find the opposite to be true. Patients sent home to die by expert cardiologists after failing bypass or stents rejoice as they lose weight, eliminate angina chest pains, lessen their medication, lower their blood sugars, decrease or come off their insulin, revert their positive stress test back to normal, selectively diminish the plaque plugging their arteries, and resume a fully active life empowered by the knowledge that they, not their physicians, have become the locus of control for the disease that was destroying them.”

Caldwell Esselstyn (1933) American physician, author and rower

Foreword https://books.google.it/books?id=6Aosc1wlAXcC&pg=PA1 to No More Bull! by Howard Lyman (New York: Scribner, 2005).

Life , Pain , Disease , Home

“It is a question of the systematic and interpretive organization of the sensational, scattered and narcissist surrealist experimental material, - that is to say, of everyday surrealist events:, br>nocturnal pollution, false recollection, dream, diurnal fantasy, the concrete transformation of nocturnal phosphene into a hypnagogic image or of "waking phosphene" into an objective image, - the nutritive caprice, - inter-uterine claims, - anamorphic hysteria, - the voluntary retention of the urine, - the involuntary retention of insomnia - the fortuitous image of exclusively exhibitionist tendency, -the incomplete action, - the frantic manner, - the regional sneeze, the anal wheelbarrow, the minimal mistake, the liliputian malaise, the super-normal physiological state, - the picture one leaves off painting, that which one paints, the territorial ringing of the telephone, "the deranging image", etc., etc.,
all these things, I say, and a thousand other instantaneous or successive sollicitations, revealing a minimum of irrational intentionalety or, on the contrary, a minimum of suspect phenomenal nullity, are associated, by the mechanisms of paranoiac-critical activity, in an indestructible delirious-interpretive system of political problems, paralytic images, more or less mammiferous questions, playing the role of the obsessing idea.”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

Source: Quotes of Salvador Dali, 1931 - 1940, My Pictorial Struggle', S. Dali, 1935, Chapter: 'My Pictorial Struggle', pp. 15-16

Dreams , Idea , Question , Problem

“So there is a big transformation. Also if you see the average lifespan, which was 28–29 in 1947, is now 64–65. In Kerala it is 74 or so. I am sure soon it will become 80–90. That is partly also because of food, because without nutrition, it is not possible. So we have had a transformation in our economic wellbeing. But that is not spread evenly in society; there are still very poor people, the highly deprived. In my view, the first task of both science and society is to address this issue”

M. S. Swaminathan (1925) Indian scientist

On changes in the living conditions in India since Indepencnce in 1947 pdf, In Conversation: M. S. Swaminathan, 25 October 2011, Current Science http://www.currentscience.ac.in/Volumes/101/08/0996.pdf,

People , Food , Science

“I've been a vegetarian for 21 years and a vegan plant-based athlete for 5 years. … Nothing takes the place of real plant-based nutrition.”

Jason P. Lester (1974) American triathlete and distance runner

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/p/n7OlTXNTcx/ (12 May 2014).

“Cow milk has no valid claim as the perfect food. As nutrition, it produces allergies in infants, diarrhea and cramps in the older child and adult, and may be a factor in the development of heart attacks and strokes. Perhaps when the public is educated as to the hazards of milk only calves will be left to drink the real thing. Only calves should drink the real thing.”

Frank Oski (1932–1996) American pediatrician

Source: Don't Drink Your Milk! (1983), p. 84

Education , Food , Drink , Heart

“We must give our children the equal opportunity to develop their minds and bodies to the fullest. We will continue, even expand, the conditional cash transfers (or CCT's) to the poorest families so that their children will have the means to get to school and the nutrition to support a healthy brain - and body. We must cut down drastically that 34% drop-out rate in primary grades.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2009, Speech: The Socio-Economic Peace Program of Senator Francis Escudero

Children , School , Family , Support

“In Aristotle the mind, regarded as the principle of life, divides into nutrition, sensation, and faculty of thought, corresponding to the inner most important stages in the succession of vital phenomena.”

Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920) German physician, physiologist, philosopher and professor

Source: Principles of Physiological Psychology, 1904, p. 22

Life , Success

“Knowing that training is little more than breaking down muscle, I figured that what rebuilds that same muscle must be a major factor for recovery and therefore quicker improvement. If I was able to recover from each workout faster, I would be able to schedule them closer together and therefore train more than my competition. I would improve faster. As I suspected, food was the answer—high-quality, nutrient-dense, alkaline-forming, easily digestible food in proper proportions … Nutrition has a dramatic effect on recovery—that was unmistakable. … The result was astounding. Not only did my recovery time plummet but my energy level, strength-to-weight ratio, and endurance shot up. … On the cellular level, this diet was able to speed the renewal of muscle tissue. That meant that following this diet would actually help the body regenerate more frequently, suggesting that it could help reduce biological age.”

Brendan Brazier (1975) Canadian triathlete, publisher, writer, editor

Introduction
The Thrive Diet

Age , Food , Time , Help

“Don't ask God to bless junk food and miraculously transform it so that it has nutritional value. That's not how God works.”

Bill Hybels (1951) American writer

Too Busy Not to Pray (2008, InterVarsity Press)

God , Food

“It is terrible to see how a single unclear idea, a single formula without meaning, lurking in a young man’s head, will sometimes act like an obstruction … in an artery, hindering the nutrition of the brain, and condemning its victim to pine away in the fullness of his intellectual vigor and in the midst of intellectual plenty.”

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist

"How to make our ideas clear,” Popular Science Monthly, Vol. 12 (January 1878)

Idea

“To maintain good health requires good nutrition and a healthy dose of exercise.”

DeBarra Mayo (1953) American martial artist

Erie Times, SportsWeek, March 3, 1986

Health , Exercises

“There is nothing necessary or desirable for human nutrition to be found in meats or flesh foods, which are not found in and derived from vegetable products.”

John Harvey Kellogg (1852–1943) American physician

Source: The New Dietetics, What to Eat and How: A Guide to Scientific Feeding in Health and Disease, Battle Creek, MI: The Modern Medicine Publishing Co., 1921, p. 366 https://books.google.it/books?id=TNsMAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA366.

Food

“The immanent purpose is an intrinsic property of living beings, without it, they would not exist. Consider the autonomous function units and their components: organs, tissues, isolated cells, as well as other properties such as nutrition, body defense, growth, reproduction, to which they are subject at the end. When it comes to these properties, biologists do not argue; but if you pronounce the word purpose, there is a public outcry. Probably because they do not distinguish the purpose of fact or immanent, the trascendental purpose. Of the latter, the biologist has little or nothing to say; it is a matter of metaphysics.”

Pierre-Paul Grassé (1895–1985) French zoologist

Grassé, Pierre Paul (1977); Evolution of living organisms: evidence for a new theory of transformation. Academic Press, p. 2
Evolution of living organisms: evidence for a new theory of transformation (1977)
Original: La finalité immanente est une propriété intrinseque des etres vivants, sans elle, ils n'existeraient pas. Considérés en tant qu' unités fonctionelles autonomes, leurs constituants: organes, tissus, cellule isolée, au meme titre que les autres propriétés: nutrition, défense de l'organisme, croissance, reproduction, sont subordonnés à une fin. Quand il s'agit de ces propriétes, les biologistes ne se disputent pas; mais si l'on pronounce le mot finalité, c'est un levée de boucliers. Probablement parce qu'ils ne distinguent pas la finalité de fait ou immanente, de la finalité trascendante. Sur cette derniere, le biologiste n'a que peu, sinon rien à dire; elle ressortit de la métaphysique

“In our cultural glorification of dairy, we often forget that many of these products are directly contributing to our current public health epidemic. Even more troubling, due to the dairy industry’s deep pockets and political connections, federal authorities are giving these foods a stamp of approval, rather than raising a nutritional red flag.”

Andy Bellatti (1982) Argentine journalist

Quoted in Michele Simon, "Whitewashed: How Industry and Government Promote Dairy Junk Foods" https://www.huffingtonpost.com/michele-simon/dairy-junk-foods_b_5485922.html, HuffPost (18 June 2014).

Health , Food , Forgetting

“The panel put targets, for example, on nutrition, education, ending preventable child deaths, encouraging birth registration, putting an end to violence against girls, and child marriage — all of which, if enacted, will improve the lives of billions of children throughout the world.”

Tawakkol Karman (1979) Yemeni journalist, politician, human rights activist, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

2000s, Youth Q&A on the U.N. High-Level Panel on the Post-2015 Agenda Report (2009)

Death , Marriage , Children , World

“Someone could have an outstanding comprehension of a bodybuilding diet and a background in nutrition but not have the work ethic and desire to put it into practice. That person won't be as successful as the person who understands some basics and puts them into action regularly.”

Robert Cheeke (1980) American bodybuilder

Source: Vegan Bodybuilding and Fitness (2010), Ch. 3

Understanding , Success , Personality

“I started out like most people just finding my local martial arts gym … and it's quite easy to start thinking that whatever you're in is the best thing that you can do, so … I assumed that Taekwondo is the best. … I started thinking, “Well, maybe there's something else that the other arts have offer,” so I started cross-training. Anyway, that got me into competing in mixed martial arts. So, I thought my diet was pretty good … and it was until I got injured … that I actually had some time to sit back and really analyze what I was eating, and I realized I hadn't applied the same scrutiny to my diet as I had to the martial arts training. So I saw a parallel there, that in martial arts there's a lot of nonsense out there, people teaching stuff that really doesn't work, and I'd realized that and started finding the truth in martial arts, and basically I realized I hadn't found the truth in nutrition, so last year I spent over 1,000 hours looking at peer reviewed medical science and realized that a plant-based diet is superior and optimal for health and athletic performance.”

James Wilks (1978) English martial artist

Speech at the Healthy Lifestyle Expo, in Woodland Hills, California (October 12-15, 2012). Video in “MMA Ultimate Fighter - James "Lighting" Wilks - Is Vegan”, in VegSource.com http://www.vegsource.com/news/2012/12/mma-ultimate-fighter---james-lighting-wilks---is-vegan-video.html.

People , Health , Truth , Art

“We will make yogurt with all kinds of nutritious elements. We want to provide nutrition to the poor and children.”

Muhammad Yunus (1940) Bangladeshi banker, economist and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

The Daily Star (14 October 2006)

Children

“Why should there be hunger and privation in any land, in any city, at any table when man has the resources and the scientific know-how to provide all mankind with the basic necessities of life? Even deserts can be irrigated and top soil can be replaced. We cannot complain of a lack of land, for there are twenty-five million square miles of tillable land, of which we are using less than seven million. We have amazing knowledge of vitamins, nutrition, the chemistry of food, and the versatility of atoms. There is no deficit in human resources; the deficit is in human will. The well-off and the secure have too often become indifferent and oblivious to the poverty and deprivation in their midst. The poor in our countries have been shut out of our minds, and driven from the mainstream of our societies, because we have allowed them to become invisible. Just as nonviolence exposed the ugliness of racial injustice, so must the infection and sickness of poverty be exposed and healed - not only its symptoms but its basic causes. This, too, will be a fierce struggle, but we must not be afraid to pursue the remedy no matter how formidable the task.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, The Quest for Peace and Justice (1964)

Life , Hunger , Food , Knowledge

“I believe that we in the medical profession have taken the wrong course. It is as if we were simply standing by, watching millions of people march over a cliff, and then intervening in a desperate, last-minute attempt to save them once they have fallen over the edge. Instead, we should be teaching them how to avoid the chasm entirely, how to walk parallel to the precipice so that they will never fall at all. I believe that coronary artery disease is preventable, and that even after it is under way, its progress can be stopped, its insidious effects reversed. I believe, and my work over the past twenty years has demonstrated, that all this can be accomplished without expensive mechanical intervention and with minimal use of drugs. The key lies in nutrition—specifically, in abandoning the toxic American diet and maintaining cholesterol levels well below those historically recommended by health policy experts.”

Caldwell Esselstyn (1933) American physician, author and rower

Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease https://books.google.it/books?id=WDjZpJXEQwkC&pg=PT0 (New York: Penguin, 2007), ch. 1.

People , Health , Disease , Way

“The generally accepted computation is that 2½ acres of land are required to provide a minimum adequate diet for each person, by Western standards anyhow. On a vegetarian diet it has been estimated that 1½ acres per head may provide enough. The reason for this difference is that animals grazed for meat-eating purposes require about 15 times more land than is necessary to raise an equivalent amount of nutrition in the form of grains, vegetables and fruit for human consumption. This means that India, on a vegetarian diet, is living far more wisely within its own land resources than are the meat-eating peoples.”

Richard Gregg (social philosopher)

Which Way Lies Hope? An Examination of Capitalism, Communism, Socialism and Gandhiji's Programme (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1952), p. 8 https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.54786/2015.54786.Which-Way-Lies-Hope#page/n15/mode/2up.

People , Time , Animals , Personality

“The crusade is never off my mind — the exercise I do, the food I eat, the thought I think — all this and how I can help make my profession better-respected. To me, this one thing — physical culture and nutrition — is the salvation of America.”

Jack LaLanne (1914–2011) American exercise instructor

In "Jack LaLanne dies at 96; spiritual father of U.S. fitness movement, LosAngeles Times"

Food , Exercises , Thinking , Help

“This is a message to all those out there who think that you need animal products to be fit and strong. Almost two years after becoming vegan I am stronger than ever before and I am still improving day by day. Don't listen to those self proclaimed nutrition gurus and the supplement-industry trying to tell you that you need meat, eggs and dairy to get enough protein. There are plenty plant-based protein-sources and your body is going to thank you for stopping to feed it with dead-food. Go vegan and feel the power!”

Patrik Baboumian (1979) German strength-athlete

Message attached to his YouTube video “555kg yoke-carry for 10m in the middle of Berlin” (1 September 2013) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vUQISAuFiI.

Food , Feeling , Thinking , Strong

“Society… directly penetrates the organism in its functioning, most importantly in respect to sexuality and nutrition. While both sexuality and nutrition are grounded in biological drives, these drives are extremely plastic in the human animal. Man is driven by his biological constitution to seek sexual release and nourishment. But his biological constitution does not tell him where he should seek sexual release and what he should eat.”

Peter L. Berger book The Social Construction of Reality

(1991, p. 202)
The Social Construction of Reality, 1966

Animals

“No one supposed that dinoflagellates might actively kill fish as an evolved response for their own specific advantage, including a potential nutritional benefit for the algal cells. And yet the dinoflagellates do seem to be killing and eating fishes in a manner suggesting active evolution for this most peculiar reversal.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

"Reversing Established Orders", p. 400
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

Fish

“Animals deserve to be treated with kindness. I love animals, and I don't believe humans can treat them as commodities and cause them harm. … I officially became a vegan on June 1, 2009. Even though it's quite a change in terms of nutrition, I have never felt better or so healthy in my life. Considering that I'm a professional athlete, that's quite important … I understand the impact I have in joining many groups like PETA. I don't do it to force people to be vegetarian or vegan. I just want to educate people on the subject to make this world a better place. … Many people … refuse to get educated on the matter because just like me, they're sensitive and afraid to make a change. But my friends, that change is not bad at all. … Millions of people around the globe are going vegetarian for the sake of animals, their health and the environment. I encourage you to give it a try too!”

Georges Laraque (1976) Canadian ice hockey player

“A Vegan Life”, in georgeslaraque.com (August 2009) https://georgeslaraque.com/vg-vegan.php.

Love , Life , People , Health

“The study convincingly indicates that African diet was previously more varied, being based on a more diversified agriculture than was possible under colonialism. In terms of specific nutritional deficiencies, those Africans who suffered most under colonialism were those who were brought most fully into the colonial economy: namely, the urban workers.”

Walter Rodney book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

Source: How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972), p. 373.
Context: Finally, attention must be drawn to one of the most important consequences of colonialism on African development, and that is the stunting effect on Africans as a physical species. Colonialism created conditions which led not just to periodic famine but to chronic undernourishment, malnutrition, and deterioration in the physique of the African people. If such a statement sounds wildly extravagant, it is only because bourgeois propaganda has conditioned even Africans to believe that malnutrition and starvation were the natural lot of Africans from time immemorial. A black child with a transparent rib cage, huge head, bloated stomach, protruding eyes, and twigs as arms and legs was the favorite poster of the large British charitable operation known as Oxfam. The poster represented a case of kwashiorkor—extreme malignant malnutrition. Oxfam called upon the people of Europe to save starving African and Asian children from kwashiorkor and such ills. Oxfam never bothered their consciences by telling them that capitalism and colonialism created the starvation, suffering, and misery of the child in the first place. There is an excellent study of the phenomenon of hunger on a world scale by a Brazilian scientist, Josue de Castro. It incorporates considerable data on the food and health conditions among Africans in their independent pre-colonial state or in societies untouched by capitalist pressures; and it then makes comparisons with colonial conditions. The study convincingly indicates that African diet was previously more varied, being based on a more diversified agriculture than was possible under colonialism. In terms of specific nutritional deficiencies, those Africans who suffered most under colonialism were those who were brought most fully into the colonial economy: namely, the urban workers.

Study , Suffering

“I am not a great fan of shouting down people or being rude to people, I think we have a situation and a Congress that's way out of touch with where the American people are. People have a right to be angry when Congress gives tax breaks to billionaires and wants to cut nutrition programs for low income pregnant women. You have a right to be angry. Take that out in a constructive way. … I think people have a right to go into a restaurant and have dinner, that's where we got to place our energy. I do know that people are angry. They are angry about these terribly inhumane immigration policies. They're angry about the fact they can't afford prescription drugs. They are angry about tax breaks that go to billionaires. The way to deal with that is exactly what Alexandria did. Organize at the grass roots level. Win elections and get involved in the political process.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

About the Red Hen restaurant controversy. Video online https://www.mediaite.com/tv/bernie-sanders-defends-sarah-sanders-people-have-a-right-to-go-to-a-restaurant-for-dinner/ at Mediaite, 27 June 2018.
2010s, 2018

Women , People , Way , Thinking

“Diet and nutrition advice is often focused on how much we ought to eat, and misses the point: More important than how much, how often, and when we eat is what we eat. Different kinds of animals require different types of diets. We humans are built to thrive on starch. The more rice, corn, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and beans we eat, the trimmer, more energetic, and healthier we become.
Starch? Really? Isn't that for laundry? Yes, but it's also the key to optimum health and satiety. We hear a lot about carbohydrates and whether or not we should eat them, but we don't hear enough about the most valuable type of carbohydrate, starch.”

John A. McDougall (1947) American physician

The Starch Solution (Rodale Books, 2013), Ch. 1, p. 6 https://books.google.it/books?id=if9YAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA6.

Health , Animals

“Gazing into the golden rage of the sun shreds vision into scraps of light and darkness. A white sun is congealed from patches of light, floating ephemerally at the edge of blindness. This is the illuminating sun, giving what we can keep, the sun whose outpourings are acquired by the body as nutrition, and by the eye as (assimilable) sensation. (…) Mixed with this nourishing radiance, as its very heart, is the other sun, the deeper one, dark and contagious, provoking a howl from Bataille: ‘the sun is black’. From this second sun—the sun of malediction—we receive not illumination but disease, for whatever it squanders on us we are fated to squander in turn.”

Nick Land (1962) British philosopher

Source: The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism (1992), Chapter 2: "The curse of the sun", p. 20

Fate , Disease , Light , Rage

“Health is normal. The human body is a self-repairing, self-defending, and self-healing marvel. Disease is relatively difficult to induce, considering the body’s powerful immune system. However, this complicated and delicate machinery can be damaged if fed the wrong fuel during the formative years. The chronic diseases commonly associated with aging—hypertension, coronary artery disease, Type II diabetes, degenerative joint disease, Parkinson’s, and Alzheimer’s, as well as most cancers—are not the inevitable outcome of the aging process; they are born out of wrong food choices earlier in life. Healthy living with nutritional excellence throughout life can slow the decline of aging. It can prevent the years and years of suffering in ill health that is so common today as people get older and become dependent on medical treatments, drugs, and surgery. Medical intervention does very little to slow the progression of illnesses and gradual mental and physical decline. Nutritional excellence is the only real fountain of youth.”

Joel Fuhrman (1953) Family Physician and author

Source: Disease-Proof Your Child (2005), Ch. 1, p. 7

Life , People , Health , Youth

“The objective of social change might concern the nutritional standard of consumption, the economic standard of living, the type of group relation, the output of a factory, the productivity of an educational team. It is important that a social standard to be changed does not have the nature of a “thing” but of a “process.””

Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) German-American psychologist

Source: 1940s, Quasi-Stationary Social Equilibria and the Problem of Permanent Change, 1947, p. 39.

Education , Nature , Change

“I started looking into nutrition and alternative medicine because I obviously didn’t want to take any drugs or anything like that. I actually found out that what I was eating could actually affect the way I felt. … You can train as hard as you want but if you’re not training the right thing, it won’t help you out. Half of that is doing your homework at home. If you work your bones off in the gym and then you go home and don’t get a good amount of sleep and don’t eat good, you won’t get good results. … One of the reasons why I love the martial arts so much is because of the discipline. It makes me do things I should be doing anyway, like eating right and not partying.”

Luke Cummo (1980) American mixed martial artist

"TUF 2 welterweight finalist Luke Cummo" https://www.mmaweekly.com/tuf-2-welterweight-finalist-luke-cummo, interview with MMAWeekly.com (November 2, 2005).

Love , Art , Way , Home

“There is, I think, no more nutritive or suggestive truth… than that of the perfect dependence of the "moral" sense of a work of art on the amount of felt life concerned in producing it. The question comes back thus, obviously, to the kind and the degree of the artist's prime sensibility, which is the soil out of which his subject springs.”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

The Portrait of a Lady.
Prefaces (1907-1909)

Life , Truth , Art , Spring

“The same nutritive elements exist in both vegetable and animal foods, and … within certain limits, the two classes of food are interchangeable.”

Edward Smith (physician) (1819–1874) British physician, born 1819

Source: Foods, Ch. XIX, p. 143

Food , Animals

“Nutrition has always played a huge role in my life. I became a vegetarian when I was 13 and then got my entire family to become vegetarians. And I have always been active my whole life. I genuinely enjoy sports and I spend time on my total gym.”

Christie Brinkley (1954) American model

“Christie Brinkley Is 'Energized' About 2009”, interview with People (18 January 2009) http://people.com/celebrity/christie-brinkley-is-energized-about-2009/.

Life , Family , Sport , Time

“My mom always taught me to hold my head up high and be strong and confident in everything I do. … I’ve been interested in fitness and nutrition for most of my life. I became a vegetarian at a very young age and had to learn how to get the proper nutrition to my body. Over a 15-year process I visited trainers, dietitians and doctors; read hundreds of books and studies; and eventually became a personal trainer and fitness nutritionist myself. I want to use all of my real-life experience and the science behind my certifications to help educate everyone struggling with their body image. … Modeling is a lot of hard work and you have to have a very strong sense of self and confidence to succeed.”

Jayde Nicole (1986) Canadian model, Playboy's Playmate of the Month January 2007 and Playmate of the Year 2008

"Jayde Nicole, Miss 2008, Interview", in RunwayLive.com (20 August 2011) https://www.runwaylive.com/3306-jayde-nicole-miss-2008-interview.html.

Life , Books , Age , Education

“The promotion of dairy products in schools is especially troubling, where children are a captive audience and greatly influenced by the foods served there. That’s why the dairy industry wants to maintain its strong presence in schools, despite local and federal efforts to improve the nutritional quality of school food.”

Michele Simon (1965) public health lawyer

Whitewashed (2014)

Children , School , Food , Effort

“Every … element, whether mineral or organic, which is required for nutrition is found in the vegetable kingdom.”

Edward Smith (physician) (1819–1874) British physician, born 1819

Source: Foods, Ch. XIX, p. 143

“My job was to manage the editorial production of the first—and as yet only—Surgeon General's Report on Nutrition and Health … My first day on the job, I was given the rules: No matter what the research indicated, the report could not recommend “eat less meat” as a way to reduce intake of saturated fat, nor could it suggest restrictions on intake of any other category of food. In the industry-friendly climate of the Reagan administration, the producers of foods that might be affected by such advice would complain to their beneficiaries in Congress, and the report would never be published.”

Marion Nestle American academic

Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health, University of California Press (2002, 2013), Introduction, p. 3 https://books.google.it/books?id=39oVBbtt6IEC&pg=PA3

Health , Food , Way

“Thousands — millions and billions — of animals are killed for food. That is very sad. We human beings can live without meat, especially in our modern world. We have a great variety of vegetables and other supplementary foods, so we have the capacity and the responsibility to save billions of lives. I have seen many individuals and groups promoting animal rights and following a vegetarian diet. This is excellent. Certain killing is purely a "luxury." … But perhaps the saddest is factory farming. The poor animals there really suffer. I once visited a poultry farm in Japan where they keep 200,000 hens for two years just for their eggs. During those two years, they are prisoners. Then after two years, when they are no longer productive, the hens are sold. That is really shocking, really sad. We must support those who are attempting to reduce that kind of unfair treatment. An Indian friend told me that his young daughter has been arguing with him that it is better to serve one cow to ten people than to serve chicken or other small animals, since more lives would be involved. In the Indian tradition, beef is always avoided, but I think there is some logic to her argument. Shrimp, for example, are very small. For one plate, many lives must be sacrificed. To me, this is not at all delicious. I find it really awful, and I think it is better to avoid these things. If your body needs meat, it may be better to eat bigger animals. Eventually you may be able to eliminate the need for meat. I think that our basic nature as human beings is to be vegetarian — making every effort not to harm other living beings. If we apply our intelligence, we can create a sound, nutritional program. It is very dangerous to ignore the suffering of any sentient being.”

Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet

Interview in Worlds in Harmony: Dialogues on Compassionate Action, Berkeley: Parallax Press, 1992, pp. 20-21.

People , World , Sadness , Food

“Nutrition science is where surgery was in about 1650, you know, really interesting and promising, but would you want to have them operate on you yet? I don’t think so.”

Michael Pollan (1955) American author, journalist, activist, and professor of journalism

[In Defense of Food: Author, Journalist Michael Pollan on Nutrition, Food Science and the American Diet, 2008-02-13, Democracy Now!, http://www.democracynow.org/2008/2/13/in_defense_of_food_author_journalist, 2009-04-15]

Thinking , Science

“Beer is amazing. Nutritional. Medicinal. A beverage, but also a meal.”

J. R. Moehringer book The Tender Bar

The Tender Bar, p. 108, ppb edition.

Beer

“I always felt tired when I used to eat meat—I got sick of that. Also, I wanted to start a serious training/nutritional program for my surfing competitions. I tried it out (not eating meat) and loved it—I felt so healthy and energetic. I’ve never looked back since! … I believe those (meat) companies … should just think of their pets—if they would like their pets treated like that—and then ask them if they want to continue doing that. … Definitely I want to become a world champion surfer one day, but more importantly, being a good role model for kids and promoting a clean lifestyle.”

Anastasia Ashley (1987) American surfer and model

"Anastasia Ashley: Too Beautiful", interview with peta2 (19 January 2012) https://www.peta2.com/news/anastasia-ashley-too-beautiful/.

Love , World , Thinking , Training

“That summer I was nominated to go to the Team Birkie ski camp for the best high school cross-country skiers in the state. … The camp served vegetable lasagna, all kinds of salads, and freshly baked whole wheat bread. … I didn't have any choice, so I ate it all. And I couldn't believe how good it tasted! What was even more amazing was how great I felt. I trained more, and more often, at that camp than I ever had before. And I had never felt better, stronger. I suspected that what I was eating had something to do with how I was feeling, but it wasn't until years later, when I began to study the connection between diet and exercise, nutrition and health, that I learned the importance of diet for everyone — not just athletes. I would learn that a plant-based diet meant more fiber, which sped food through the digestive tract, minimizing the impact of toxins. The same diet also meant more vitamins and minerals; more substances like lycopene, lutein, and beta carotene, which helps protect against chronic disease. And it would mean less refined carbohydrates and trans fats, both implicated in heart disease and other ailments.”

Scott Jurek (1973) American ultramarthon runner

Source: Eat and Run (2012), Ch. 4, pp. 31-32

Health , Disease , School , Food

“Interviewer: How about pets, Wayne? Would you envision a future with no pets in the world?
Wayne Pacelle: I wouldn’t say that I envision that, no. If I had my personal view perhaps that might take hold. In fact, I don’t want to see another cat or dog born. It’s not something I strive for, though. If people were very responsible, and didn’t do manipulative breeding, and cared for animals in all senses, and accounted for their nutritional needs as well as their social and psychological needs, then I think it could be an appropriate thing. I’m not sure. I think it’s one of those things that we’ll decide later in society. I think we’re still far from it.”

Wayne Pacelle (1965) American activist

Interview in "Bloodties: Nature, Culture, and the Hunt," 1994

People , World , Dogs , Cats

“My belief in how plant-based nutrition could boost athletic performance while also reducing the strain on the environment was, at the time, considered fringe at best. … Ten years later, it's now common for people to speak of their “plant-based diet.” Even “vegan” is a familiar word, seen on the most conventional restaurants' menus. The importance of avoiding animal products in our diet, whether for heath, physical and mental performance, environmental, ethical, or a combination of these reasons, is now well understood and widely accepted.”

Brendan Brazier (1975) Canadian triathlete, publisher, writer, editor

Preface to the 10th Anniversary Edition
The Thrive Diet

People , Time , Animals

“The Harvard Law states: Under controlled conditions of light, temperature, humidity, and nutrition, the organism will do as it damn well pleases.”

Larry Wall (1954) American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl

[199710161841.LAA13208@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

Law , Light

“flimsy, desultory readers, who fly from foolish book to foolish book, and get good of none, and mischief of all—are not these as foolish, unhealthy eaters, who mistake their superficial false desire after spiceries and confectioneries for their real appetite, of which even they are not destitute, though it lies far deeper, far quieter, after solid nutritive food?”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1860s, On The Choice Of Books (1866)

Books , Food , Falseness , Flying

“Life seems to be common even to plants, but we are seeking what is peculiar to man. Let us exclude, therefore, the life of nutrition and growth. Next there would be a life of perception, but it also seems to be common even to the horse, the ox, and every animal. There remains, then, an active life of the element that has a rational principle; of this, one part has such a principle in the sense of being obedient to one, the other in the sense of possessing one and exercising thought. And, as "life of the rational element" also has two meanings, we must state that life in the sense of activity is what we mean; for this seems to be the more proper sense of the term. Now if the function of man is an activity of soul which follows or implies a rational principle, and if we say "so-and-so" and "a good so-and-so" have a function which is the same in kind, e. g. a lyre, and a good lyre-player, and so without qualification in all cases, eminence in respect of goodness being added to the name of the function (for the function of a lyre-player is to play the lyre, and that of a good lyre-player is to do so well): if this is the case, and we state the function of man to be a certain kind of life, and this to be an activity or actions of the soul implying a rational principle, and the function of a good man to be the good and noble performance of these, and if any action is well performed when it is performed in accordance with the appropriate excellence: if this is the case, human good turns out to be activity of soul in accordance with virtue, and if there are more than one virtue, in accordance with the best and most complete.
But we must add "in a complete life."”

Aristotle book Nicomachean Ethics

For one swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy.
Book I, 1098a; §7 as translated by W. D. Ross
Variants:
One swallow does not a summer make.
As quoted in A History of Ancient Philosophy: From the Beginning to Augustine (1998) by Karsten Friis Johansen, p. 382
One swallow (they say) no Sommer doth make.
John Davies, in The Scourge of Folly (1611)
One swallow yet did never summer make.
As rendered by William Painter in Chaucer Newly Painted (1623)
One swallow does not make a spring, nor does one sunny day; similarly, one day or a short time does not make a man blessed and happy.
As translated in Philosophical Grounds of Rationality: Intentions, Categories, Ends (1988), by Richard E. Grandy and ‎Richard Warner, p. 483
Nicomachean Ethics

Life , Exercises , Soul , Sense

“We have accepted a warped sense of priorities which says America can always find enough money for war, but that there is never enough for infrastructure or education or nutrition programs. We are going to reject that idea and invest in our people.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

Twitter, https://twitter.com/BernieSanders/ (3 July 2019)
2010s, 2019, July 2019

Money , War , People , Sense

“The chief activities of beings, both human and non-human, are put forth, directly or indirectly, for the purpose of procuring food. The suppression, entire or partial, of one being by another for nutritive purposes is, therefore, the form of the most frequent and excessive egoism. The lowly forms of life—the worms, echinoderms, mollusks, and the like—are, for the most part, vegetarians. So, also, are prevalently the insects, birds, rodents, and ungulates. These creatures are not, as a rule, aggressively harmful to each other, chiefly indifferent. But upon these inoffensive races feed with remorseless maw the reptilia, the insectivora, and the carnivora. These being-eaters cause to the earth-world its bloodiest experiences. It is their nature (established organically by long selection, or, as in the case of man, acquired tentatively) to subsist, not on the kingdom of the plant, the natural and primal storehouse of animal energy, but on the skeletons and sensibilities of their neighbors and friends. The serpent dines on the sparrow and the sparrow ingulfs the gnat; the tiger slays the jungle-fowl and the coyote plunders the lamb; the seal subsists on fish and the ursus maritimus subsists on seal; the ant enslaves the aphidae and man eats and enslaves what can not get away from him. Life riots on life—tooth and talon, beak and paw. It is a sickening contemplation, But life everywhere, in its aspect of activity, is largely made up of the struggle by one being against another for existence—of the effort by one being to circumvent, subjugate, or destroy another, and of the counter effort to reciprocate or escape.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), The Preponderance of Egoism, pp. 123–125

Food , Indifference , Nature , Animals

“He had great compassion for the poor. He often voiced disquiet over the fact that minimum standards of nutrition, clothing, shelter, medical care and education were beyond the reach of many sections of the people of India and called for determined efforts to address these deficiencies. He was also deeply concerned about the weakening of traditional values that have enabled diverse Indians live together in peace for centuries.”

Neelam Sanjiva Reddy (1913–1996) sixth President of India

Speech by the President of India, Shri Pranab Mukherjee at the concluding function of the centenary celebrations of the former President of India, Dr. Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy

Peace , Clothes , People , Education

“Books don’t have a nutritional value. Which is to say, we don’t just read "good" books because they’re good for us. We read to expand our horizons, to understand and connect with something outside ourselves, good and bad. We read to challenge ourselves…”

Mariko Tamaki (1975) Canadian writer and artist

On reading books that might be deemed inappropriate in “We Read To Challenge Ourselves: An Interview With Mariko Tamaki” https://comicsalliance.com/mariko-tamaki-pride-week-interview/ in Comics Alliance (2016 Jun 24)

Bad luck , Books , Reading , Understanding

“A carnivorous animal is not an ideal animal, and never can be. The life of a carnivorous animal is a perpetual onslaught. Every meal is a murder. Eating is not the harmless activity it is to one who sits down to fruit and grains. The carnivore must kill somebody, or have somebody else do it for him, in order to eat. It cannot be otherwise. And an animal whose life is one unbroken succession of such necessities, whose stomach is the grave of hundreds and thousands, and even of tens of thousands, of his fellow-beings, may be meritorious in other respects — may preach the Golden Rule, decry war, give money to the missionary, and rail at the rich — but so long as he continues to fill himself every few hours with the blood and vitals of others, he is not only not an ideal animal, but has in reality no just claims on life. Flesh is a painful form of nutrition for any organism, but it is especially so for man, because it is unnecessary, and because man makes so many pretensions and occupies a position in the world of such exceptional responsibility.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: The New Ethics (1907), The Food of the Future, pp. 131–132

Money , Pain , Success , War