Quotes about vegetarianism
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Cloris Leachman photo
Rukmini Devi Arundale photo
Rupert Sheldrake photo
Michael Porter Jr. photo
Jeremy Corbyn photo

“I am vegetarian. … I became one at 20 when I was working in a pig farm. I got attached to the pigs and I couldn’t stand the thought that they would have to go off to be slaughtered.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

" A welcome in the hillside http://www.camdennewjournal.com/welcome-hillside", interview with John Gulliver, in Camden New Journal (13 August 2015).
2000s

Mary Tyler Moore photo
Samantha Barks photo
Patricia de Leon (actress) photo
Traci Bingham photo

“By exposing myself, I hope to expose others to the many benefits of a vegetarian diet.”

Traci Bingham (1968) American actress

About her ad for PETA, "All animals have the same parts—have a heart, go vegetarian", as quoted in "Traci Bingham Gets to the Meat of the Matter", PETA.org (2002) https://web.archive.org/web/20020805202404/http://www.peta.org:80/feat/tracibee/index-uk.html.

Jared Leto photo
Chris Adler photo

“My marriage, my relationships and family, my accomplishments with my band and my choice to be vegetarian are not only things I am proud of, they define me.”

Chris Adler (1972) American drummer

Print ad for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, in “Lamb of God’s Chris Adler is Vegetarian,” Peta2.com (20 July 2011) https://www.peta2.com/news/lamb-of-gods-chris-adler/.

Henry Stephens Salt photo
Rynn Berry photo
John Dear photo
Guido Ceronetti photo

“I am amazed when I see young people eating meat. It seems to me so much thing from other times! The carnivore youth is not with the times, it has a stomach of the nineteenth century, who carnivorized Europe… Eating pieces of slaughtered animals is an anomaly, out of a vegetarian diet there is no real youth. Meat is mostly an anguished habit of old people. Requiring meat dishes, talking about it, remembering it, it's a thing of old people, old and unable to rejuvenate with a decidedly alternative diet.”

Mi stupisco, quando vedo gente giovane mangiare carne. Mi sembra talmente cosa d'altre epoche! La gioventù carnivora non è coi tempi, ha uno stomaco da secolo XIX, che carnivorizzò l'Europa... Cibarsi di pezzi di animali macellati è un'anomalia, fuori della dieta vegetariana non c'è giovinezza vera. La carne è per lo più un'angosciata abitudine dei vecchi. Richiedere piatti di carne, parlarne, ricordarli è cosa da vecchi, e da vecchi incapaci di svecchiarsi con una dieta decisamente alternativa.
Insects without Borders: Thoughts of the Unknown Philosopher (Insetti senza frontiere: Pensieri del filosofo ignoto), Milan: Adelphi, 2009, § 34.

Bill Bailey photo
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.

Ingmar Bergman photo

“To the fanatical believer physical and spiritual suffering is beside the point, compared with salvation. That is why, to him, everything happening around him is irrelevant, a mirror-image, a mere will-o'-the-wisp. … I can really never get shot of them, the fanatics. Whether they appear as religious fanatics or vegetarian fanatics makes no odds. They're catastrophic people.”

Ingmar Bergman (1918–2007) Swedish filmmaker

Jonas Sima interview <!-- p. 117 -->
Bergman on Bergman (1970)
Context: To the fanatical believer physical and spiritual suffering is beside the point, compared with salvation. That is why, to him, everything happening around him is irrelevant, a mirror-image, a mere will-o'-the-wisp. … I can really never get shot of them, the fanatics. Whether they appear as religious fanatics or vegetarian fanatics makes no odds. They're catastrophic people. These types whose whole cast of mind as it were looks beyond mere human beings toward some unknown goal. The terrible thing is the great power they often wield over their fellow human beings. Apart from the fact that I believe they suffer like the very devil, I've no sympathy for them.

Bill Bailey photo
Christian Morgenstern photo
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar photo
Daniella Monet photo
J. Howard Moore photo

“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

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J. Howard Moore photo
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Killer Kowalski photo
Alice A. Bailey photo
Rajendra Prasad photo

“Coming from a scholarly family with complete spiritual background, he was a strict vegetarian, fully drenched in the Indian culture.”

Rajendra Prasad (1884–1963) Indian political leader

Source: Presidents of India, 1950-2003, p. 4

“There is a vegetarian option: you can fuck off.”

Frankie Boyle (1972) Scottish comedian

Series 6, episode 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JD8cL9UhccM.
Mock the Week

Robyn Hitchcock photo
Jenna Talackova photo

“I read a few books like Skinny Bitch, a bunch of books on vegan lifestyles and my mother always brought me to vegetarian restaurants, so I was really into diets and studying health. And I just thought it would be the best step, so I went vegetarian. … I watched a lot of PETA videos on YouTube, and it was heartbreaking.”

Jenna Talackova (1988) Canadian model

Unveiling her PETA ad on Davie Street; as quoted in "Jenna Talackova unveils racy PETA ad and promotes vegan diet" https://www.vancouverobserver.com/city/jenna-talackova-unveils-racy-peta-ad-and-promotes-vegan-diet, The Vancouver Observer (24 January 2014).

Hannah Teter photo

“I went vegetarian after watching Earthlings.”

Hannah Teter (1987) snowboarder

I had no idea how intense and how horrible factory farms are. I have such a love for animals that I can’t justify having their heads cut off for me. And the slavery of the dairy industry motivates me to go more vegan. I can’t justify animal slavery for my enjoyment. … I feel stronger than I’ve ever been, mentally, physically, and emotionally. My plant-based diet has opened up more doors to being an athlete. It’s a whole other level that I’m elevating to. I stopped eating animals about a year ago, and it’s a new life. I feel like a new person, a new athlete.
"Hannah Teter, Gold-Medal Snowboarder, Carves a Meaningful Life", interview with the HuffPost (21 April 2010) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/avital-binshtock/hannah-teter-gold-medal-s_b_468137.html.

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Ammon Hennacy photo

“A pacifist between wars is like a vegetarian between meals.”

Ammon Hennacy (1893–1970) American Christian radical

[A Revolution of the heart: essays on the Catholic worker, Coy, Patrick G., 1988, Temple University Press, 153]

Albert Einstein photo

“Besides agreeing with the aims of vegetarianism for aesthetic and moral reasons, it is my view that a vegetarian manner of living by its purely physical effect on the human temperament would most beneficially influence a lot of mankind.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

From a letter to Hermann Huth, Vice-President of the German Vegetarian Federation, 27 December 1930. Supposedly published in German magazine Vegetarische Warte, which existed from 1882 to 1935. Einstein Archive 46-756. Quoted in The Ultimate Quotable Einstein by Alice Calaprice (2011), [//books.google.it/books?id=G_iziBAPXtEC&pg=PA453 p. 453]. ISBN 978-0-691-13817-6
1930s

James Thomson (B.V.) photo
Mwanandeke Kindembo photo

“My name, as you may have guessed, is Theodore. I come from a strange stock. The members of my family were mostly epileptics, vegetarians, stutterers, triplets, nailbiters. But we've always been happy.”

Brother Theodore (1906–2001) German-American monologuist and comedian

[David Lefkowitz, https://www.playbill.com/article/stand-up-tragedy-brother-theodore-gottlieb-dead-at-94-com-95915, Stand-Up Tragedy: 'Brother' Theodore Gottlieb Dead at 94, Playbill, April 6, 2001, February 3, 2021]

Dhanush photo

“Being a vegetarian always made me feel healthy. I've always felt light. Every time I sit down to eat, I'm helping the environment. I'm proud to be a vegetarian.”

Dhanush (1983) Indian actor, singer, born 1983

"Dhanush, Mallika named hottest vegetarians" https://www.ndtv.com/entertainment/dhanush-mallika-named-hottest-vegetarians-623139, NDTV.com (20 January 2012).

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).

Esha Deol photo

“I have been a vegetarian all my life, as has my family, including all my dogs. Even when my father, a nonvegetarian, comes home for dinner, he has to eat vegetarian fare.”

Esha Deol (1981) Indian actress

Quoted in "Sexiest Veggies" https://web.archive.org/web/20121001155636/http://www.ndtv.com/photos/entertainment/anupama-verma-sizzles-for-peta-574/slide/10, NDTV.com (1 October 2012).

Yana Gupta photo