Quotes From Mostly Vegans & Vegetarians
PYTHAGORAS (570-490 BC)
"For as long as man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings, he will never know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seeds of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love."
BUDDHA (563-483 BC)
"To know, and not do, is not to know. All beings tremble before violence. All love life. All fear death. See yourself in others. Then whom can you hurt? What harm can you do?...First, live a compassionate life. Then you will know....He who injures living beings is not noble. He is called noble because he is gentle and kind towards all living beings.”
HIPPOCRATES (460-370 BC)
"The soul is the same in all living creatures, although the body of each is different. Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food."
PLATO (428-347 BC)
"The Gods created certain kinds of beings to replenish our bodies; they are the trees and the plants and the seeds...Compulsory physical exercise does no harm to the body, but compulsory learning never sticks to the mind."
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (1706-1790)
"My refusing to eat meat occasioned inconveniency, and I have been frequently chided for my singularity. But my light repast allows for greater progress, for greater clearness of head and quicker comprehension."
LEO TOLSTOY (1828-1910)
"As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields...Kindness is incompatible with steak...The kinder and more intelligent a person is, the more kindness he can find in other people. Kindness enriches our life; with kindness mysterious things become clear, difficult things become easy and dull things become cheerful...There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth...If you feel pain. You are alive. But, if you feel the pain of others, you’re human....Don’t tell me about your religion, let me see your religion in your actions.”
CHARLES DARWIN (1809-1882)
"There is no fundamental difference between man and the higher animals in their mental faculties . . . The lower animals, like man, manifestly feel pleasure and pain, happiness, and misery. Besides love and sympathy, animals exhibit other qualities connected with the social instincts which in us would be called moral."
DANIEL ELLSBERG (1931-2023)
"Look, all administrations, all governments lie, all officials lie, and nothing they say is to be believed. That's a pretty good rule."
HENRY DAVID THOREAU (1817-1862)
"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, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other...One farmer says to me, “You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make the bones with;” and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying himself with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle."
MARK TWAIN (1835-1910)
"Of all the creatures, man is the most detestable. Of the entire brood, he’s the one that possesses malice. He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain. The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot...Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect...It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions."
THOMAS EDISON (1847-1931)
"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. The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, in diet, and in the cause and prevention of disease."
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW (1856-1950)
"Think of the fierce energy concentrated in an acorn! You bury it in the ground, and it explodes into an oak! Bury a sheep, and nothing happens but decay...Animals are my friends, and I don't eat my friends."
JANE GOODALL (1934- )
“Farm animals are far more aware and intelligent than we ever imagined and, despite having been bred as domestic slaves, they are individual beings in their own right. As such, they deserve our respect. And our help. Who will plead for them if we are silent? Thousands of people who say they ‘love’ animals sit down once or twice a day to enjoy the flesh of creatures who have been treated with so little respect and kindness, just to make more meat.”
MAHATMA GANDHI (1869-1948)
"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated. Whenever you are confronted with an opponent. Conquer him with love.”
ALBERT SCHWEITZER (1875-1965)
"Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace."
RUTH HARRISON (1920-2000)
"In fact, if one person is unkind to an animal it is considered to be cruelty, but where a lot of people are unkind to animals, especially in the name of commerce, the cruelty is condoned and, once large sums of money are at stake, will be defended to the last by otherwise intelligent people."
CARL SAGAN (1934-1996)
"Humans–who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals–have had an understandable penchant for pretending animals do not feel pain. A sharp distinction between humans and “animals” is essential if we are to bend them to our will, make them work for us, wear them, eat them–without any disquieting tinges of guilt or regret. It is unseemly of us, who often behave so unfeelingly toward other animals, to contend that only humans can suffer. The behavior of other animals renders such pretensions specious. They are just too much like us."
T. COLIN CAMPBELL (1934- )
"What we have come to consider as “normal” illnesses of aging are really not normal. In fact, these findings indicate that the vast majority, perhaps 80 to 90% of all cancers, cardiovascular diseases, and other forms of degenerative illness can be prevented, at least until very old age, simply by adopting a plant-based diet. The closer you are to a plant based diet, the healthier you will be."
THE DALAI LAMA (1935- )
"I do not see any reason why animals should be slaughtered to serve as human diet when there are so many substitutes. After all, man can live without meat. It is only some carnivorous animals that have to subsist on flesh. Killing animals for sport, for pleasure, for adventures, and for hides and furs is a phenomenon which is at once disgusting and distressing. There is no justification in indulging in such acts of brutality . . . Life is as dear to a mute creature as it is to a man. Just as one wants happiness and fears pain, just as one wants to live and not to die, so do other creatures...If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito...My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.”
PAUL MCCARTNEY (1942- )
"If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian."
NEAL D. BARNARD, MD (1953- )
"The beef industry has contributed to more American deaths than all the wars of this century, all natural disasters, and all automobile accidents combined. If beef is your idea of “real food for real people,” you’d better live real close to a real good hospital."
ALBERT EINSTEIN (1879-1955)
"Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet...Be a loner. That gives you time to wonder, to search for the truth. Have holy curiosity. Make your life worth living...Although I am a typical loner in my daily life, my awareness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice has prevented me from feelings of isolation...Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social enviroment. Most people are incapable of forming such opinions...Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile...Those who have the privilege to know have the duty to act."
ANGELA DAVIS (1944- )
"The food we eat masks so much cruelty. The fact that we can sit down and eat a piece of chicken without thinking about the horrendous conditions under which chickens are industrially bred in this country is a sign of the dangers of capitalism, how capitalism has colonized our minds. The fact that we look no further than the commodity itself, the fact that we refuse to understand the relationships that underly the commodities that we use on a daily basis. And so food is like that."
NOVAK DJOKOVIC (1987- )
"I do eat plant-based. I think that's one of the reasons why I recover well. I don't have allergies that I used to have anymore... And I like it."
ALICE WALKER (1944- )
"The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for whites or women for men...as we talked of freedom and justice one day for all, we sat down to steaks. I am eating misery, I thought, as I took the first bite. And spit it out.”
JAMES CAMERON (1954- )
“It’s not a requirement to eat animals, we just choose to do it, so it becomes a moral choice and one that is having a huge impact on the planet, using up resources and destroying the biosphere...You can't be an environmentalist, you can't be an ocean steward without truly walking the walk and you can't walk the walk in the world of the future, the world ahead of us, the world of our children, not eating a plant-based diet."
JOHN ROBBINS (1947- )
“Your life does matter. It always matters whether you reach out in friendship or lash out in anger. It always matters whether you live with compassion and awareness or whether you succumb to distractions and trivia. It always matters how you treat other people, how you treat animals, and how you treat yourself. It always matters what you do. It always matters what you say. And it always matters what you eat...If you want to know what health is worth, ask the person who has lost it...It may be healthier to eat beer and franks with cheer and thanks, than to eat sprouts and bread with doubts and dread...Animals do not 'give' their life to us, as the sugar-coated lie would have it. No, we take their lives. They struggle and fight to the last breath, just as we would do if we were in their place... A doctor who doesn't know about food is like a firefighter who doesn't know about water."
DICK GREGORY (1932-2017)
"I had been a participant in all of the "major" and most of the "minor" civil rights demonstrations of the early sixties. Under the leadership of Dr. King, I became convinced that nonviolence meant opposition to killing in any form. I felt the commandment "Thou Shalt Not Kill" applied to human beings not only in their dealings with each other—war, lynching, assassination, murder, and the like—but in their practice of killing animals for food and sport. Animals and humans suffer and die alike. Violence causes the same pain, the same spilling of blood, the same stench of death, the same arrogant, cruel, and brutal taking of life."
PETER SINGER (1946- )
“We are, quite literally, gambling with the future of our planet- for the sake of hamburgers. The belief that the animals exist because God created them, and that he created them so we can better meet our needs, is contrary to our scientific understanding of evolution and, of course, to the fossil record, which shows the existence of non-human primates and other animals millions of years before there were any human beings at all. Animal Liberation is Human Liberation too...My own view is that being a vegetarian or vegan is not an end in itself, but a means towards reducing both human and animal suffering and leaving a habitable planet to future generations.”
DR. MICHAEL KLAPER (1947- )
"People are the only animals that drink the milk of the mother of another species. All other animals stop drinking milk altogether after weaning. It is unnatural for a dog to nurse from a mother giraffe; it is just as unnatural for a human being to drink the milk of a cow. The human body has no more need for cows' milk than it does for dogs' milk, horses' milk, or giraffes' milk."
DR. MILTON MILLS
"Human beings have the gastrointestinal tract structure of a "committed" herbivore. Humankind does not show the mixed structural features one expects and finds in anatomical omnivores such as bears and raccoons. Thus, from comparing the gastrointestinal tract of humans to that of carnivores, herbivores and omnivores we must conclude that humankind's GI tract is designed for a purely plant-food diet."
DR. DEAN ORNISH (1953- )
“I don't understand why asking people to eat a well-balanced vegetarian diet is considered drastic, while it is medically conservative to cut people open and put them on cholesterol lowering drugs for the rest of their lives...Poor health is not caused by something you don't have, it's caused by disturbing something that you already have. Health is not something you need to get, it's something you have already if you don't disturb it.”
VENUS WILLIAMS (1980- )
"There’s something about when you’re eating healthy food, it makes you feel proud and it makes you feel like you’re doing the right thing. When you eat unhealthy, there’s a certain guilt about it...you just know it’s going to catch up. So, I love that feeling of when I’m eating healthy...doing the right things, and eating plants, and eating live foods, it helps you in your life. I think you feel more energized and you feel more positive."
DR. WILL TUTTLE (1953- )
“There is something about veganism that is not easy, but the difficulty is not inherent in veganism, but in our culture...How could it ever be our purpose to rob another living being of his or her purpose?”
PETER DINKLAGE (1969- )
"By buying meat, eggs, and dairy products, you are paying for cruelty."
ARIANA GRANDE (1993- )
"I love animals more than I love most people, not kidding. But I am a firm believer in eating a full plant-based, whole food diet that can expand your life length and make you an all-around happier person."
STEVE O (1974- )
"Initially, my decision to stop eating meat was motivated by fear of spiritual consequences, but right away I found that not eating meat made me feel good about myself. It increased my self-esteem, which I found so rewarding, I wanted to do more."
ALICIA SILVERSTONE (1976- )
Nothing's changed my life more. I feel better about myself as a person, being conscious and responsible for my actions and I lost weight and my skin cleared up and I got bright eyes and I just became stronger and healthier and happier. Can't think of anything better in the world to be but be vegan...Being vegan just gives you such great karma."
DR. MELANIE JOY (1966- )
“Think about it: virtually every atrocity in the history of humankind was enabled by a populace that turned away from a reality that seemed too painful to face, while virtually every revolution for peace and justice has been made possibly by a group of people who chose to bear witness and demanded that others bear witness as well...Often, vegan advocates assume that a person's defensiveness is the result of selfishness or apathy, when in fact it is much more likely the result of systematic and intensive social conditioning...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, from African slavery to the Nazi Holocaust. When an ideology is in its prime, these myths rarely come under scrutiny. However, when the system finally collapses, the 3 Ns are recognized as ludicrous.”
CORETTA SCOTT KING (1927-2006)
"Veganism is interconnected with all other struggles against oppression. Killing an animal for no other reason than your taste, is to exercise a dangerous lack of compassion."
LAUREN ORNELAS
“We encourage people to eat their ethics and not look at going to the grocery store and buying food as overwhelming when thinking of these dilemmas, but instead looking at it as an opportunity. It’s one more chance to make a difference.”
CESAR CHAVEZ (1927-1993)
“I became a vegetarian after realizing that animals feel afraid, cold, hungry and unhappy like we do. I feel very deeply about vegetarianism and the animal kingdom. It was my dog Boycott who led me to question the right of humans to eat other sentient beings.”
ROSA PARKS (1913-2005)
“Stand for something or you will fall for anything. Today’s mighty oak is yesterday’s nut that held its ground.”
DR. CALDWELL ESSELSTYN (1933- )
"If the truth be known, coronary artery disease is a toothless paper tiger that need never, ever exist, and if it does exist, need never, ever progress."
DR. KIM WILLIAMS (1955- )
"There are two kinds of cardiologists, vegans, and those who haven't read the data."
DR. MICHELLE MCMACKEN
"The fact that doctors are not given the training to use what is universally recognized as the most powerful tool (healthy nutrition) is crazy."
CHRIS HEDGES (1956- )
"We can, by becoming vegan, refuse to be complicit in the torture of billions of animals for corporate profit and can have the well-documented health benefits associated with a plant-based diet, especially in the areas of heart disease and cancer."
DR. VANDANA SHIVA (1952- )
"Genetic engineering has never been about saving the world, it's about controlling the world. Nature shrinks as capital grows, The growth of the market cannot solve the very crisis that it creates."
GLENN GREENWALD (1967- )
"One of the odd aspects of animal mistreatment in the U.S. is that species regarded as more intelligent and emotionally complex — dogs, dolphins, cats, primates — generally receive more public concern and more legal protection. Yet pigs –among the planet’s most intelligent, social, and emotionally complicated species, capable of great joy, play, love, connection, suffering and pain, at least on a par with dogs — receive almost no protections, and are subject to savage systematic abuse by U.S. factory farms."
WOODY HARRELSON (1961- )
"So I started thinking to myself, Jeez, I’ve always been told nothing but ‘Milk does a body good.’ It’s a fundamental thing. So from there it was like, What else are they lying about? I just started realizing: There are all these things we’re brought up to believe that are just a total hoax, just bullshit advertising, you know?"
MICHELLE PFEIFFER (1958- )
"Eating a vegan diet — it's just so much healthier — and you avoid a lot of toxins that could age your skin and your body. I really noticed a difference in my skin not too long after switching to fully vegan,"
Ed Winters (1994-)
“Farmers love their animals and want only the best for them, while still profiting from sending them to a slaughterhouse to be killed. It is undeniably a contradiction to claim to love someone who you intend to kill for money.”
PAUL WATSON (1950- )
"If you want to know where you would have stood on slavery before the Civil War, don’t look at where you stand on slavery today. Look at where you stand on animal rights."
ALEX HERSHAFT
"'Never again' is not about what others shouldn't do to us. It's about what we shouldn't do to others. 'Never again' means that we must never again perpetrate mass atrocities against other living beings. And if you draw an analogy between the Jewish Holocaust and the animal holocaust, the lesson to be drawn is that we are all capable of oppression. And (nearly) everyone who goes to the supermarket today, subsidizes oppression of billions of animals."
GEORGES METANOMSKI
"When I see cages crammed with chickens from battery farms thrown on trucks like bundles of trash, I see, with the eyes of my soul, the Umschlagplatz (where Jews were forced onto trains leaving for the death camps). When I go to a restaurant and see people devouring meat, I feel sick. I see a holocaust on their plates."
MARY TYLER MOORE (1936-2017)
“Behind every beautiful fur coat, there is a story. It is a bloody, barbaric story.”
DR. MICHAEL GREGER (1972- )
“The primary reason diseases tend to run in families may be that diets tend to run in families. The Global Burden of Disease study determined that our biggest killer is our diet. Most deaths in the United States are preventable, and they are related to what we eat. Our diet is the number-one cause of premature death and the number-one cause of disability. Surely, diet must also be the number-one thing taught in medical schools, right? Sadly, it's not."
AVA DUVERNAY (1972- )
"Like many food trends that seem new, black veganism has historical roots. For a lot of black people, it’s also about social justice and food access. The food we've been eating has been killing us."
HOWARD ZINN (1922-2010)
“A good education is a synthesis of book learning and involvement in social action, because each enrich the other. The accumulation of knowledge, while fascinating in itself, is not sufficient without action...So long as atrocities remain remote, abstract, they will be tolerated, even by decent people... Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world...What struck me as I began to study history was how nationalist fervor, inculcated from childhood on by pledges of allegiance, national anthems, flags waving and rhetoric blowing, permeated the educational systems of all countries, including our own. I wonder now how the foreign policies of the United States would look if we wiped out the national boundaries of the world, at least in our minds, and thought of all children everywhere as our own. Then we could never drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, or napalm on Vietnam, or wage war anywhere, because wars, especially in our time, are always wars against children, indeed our children.”
MARTIN LUTHER KING, Jr., (1929-1968)
“Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?". In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends...There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right...A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus...Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter...Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter...Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that."
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT (1884-1962)
“I have never felt that anything really mattered but the satisfaction of knowing that you stood for the things in which you believed and had done the very best you could.”
EUGENE DEBS (1855-1926)
"I have no country to fight for; my country is the earth, and I am a citizen of the world. While there is a lower class, I am in it, while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free. The most heroic word in all languages is revolution."
AMY GOODMAN (1957- )
"Beyond the borders of wealthy countries like the United States, in developing countries where most people in the world live, the impacts of climate change are much more deadly, from the growing desertification of Africa to the threats of rising sea levels and the submersion of small island nations."
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
“I care not for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it. I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being.”
Nelson Mandela (1918-2013)
"Education is the most powerful weapon that you can use to change the world. For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others...No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. They must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” "
Rachel Carson (1907-1964)
“Until we have the courage to recognize cruelty for what it is–whether its victim is human or animal–we cannot expect things to be much better in this world. We cannot have peace among men whose hearts delight in killing any living creature. By every act that glorifies or even tolerates such moronic delight in killing we set back the progress of humanity.”
Theodore Isaac Rubin (1923-2019)
"Kindness is more important than wisdom, and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom."
Thich Nhat Hanh (1926-2022 )
"Be yourself. Life is precious as it is. All the elements for your happiness are already here. There is no need to run, strive, search or struggle...The present moment is filled with joy and happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it...By destroying the animals, the air, and the trees, we are destroying ourselves...Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy...Because of your smile, you make life more beautiful...To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don't need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself...Our own life has to be our message."
Jenny Leading Cloud (White River Sioux)
"The buffalo and the coyote are our brothers, the birds, our cousins. Even the tiniest ant, even a louse, even the smallest flower you can find, they are all relatives. We end our prayers with the words "mitakuye oyasin" - all my relations - and that includes everything that grows, crawls, runs, creeps, hops, and flies on this continent."
Dr. William C. Roberts (1932- )
“Although we think we are, and we act as if we are, human beings are not natural carnivores. When we kill animals to eat them, they end up killing us, because their flesh, which contains cholesterol and saturated fat, was never intended for human beings, who are natural herbivores.”
Herman Melville (1819-1891)
"There is no folly of the beasts of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men.”
Dr. Christiane Northrup (1949- )
"Eating organic fruits and vegetables is like breastfeeding from the earth herself."
Ricky Gervais (1961-)
"Animals don't have a voice. But I do. A loud one. I'm a f*cking big mouth. My voice is for them. And I'll never shut up while they suffer."
Helen Keller (1880-1968)
"Your success and happiness lies in you. Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties...All the world is full of suffering. It is also full of overcoming...Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing...Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much...The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen, or even touched, they must be felt with the heart.""
Greta Thunberg (2003-)
"You are not mature enough to tell it like it is. Even that burden you leave to your children. We are about to sacrifice our civilization for the opportunity of a very small number of people to continue to make enormous amounts of money...The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say, we will never forgive you." - UN Climate Summit, 2019
Wendell Berry (1934-)
“People are fed by the food industry, which pays no attention to health, and are treated by the health industry, which pays no attention to food...Praise ignorance, for what man has not encountered, he has not destroyed.”
Lewis Hamilton (1985-)
"Every person I have met who has gone vegan says it is the best decision they have ever made."
Voltaire (1694-1778)
“How pitiful, and what poverty of mind, to have said that the animals are machines deprived of understanding and feeling...Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities...The secret of being boring is to say everything...Every man is a creature of the age in which he lives and few are able to raise themselves above the ideas of the time."
Dr. Columbus Batiste (1972-)
“Today’s athletes, from the top stars to the weekend warriors, are embracing the fact that they can reach their short-term goals without sacrificing their long-term health. Replacing an animal protein diet with a plant-based diet not only protects the heart, battles cancer, defeats diabetes, and stomps out strokes, but it also decreases inflammation, improves recovery time, and can fuel an athlete’s fire to win.”
Brenda Davis, RD
“One of the biggest advantages of a plant-based diet for athletes and other active individuals is that it prevents the hypertension, inflammation, and oxidative stress associated with Western-style diets...I am constantly inspired by elite plant-based athletes who are setting world records. I am equally inspired by plant-based individuals in their seventies, eighties, and beyond who are still fit, vibrant, and free of chronic disease. To me, this is the real acid test...nothing surpasses plant-based diets where long-term health is concerned.”
Rich Roll (1966-)
"About 2 weeks into eating a completely whole food plant-based diet I realized how different it was to everything else I tried. It revitalized me like no other way of eating. I wanted to feel this way all the time...I didn’t reach my athletic peak until I was 43. I didn’t write my first book until I was 44. I didn’t start my podcast until I was 45. At 30, I thought my life was over. At 52, I know it’s just beginning. Keep running. Never give up. And watch your kite soar.”
Frederick Douglass (1818-1895)
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will...It is better to be a member of the great human family, than a member of any particular variety of the human family. In regard to men as in regard to things, the whole is more than a part. Away then with the nonsense that a man must be black to be true to the rights of black men. I put my foot upon the effort to draw lines between the white and the black, or to draw race lines anywhere in the domain of liberty...No man (or woman) fails, or can fail, who so grandly gives himself and all he has to a righteous cause.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
“We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children...What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us...You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.”
Ella Cara Deloria (Beautiful Day Woman) (1889-1971)
“I am not afraid; I have relatives.”
Gemunu de Silva
“It would have been contradictory not to be involved in animal rights if I was involved in other social justice issues.”
Sailesh Rao
"If you say you would not deliberately hurt an innocent animal unnecessarily, by definition, you are vegan. Going vegan is about coming home to who you are...Eat plants, plant trees, love animals, heal the planet."
Damien Mander (1979-)
"We are the only species to create the notion of a religion. And the only one to defile what it means to be spiritual on such a grand scale. We are not the main act. We're simply one of the millions of species that has risen and will become extinct. The only difference with us Humans is that we have the capacity to alter the trajectory of our own self created fate. But only if we can learn to include nature in our own selfish equations."
Edward Abbey (1927-1989)
“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”
Andrew Kimbrell (1950-)
“We’re just required to be faithful to our vision, and it’s not about victory, it’s in acting in a way that merits victory, and then we can be at peace.”
Frances Moore Lappe (1944-)
“Every aspect of our lives is, in a sense, a vote for the kind of world we want to live in.”
Benjamin Hoff (1946-)
"If people were superior to animals, they'd take good care of them."
Isaac Bashevis Singer (1903-1991)
"Kindness, I have discovered, is everything in life...In their behavior towards creatures, all men were Nazis. The smugness with which man could do with other species as he pleased exemplified the most extreme racist theories, the principle that might is right...What do they know-all these scholars, all these philosophers, all the leaders of the world...? They have convinced themselves that man, the worst transgressor of all the species, is the crown of creation. All other creatures were created merely to provide him with food, pelts, to be tormented, exterminated. In relation to them, all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka."
Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007)
“We're terrible animals. I think that the Earth's immune system is trying to get rid of us, as well it should...Do you realize that all great literature is all about what a bummer it is to be a human being? Isn't it such a relief to have somebody say that?...Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward....And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is...We’ll go down in history as the first society that wouldn’t save itself because it wasn’t cost-effective.”
Me, Myself and I
"If people cared about animals, as much as they care about their favorite celebrities and sports teams, then everyone would be vegan...Just as Howard Lyman said that you can't be an environmentalist and eat meat, the same can be said for "peace activists", who at the end of a long event, pat themselves on the back while chomping down on cheeseburgers and chicken wings...Asking a vegan to not talk about her passions, is like asking a loving parent to not talk about her kids...It is okay when our friends and loved ones disappear or fall silent. Though it can be lonely, being on the side of truth, is not only sustainable, but comforting too...How can we expect students to be taught to think critically, when so many of our parents, teachers, and administrators are incapable of thinking critically themselves?...The United States would rather Destroy ALL Life, than Give Up on Controlling ALL Life."
Jan Creamer
"People sometimes ask, Why bother about animals when there is so much human suffering? But it's not a choice about one or the other. When we protect the weakest or the most vulnerable, whether it is animals or people, we all gain...that is how we shape our world."
David Meyer
"Be that voice and understand, there's a saying out of my heritage, Judaism, it's not on you to finish the job, but neither are you free from doing the work. So none of us are gonna end factory farming anytime soon, but we do our best. We do the work, and every time we do that, we are doing the most important work we can for the least powerful and most vulnerable. We will win."
Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen (1938-)
"Now that I no longer have money to give away, I still notice the growing edge of things and I still respond to it. I give away my time, my skills, my network of friends, my life experience. You do not need money to be a philanthropist. We all have assets. You can befriend life with your bare hands...Basically service is about taking life personally, letting the lives that touch yours touch you. These days, many people seem to think that being touched is a form of weakness, even if the life that touches you is your own. If you are under thirty, the thing to be is “cool.” Been there, done that. But why would anyone want to be “cool”? Should I live to be very old, I expect that I will not remember the times when I was “cool” but will be warmed only by the times when I cared passionately, risked everything to make a difference, and knew who I was.”
Jackie Robinson (1919-1972)
"A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives."
Banksy (1974?)
“The greatest crimes in the world are not committed by people breaking the rules but by people following the rules. It's people who follow orders that drop bombs and massacre villages...If you get tired, learn to rest, not to quit.”
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
“Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul, and sings the tunes without the words, and never stops at all...If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain; If I can ease one life the aching, Or cool one pain, Or help one fainting robin Unto his nest again, I shall not live in vain...The brain is wider than the sky...We turn not older with years, but newer every day."
Upton Sinclair (1878-1968)
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963)
"Either the United States will destroy ignorance or ignorance will destroy the United States...Education must not simply teach work, it must teach life...In 1956, I shall not go to the polls. I have not registered. I believe that democracy has so far disappeared in the United States that no 'two evils' exist. There is but one evil party with two names, and it will be elected despite all I can do or say."
Agnes Edna Ryan (1878-1954)
“Wars will never cease while men still kill other animals for food, for to turn any living creature into a roast, a steak, a chop, or any other type of ‘meat’ takes the same kind of violence, the same kind of bloodshed, and the same kind of mental processes required to change a living man into a dead soldier.”
James Baldwin (1924-1987)
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced...Neither love nor terror makes one blind: indifference makes one blind...The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality...Precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience, you must find yourself at war with your society...The place in which I’ll fit will not exist until I make it”.
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)
"The greatest triumphs of propaganda have been accomplished, not by doing something, but by refraining from doing. Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth...The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human."
Desmond Tutu (1931-2021)
"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality."
Myamoto Musashi (1584-1645)
"Think lightly of yourself, and deeply of the world."
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (1947-)
"Make a friend that doesn't look like you...you might change the world."
Jess Search (1969-2023)
"If you are going to move people to act, first you have to move them."
Erykah Badu (1971-)
“Vegan food is soul food in its truest form. Soul food means to feed the soul. And to me, your soul is your intent. If your intent is pure, you are pure."
M. Frida Hartley (1928?)
"From beasts we scorn as soulless, in forest, field and den, the cry goes up to witness the soullessness of men."
Anne Frank (1929-1945)
"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world."
Francis W. Peabody (1881-1927)
“The secret of the care of the patient is caring for the patient.”
Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986)
"The main scourge of humanity is not ignorance, because the ignorant often have excuses, but the refusal to know."
Russell Banks (1940-2023)
"Of all the animals on this planet, we are surely the nastiest, the most deceitful, the most murderous, and vile. Despite our God, or because of Him. Both. Our only virtue sometimes seems to be that we are as cruel and violent to one another as we are to the other species, whom we slay and devour, or slay for the pure pleasure of it and toss aside."
Faraz Harsini
“If you were about to be hanged for being gay because you were born in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and I was your advocate, would you want me to say let’s cut back, and try to kill fewer people, and give them more space?...Is it easier for you to go 100% vegan, or for an animal to suffer and die? You have the best intentions, but please try and do better…Why do we admire social justice leaders? They often stand alone to fight injustice and inequality. Let’s never shut up until every cage is empty, and animals are no longer on the menu.”
Norman Finkelstein (1953-)
"If I can't laugh, I don't want your Revolution...If there were an Oscar for best theatrical performance by a country, Israel would win every year. It's a country based on theater. It's a lunatic state - completely insane...No doubt one can, in light of further study and life experience, come to repudiate past convictions...Why should Americans go on with their lives as normal, worrying about calories and hair loss, while other people are worrying about where they are going to get their next piece of bread?...If you do nothing, you can be certain that nothing will happen...There are very few good people in power. Power and privilege are deeply corrupting. I thank my lucky stars, I never pursued a path in life, such that I ended up being either rich, or powerful, because I don't believe it's possible to be either or both without being morally depraved...There are many reasons to hate Israel which have nothing to do with Jews. They're completely out of control. I got an email from my close friend, a really brilliant woman. She's Palestinian and she said the United Nations can't stop them. The International Court of Justice can't stop them. The Houthis, and Hezbollah, can't stop them. Nothing can stop them. They're just on a lunatic rampage now. Complete lunatics. So there are excellent reasons to be anti-Israel that have nothing to do with Jews, though of course there's always going to be a spill over because Israel describes itself as the nation state of the Jewish people, so from hating Israel to hating Jews, is not a very big leap, when you describe yourself as a nation state of the Jewish people...Israel is the main cause of anti-Semitism in the world today...A consensus might currently exist on the evil of violent genocide and the inhumanity of chattel slavery, but no such consensus exists on the evil of capitalism, which arguably causes millions to perish each year from hunger and preventable diseases."
Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850)
"Behind every great fortune there is a crime."
Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919)
“What do you want with this theme of the “special suffering of the Jews”? I am just as much concerned with the poor victims on the rubber plantations of Putumayo, the Blacks in Africa with whose corpses the Europeans play catch...Their cries resound within me so strongly that I have no special place in my heart for the ghetto. I feel at home in the entire world, wherever there are clouds and birds and human tears.”
Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
“If you want to know what God thinks of money, look at the people he gave it to.”
Gary L. Francione (1954-)
“Veganism is not a sacrifice. It is a joy...The idea that we have the right to inflict suffering and death on other sentient beings for the trivial reasons of palate pleasure and fashion is, without doubt, one of the most arrogant and morally repugnant notions in the history of human thought."
Fred (Mr.) Rogers (1928-2003)
“Love isn't a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now...When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping”...I don’t want to eat anything that has a mother...When boys and girls discover the connection between meat and animals, many children get very concerned about it...There are three ways to ultimate success: The first way is to be kind. The second way is to be kind. The third way is to be kind...Love is at the root of everything, all learning, all parenting, all relationships. Love or the lack of it."
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963)
"If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reasons."
Roger J. Corless (1938-2007)
“Trying to be happy by accumulating possessions is like trying to satisfy hunger by taping sandwiches all over your body.”
Noam Chomsky (1928-)
"There’s a reason why, in international polls, run by US polling agencies, the United States is regarded as the greatest threat to world peace by an overwhelming margin. No other country is even close. It’s kind of interesting that the US media refused to publish this. But it doesn’t go away...Nobody is going to pour truth into your brain. It's something you have to find out for yourself...The general population doesn't know what's happening, and it doesn't even know that it doesn't know...The US is a criminal state, that is run by corporations.”
Fannie Lou Hamer (1917-1977)
"Nobody's free, until everybody's free...I am sick and tired of being sick and tired...With the people, for the people, by the people. I crack up when I hear it; I say, with the handful, for the handful, by the handful, cause that's what really happens...If I fall, I'll fall five feet four inches forward in the fight for freedom."
Israel Shahak (1933-2001)
“The Nazis made me afraid of being Jewish and the Zionists made me ashamed of being Jewish.”
Mary Travers (1936-2009)
"All of us are subject to being passive to the social ills around us. It's a struggle not to become, by staying silent, an accomplice."
Julien Benda (1867-1956)
“Julien Benda famously posited that the more unconditionally one embraces the spiritual values of Truth and Justice, the less one can expect to enjoy the material rewards of Fortune and Fame...If you're faithful to the values of Truth and Justice, it must inevitably come to pass that you’ll be ostracized, or, in the current idiom, “cancelled”. (Professor and Author Norman Finkelstein referencing French philosopher and novelist Julien Benda)
Dom Hélder Camara (1909-1999)
“When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.”
Mary Elizabeth Lease (1850-1933)
“Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street. The great common people of this country are slaves, and monopoly is the master...You may call me an anarchist, a socialist, or a communist, I care not, but I hold to the theory that if one man has not enough to eat three times a day and another man has $25,000,000, that last man has something that belongs to the first.” -
Daniel Berrigan (1921-2016)
“But what of the price of peace? I think of the good, decent, peace-loving people I have known by the thousands, and I wonder. How many of them are so afflicted with the wasting disease of normalcy that, even as they declare for the peace, their hands reach out with an instinctive spasm…in the direction of their comforts, their home, their security, their income, their future, their plans—that five-year plan of studies, that ten-year plan of professional status, that twenty-year plan of family growth and unity, that fifty-year plan of decent life and honorable natural demise. “Of course, let us have the peace,” we cry, “but at the same time let us have normalcy, let us lose nothing, let our lives stand intact, let us know neither prison nor ill repute nor disruption of ties.” And because we must encompass this and protect that, and because at all costs—at all costs—our hopes must march on schedule, and because it is unheard of that in the name of peace a sword should fall, disjoining that fine and cunning web that our lives have woven, because it is unheard of that good men should suffer injustice or families be sundered or good repute be lost—because of this we cry peace and cry peace, and there is no peace. There is no peace because there are no peacemakers. There are no makers of peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war—at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945-2018)
“Solidarity is the political version of love.”
Edward Said (1935-2003)
“Every empire, however, tells itself and the world that it is unlike all other empires, that its mission is not to plunder and control but to educate and liberate."
Maria Montessori (1870-1952)
“Everyone talks about peace, but no one educates for peace. People educate for competition and this is the beginning of any war. When we educate to cooperate and be in solidarity with one another, that day we will be educating for peace.”
Maya Angelou (1928-2014)
"I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel...If you are always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be...It’s one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive. Forgive everybody...You are the sum total of everything you've ever seen, heard, eaten, smelled, been told, forgot - it's all there. Everything influences each of us, and because of that I try to make sure that my experiences are positive."
Aristotle (384-322 BC)
“Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all...Those who know, do. Those who understand, teach...To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.
James Cromwell (1940-)
“If a kid ever realized what was involved in factory farming, they would never touch meat again...We don't need to eat anyone who would run, swim, or fly away if he could...Pets are humanizing. They remind us we have an obligation and responsibility to preserve and nurture and care for all life."
Hannah Arendt (1906-1975)
"This constant lying is not aimed at making the people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one believes anything anymore. A people that can no longer distinguish between truth and lies cannot distinguish between right and wrong. And such a people, deprived of the power to think and judge, is, without knowing and willing it, completely subjected to the rule of lies. With such a people, you can do whatever you want."
Baba Dioum (1937-)
"In the end we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught."
Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850-1919)
“To sin by silence, when they should protest, makes cowards of men...Laugh, and the world laughs with you; Weep, and you weep alone; For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth, But has trouble enough of its own. Sing, and the hills will answer; Sigh, it is lost on the air; The echoes bound to a joyful sound, But shrink from voicing care. Rejoice, and men will seek you; Grieve, and they turn and go; They want full measure of all your pleasure, But they do not need your woe. Be glad, and your friends are many; Be sad, and you lose them all,— There are none to decline your nectared wine, But alone you must drink life’s gall. Feast, and your halls are crowded; Fast, and the world goes by. Succeed and give, and it helps you live, But no man can help you die. There is room in the halls of pleasure For a large and lordly train, But one by one we must all file on Through the narrow aisles of pain. ”
Eve Ensler (1953-)
“An ACTIVIST is someone who cannot help but fight for something. That person is not usually motivated by a need for power or money or fame, but in fact is driven slightly mad by some injustice, some cruelty, some unfairness, so much so that he or she is compelled by some internal moral engine to act to make it better.”
Gabor Mate (1944-)
"It's important (supporting Palestine), if you care about Justice. It's important if you care about Truth. It's important if you care about the emotional, spiritual, physical, well being of all people around the world, including the Jewish people. So, it's not a question of taking sides, it's a question of being concerned with the fate of humanity, and Palestine right now, is a focal point. It's a focus for all that is troubling, and threatening Humanity. So, in supporting Palestinian rights, one is supporting human rights for everybody around the world...Take the worst thing you can say about Hamas, multiply it by 1,000 times and it still will not meet the Israeli repression, and killing, and dispossession of Palestinians...The flaws of our leaders perfectly mirror the emotional underdevelopment of the society that elevates them to power."
Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975)
“The human race’s prospects of survival were considerably better when we were defenseless against tigers than they are today when we have become defenseless against ourselves...We learn from history that we learn nothing from history...Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder...We cannot hope to abolish war in our future, without abolishing war in our past."
Martin Niemöller (1892-1984)
"First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the gypsies, and I did not speak out, because I was not a gypsy. Then they came for the homosexuals, and I did not speak out, because I was not a homosexual. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me."
Arundhati Roy (1961-)
"Once weapons were manufactured to fight wars. Now wars are manufactured to sell weapons."
Francesca Albanese (1977-)
"The magnitude of destruction in Gaza has prompted allegations of domicide, urbicide, scholasticide, medicide, cultural genocide, and ecocide. Nearly 40 million tons of debris, including unexploded ordnance and human remains, contaminate the ecosystem. More than 140 temporary waste sites and 340,000 tons of waste, untreated wastewater and sewage overflow contribute to the spread of diseases such as hepatitis A, respiratory infections, diarrhoea and skin diseases. As Israeli leaders promised, Gaza has been made unfit for human life...The acts of killing, the mass killing, the infliction of psychological and physical torture, the devastation, the creation of conditions of life that would not allow the people in Gaza to live, from the destruction of hospitals, the mass force displacement and the mass homelessness while people were being bombed daily, and the starvation—how can we read these acts in isolation?” (UN Human Rights Report, Genocide as Colonial Erasure, 10/24)
Marlo Thomas (1937-)
“When we’re children, we laugh seventy-five times a day, and when we’re adults, we only laugh seven times per day, so have as many good laughs as you can each day! Laughing feels good and is good medicine!”
Federico Garcia Lorca (1898-1936)
"I will always be on the side of those who have nothing and who are not even allowed to enjoy the nothing they have in peace."
Edward Snowden (1983-)
“When Exposing a crime is treated as committing a crime, you are being ruled by criminals.”