#vegetarianism

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. ↗

— Mary Midgley

#ethics #philosophy #vegetarian #vegetarianism #change

Truly man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds them. We live by the death of others. We are burial places. ↗

— Leonardo da Vinci

#death

Humans are the only animals that have children on purpose, keep in touch (or don't), care about birthdays, waste and lose time, brush their teeth, feel nostalgia, scrub stains, have religions and political parties and laws, wear keepsakes, apologize years after an offense, whisper, fear themselves, interpret dreams, hide their genitalia, shave, bury time capsules, and can choose not to eat something for reasons of conscience. The justifications for eating animals and for not eating them are often identical: we are not them. ↗

— Jonathan Safran Foer

#ethics #humans #vegetarianism #dreams

Before you rush off trying to see everything you can, educate yourself. ↗

— Jonathan Safran Foer

#vegetarianism #education

Animals are my friends...and I don't eat my friends. ↗

— George Bernard Shaw

#friends #humor #vegetarianism #humor

You can't possibly ask me to go without having some dinner. It's absurd. I never go without my dinner. No one ever does, except vegetarians and people like that. ↗

— Oscar Wilde

#humor #vegetarianism #humor

Als ik ergens vertel dat ik vegetariër ben, word ik bijna altijd gewezen op een inconsequentie of probeert men een zwak punt te ontdekken in een bewering die ik nooit heb gedaan. (Ik heb vaak het idee dat mijn vegetarische levenswijze voor zulke mensen belangrijker is dan voor mij.) ↗

— Jonathan Safran Foer

#men

This for many people is what is most offensive about hunting—to some, disgusting: that it encourages, or allows, us not only to kill but to take a certain pleasure in killing. It's not as though the rest of us don't countenance the killing of tens of millions of animals every year. Yet for some reason we feel more comfortable with the mechanical killing practiced, out of view and without emotion by industrial agriculture. ↗

— Michael Pollan

#animal-rights #animal-welfare #animals #food #hunting

You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity. ↗

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

#vegetarianism #ethics

Therefore, vegetarianism alone can give us the quality of com-passion, which distinguishes man from the rest of the animal world. ↗

— Morarji Desai

#animal #animal world #distinguishes #give #man