Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
DOUGLAS ADAMS

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.
RACHEL CARSON

As soon as I realized that I didn't need meat to survive or to be in good health, I began to see how forlorn it all is. If only we had a different mentality about the drama of the cowboy and the range and all the rest of it. It's a very romantic notion, an entrenched part of American culture, but I've seen, for example, pigs waiting to be slaughtered, and their hysteria and panic was something I shall never forget.
CLORIS LEACHMAN

If slaughterhouses had glass walls the whole world would be vegetarian.
LINDA MCCARTNEY

But for the sake of some little mouthful of flesh we deprive a soul of the sun and light, and of that proportion of life and time it had been born into the world to enjoy.
PLUTARCH

As custodians of the planet it is our responsibility to deal with all species with kindness, love and compassion. That these animals suffer through human cruelty is beyond understanding. Please help to stop this madness.
RICHARD GERE

    "You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity."
          Ralph Waldo Emerson
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.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Can you really ask what reason Pythagoras had for abstaining from flesh? For my part I rather wonder both by what accident and in what state of soul or mind the first man did so, touched his mouth to gore and brought his lips to the flesh of a dead creature, he who set forth tables of dead, stale bodies and ventured to call food and nourishment the parts that had a little before bellowed and cried, moved and lived. How could his eyes endure the slaughter when throats were slit and hides flayed and limbs torn from limb? How could his nose endure the stench? How was it that the pollution did not turn away his taste, which made contact with the sores of others and sucked juices and serums from mortal wounds?

PLUTARCH

"If a group of beings from another planet were to land on Earth -- beings who considered themselves as superior to you as you feel yourself to be to other animals -- would you concede them the rights over you that you assume over other animals?"
          George Bernard Shaw
We consume the carcasses of creatures of like appetites, passions and organs as our own, and fill the slaughter houses daily with screams of pain and fear.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

Eating meat isn't needed at all for health; so to do otherwise, just for the taste, is immoral, cruel, and inexcusable.
YAJÑAVALKYA DASA

It is only by softening and disguising dead flesh by culinary preparation that it is rendered susceptible of mastication or digestion, and that the sight of its bloody juices and raw horror does not excite intolerable loathing and disgust.
PERCY BLYTHE SHELLEY

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.
THOMAS EDISON

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.
DR. NEAL BARNARD

Man cannot pretend to be higher in ethics, spirituality, advancement, or civilization than other creatures, and at the same time live by lower standards than the vulture or hyena.
JAY DINSHAH, AMERICAN VEGAN SOCIETY

We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feather so badly that, beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the devil in human form.
WILLIAM RALPH

We all love animals. Why do we call some "pets" and others "dinner"?
K.D. LANG

While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth?
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

"For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love."
         Pythagoras
   "What is it that should trace the insuperable line? ...The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?"
        Jeremy Bentham
Life is as dear to a mute creature as it is to a man. Compassion and living kindness are the hallmarks of achievement and happiness.
THE 14TH DALAI LAMA

"Our task must be to free ourselves . . . by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty."
"Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances of survival for life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet."
          Albert Einstein
To a man whose mind is free there is something even more intolerable in the sufferings of animals than in the sufferings of man. For with the latter it is at least admitted that suffering is evil and that the man who causes it is a criminal. But thousands of animals are uselessly butchered every day without a shadow of remorse.
ROMAIN ROLLAND, NOBEL PRIZE 1915

I have no doubt that it is part of the destiny of the human race in its gradual improvement to leave off eating animals.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Until he extends the circle of compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace.
ALBERT SCHWEITZER

I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
Ahimsa paramo dharma (non-violence is the highest duty)
PADMA PURANA

"As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields."
"What I think about vivisection is that if people admit that they have the right to take or endanger the life of living beings for the benefit of many, there will be no limit to their cruelty."
          Leo Tolstoy
I do not like eating meat because I have seen lambs and pigs killed. I saw and felt their pain. They felt the approaching death. I could not bear it. I cried like a child. I ran up a hill and could not breathe. I felt that I was choking. I felt the death of the lamb.
VASLAV NIJINSKY
  "I am not interested to know whether vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn't...The pain which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity toward it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further."
          Mark Twain