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

You put a baby in a crib with an apple and a rabbit.  If it eats the rabbit and plays with the apple, I'll buy you a new car.  ~Harvey Diamond

Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.  ~Samuel Butler, Note-Books, 1912

If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian.  ~Paul McCartney

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

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.  ~Neal Barnard

Why does Sea World have a seafood restaurant?  I'm halfway through my fishburger and I realize, Oh my God.  I could be eating a slow learner.  ~Lynda Montgomery

Animals are my friends... and I don't eat my friends.  ~George Bernard Shaw

My situation is a solemn one.  Life is offered to me on condition of eating beefsteaks.  But death is better than cannibalism.  My will contains directions for my funeral, which will be followed not by mourning coaches, but by oxen, sheep, flocks of poultry, and a small traveling aquarium of live fish, all wearing white scarfs in honor of the man who perished rather than eat his fellow creatures.  ~George Bernard Shaw

Heart attacks... God's revenge for eating his little animal friends.  ~Author Unknown

My perspective of veganism was most affected by learning that the veal calf is a by-product of dairying, and that in essence there is a slice of veal in every glass of what I had thought was an innocuous white liquid - milk.  ~Rynn Berry, quoted in Joanne Stepaniak, The Vegan Sourcebook, 1998

The human body has no more need for cows' milk than it does for dogs' milk, horses' milk, or giraffes' milk.  ~Michael Klaper

Tongue - a variety of meat, rarely served because it clearly crosses the line between a cut of beef and a piece of a dead cow.  ~Bob Ekstrom

We all love animals.  Why do we call some "pets" and others "dinner?"  ~k.d. lang

I am not a vegetarian because I love animals; I am a vegetarian because I hate plants.  ~A. Whitney Brown

I've found without question that the best way to lead others to a more plant-based diet is by example - to lead with your fork, not your mouth.  ~Bernie Wilke, quoted in Joanne Stepaniak, The Vegan Sourcebook, 1998

Truely man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds theirs.  We live by the death of others:  we are burial places!  I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look on the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men.  ~Leonardo da Vinci

"Thou shalt not kill" does not apply to murder of one's own kind only, but to all living beings; and this Commandment was inscribed in the human breast long before it was proclaimed from Sinai.  ~Leo Tolstoy

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

To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being.  I should be unwilling to take the life of a lamb for the sake of the human body.  ~Mahatma Gandhi

A veteran USDA meat inspector from Texas describes what he has seen:  "Cattle dragged and choked... knocking 'em four, five, ten times.  Every now and then when they're stunned they come back to life, and they're up there agonizing.  They're supposed to be re-stunned but sometimes they aren't and they'll go through the skinning process alive.  I've worked in four large [slaughterhouses] and a bunch of small ones.  They're all the same.  If people were to see this, they'd probably feel really bad about it.  But in a packing house everybody gets so used to it that it doesn't mean anything."  ~Slaughterhouse 1997

I eat everything that nature voluntarily gives:  fruits, vegetables, and the products of plants.  But I ask you to spare me what animals are forced to surrender:  meat, milk, and cheese.  ~Author Unknown

Think of me tonite
For that which you savor
Did it give you something real,
or could you taste the pain of my death in its flavor?
~Wayne K. Tolson, from "Food Forethought"

Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.  ~Albert Einstein