A dead cow or sheep lying in the pasture is recognized as carrion. The same sort
of carcass dressed and hung up in a butcher's stall passes as food.
-- J.H. Kellogg
A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he
eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his
appetite. And to act so is immoral.
-- Leo Tolstoy
And when I think of the suffering of the creatures in our factory farms,
laboratories, puppy mills, or of any animal neglected or mistreated by man, for
me there is no more powerful question than to ask: "What would the Good Shepherd
think of this?"
-- Matthew Scully
Animals are more than ever a test of our character, of mankind's capacity for
empathy and for decent, honorable conduct and faithful stewardship.... We are
called to treat them with kindness, not because they have rights or power or
some claim to equality, but in a sense because they don't; because they all
stand unequal and powerless before us.
-- Matthew Scully
"Calves are adorable," as columnist David Plotz expressed it in Slate magazine,
"but veal is delicious. God gave man dominion over the beasts of the Earth (and)
if any animal has economic utility, we should farm it." Actually, if we are
going to get pious about it, God gave us lots of things, and one of them is
conscience. Veal, no matter what seasonings cover it, or what sanctimony defends
it, does not carry the "taste of elegance." Veal carries, as Alice Walker
observes, "the taste of a bitter life."
-- Matthew Scully
Do we, as humans, having an ability to reason and to communicate abstract ideas
verbally and in writing, and to form ethical and moral judgments using the
accumulated knowledge of the ages, have the right to take the lives of other
sentient organisms, particularly when we are not forced to do so by hunger or
dietary need, but rather do so for the somewhat frivolous reason that we like
the taste of meat? In essence, should we know better?
-- Peter Cheeke
Flesh-eating is simply immoral, as it involves the performance of an act which
is contrary to moral feeling--killing.
-- Leo Tolstoy
I do not want to make my stomach a graveyard of dead animals.
-- George Bernard Shaw
I don`t hold animals superior or even equal to humans. The whole case for
behaving decently to animals rests on the fact that we are the superior species.
We are the species uniquely capable of imagination, rationality, and moral
choice - and that is precisely why we are under an obligation to recognize and
respect the rights of animals.
-- Brigid Brophy
If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegetarian. We feel better
about ourselves and better about the animals, knowing we're not contributing to
their pain.
-- Paul and Linda McCartney
If you declare that you are naturally designed for such a diet, then first kill
for yourself what you want to eat. Do it, however, only through your own
resources, unaided by cleaver or cudgel or any kind of ax.
-- Plutarch
I know a "crime against nature" when I see one. It is usually a sign of crimes
against nature that we cannot bear to see them at all, that we recoil and hide
our eyes, and no one has cringed at the sight of a soybean factory.
-- Matthew Scully
I know, in my soul, that to eat a creature who is raised to be eaten, and who
never has a chance to be a real being, is unhealthy. It's like...you're just
eating misery. You're eating a bitter life.
-- Alice Walker
I look my age. It is the other people who look older than they are. What can you
expect from people who eat corpses?
-- George Bernard Shaw
In all the round world of Utopia there is no meat. There used to be. But now we
cannot stand the thought of slaughterhouses. And, in a population that is all
educated, and at about the same level of physical refinement, it is practically
impossible to find anyone who will hew a dead ox or pig... I can still remember
as a boy the rejoicings over the closing of the last slaughterhouse.
-- H.G. Wells
In protecting animals, it is always just one step from the mainstream to the
fringe. To condemn the wrong is obvious, to suggest its abolition radical.
-- Matthew Scully
I think there will come a time, and this is down the road a great many years,
when civilized people will look back in horror on our generation and the ones
that have preceded it: the idea that we should eat other living things running
around on four legs, that we should raise them just for the purpose of killing
them! The people of the future will say, 'meat-eaters!' in disgust and regard us
in the same way that we regard cannibals and cannibalism.
-- Dennis Weaver
It's also worth recalling that people can agree on the same objectives for
different reasons: A secular philosopher like Peter Singer can oppose factory
farming because it's unethical by his theories of justice. An environmentalist
can oppose factory farming because it's reckless stewardship. A conservative can
oppose factory farming because it is destructive to small farmers and to the
decent ethic of husbandry those farmers live by. A religious person can oppose
factory farming because it is degrading to both man and animal -- an offense to
God.
-- Matthew Scully
My mother thought it would make us feel better to know animals had no souls and
thus their deaths were not to be taken seriously. But it didn't help and when I
think of some of the animals I've known, I wonder. The only really "soulful"
eyes in the world belong to the dog or cat who sits on your lap or at your feet
commiserating when you cry.
-- Liz Smith
My refusing to eat flesh occasioned an inconveniency, and I was frequently
chided for my singularity, but, with this lighter repast, I made the greater
progress, for greater clearness of head and quicker comprehension
-- Benjamin Franklin
Nonviolence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution.
Until we stop harming all living beings, we are all savages.
-- Thomas Edison
Nothing more strongly arouses our disgust than cannibalism, yet we make the same
impression on Buddhists and vegetarians, for we feed on babies, though not our
own.
-- Robert Louis Stevenson
People often say that humans have always eaten animals, as if this is a
justification for continuing the practice. According to this logic, we should
not try to prevent people from murdering other people, since this has also been
done since the earliest of times.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer
Poor animals! How jealously they guard their pathetic bodies... that which to us
is merely an evening's meal, but to them is life itself.
-- T. Casey Brennan
Torturing animals to prolong human life has separated science from the most
important thing that life has produced - the human conscience.
-- John Cowper Powys
[T]he standard vegetarian argument that the average person eats meat, and yet
could not bear to see how it was produced, actually speaks well for the average
person. Imagine a world in which most people enjoyed hearing and seeing the
details.
-- Matthew Scully
Truly man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds them. We live by the
death of others. We are burial places! I have since an early age abjured the use
of meat...
-- Leonardo da Vinci
Various philosophers and religious leaders tried to convince their disciples and
followers that animals are nothing more than machines without a soul, without
feelings. However, anyone who has ever lived with an animal--be it a dog, a
bird, or even a mouse--knows that this theory is a brazen lie, invented to
justify cruelty.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer
We are all God's creatures--that we pray to God for mercy and justice while we
continue to eat the flesh of animals that are slaughtered on our account is not
consistent.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer
We consume the carcasses of creatures of like appetites, passions and organs
with our own, and fill the slaughterhouses daily with screams of pain and fear.
-- Robert Louis Stevenson
We have found ways never before imagined to torture and maim animals and make
their lives a misery, almost a living hell for many thousands locked in cages in
the multinational food industry, in government establishments devoted to finding
the newest and best weapons for humans to kill each other, and in laboratories
where often the most important thing being researched is the latest in lipstick
or face cream.
-- David Oderberg
We pray on Sundays that we may have light
To guide our footsteps on the path we tread;
We are sick of war, we don't want to fight,
And yet we gorge ourselves upon the dead.
-- George Bernard Shaw
When a man wantonly destroys one of the works of man, we call him a vandal. When
he wantonly destroys one of the works of God, we call him a sportsman.
-- Joseph Wood Krutch
You can't eat your friends and have them too.
-- Franz Kafka
You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed to
the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
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
Why.....why??? Be so crude? I find your post to be distasteful in many ways. But I am not surprised in the least. I give up.
