Eating Animals Quotes & Sayings

Most people are sensitized to animals through their cats and dogs, but for me it was a flounder. I used to go fishing with my dad as a kid and always felt bad about yanking these panic-stricken creatures from the water. I stopped eating fish as an adolescent and went vegan at twenty. — Dan Mathews

It's very interesting to blur the line between eating human beings and eating animals, because I do think people should think more about what they put in their bodies, whether it is nutritionally or philosophically. — Bryan Fuller

The raising of animals for food and all that it entails is the single most destructive force impacting our planet's fragile ecosystems. Our planet simply cannot sustain the greed of billions of human beings who are eating other animals. — Sharon Gannon

There is no meaningful distinction between eating flesh and eating dairy or other animal products. Animals exploited in the dairy industry live longer than those used for meat, but they are treated worse during their lives, and they end up in the same slaughterhouse after which we consume their flesh anyway. There is probably more suffering in a glass of milk or an ice cream cone than there is in a steak. — Gary L. Francione

When we lift our forks, we hang our hats somewhere. We set ourselves in one relationship or another to farmed animals, farm-workers, national economies, and global markets. Not making a decision
eating 'like everyone else'
is to make the easiest decision, a decision that is increasingly problematic. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Honestly, I would eat cardboard rather than go back to eating animals. — Ellen DeGeneres

I ate and drank slowly as one should (cook fast, eat slowly) and without distractions such as (thank heavens) conversation or reading. Indeed eating is so pleasant one should even try to suppress thought. Of course reading and thinking are important but, my God, food is important too. How fortunate we are to be food-consuming animals. Every meal should be a treat and one ought to bless every day which brings with it a good digestion and the precious gift of hunger. — Iris Murdoch

Throughout my work, my subjects are being told that they must change their diet in order to make the adjustment into the new world. Our bodies must become lighter, and this means the elimination of heavy foods. During the sessions, my clients are repeatedly warned to stop eating meat (beef and pork especially), mainly because of the additives and chemicals that are being fed into the animals. — Dolores Cannon

Anyone who cares about the Earth - really cares - must stop eating animals. — Linda McCartney

I'm not a vegetarian. Now, don't get me wrong - I like animals. And I don't think it's just fine to industrialize their production and to churn them out like they were wrenches. But there's no way to treat animals well when you're killing 10 billion of them a year. Kindness might just be a bit of a red herring. Let's get the numbers of animals we're killing for eating down, and then we'll worry about being nice to the ones that are left. — Mark Bittman

I've always found wildlife very calming
except when animals are eating each other, of course. — Tom Upton

We can't plead ignorance, only indifference. Those alive today are the generations that came to know better. We have the burden and the opportunity of living in the moment when the critique of factory farming broke into the popular consciousness. We are the ones of whom it will be fairly asked, What did you do when you learned the truth about eating animals? — Jonathan Safran Foer

She's one of those who goes all gooey over small furry animals. Not that it stops her eating them — Simon Bestwick

There's so many issues tied to the meat industry. I mean, social, environmental, humanitarian - all of them. I know that when I'm eating that I'm not hurting the planet, I'm not hurting other people on this planet, I'm not hurting animals ... and I'm not hurting nature. — Maggie Q

Ninety-nine percent of all land animals eaten or used to produce milk and eggs in the United States are factory farmed. So although there are important exceptions, to speak about eating animals today is to speak about factory farming. — Jonathan Safran Foer

There are good intentions behind many people's conversion to veganism, including an admirable devotion to the well-being of animals and a justified skepticism about the crap the USDA allows manufacturers to put in our food. But it's hard to ignore the often sanctimonious nature of what some nutritionists view as an 'extremist' way of eating. — Julie Klausner

We need a better way to talk about eating animals, a way that doesn't ignore or even just shruggingly accept things like habits, cravings, family and history but rather incorporates them into the conversation. The more they are allowed in, the more able we will be to follow our best instincts. — Jonathan Safran Foer

You see this incredible capacity for replication in nature, survival, development, all of these things that are around us all the time in nature that just happen. By comparison, human life is really, really complicated. We're gifted animals, but we are so complicated. Nothing is easy for us, except maybe eating too much. — Alison Hawthorne Deming

The consumption of animals - whether you're wearing them or eating them - is extraordinarily damaging to the planet. There are over a billion animals killed a year for food, half of which don't even get eaten. And there's over 50 million animals killed just for fashion. — Stella McCartney

There is something about eating animals that tends to polarize: never eat them or never sincerely question eating them; become an activist or disdain activists. — Jonathan Safran Foer

We do know, however that almost no animal routinely kills prey animal on an indiscriminate basis.
The only wild animal I've seen who will sometimes violate this rule is the coyote. Most of the time a coyote eats the animals he kills, but occasionally coyotes will go on a lamb-killing spree, killing twenty and eating only one. I believe it's possible coyotes have lost some of their economy of behavior by living in close proximity to humans and overabundant food supplies. A coyote that kills twenty lambs and eats only one isn't going to have to trek a hundred miles to find more lambs next week. Any sheep rancher will have several hundred other lambs that will be just as easy to catch later on, and the coyote knows it. Wild coyotes have probably lost the knowledge taht you shouldn't waste food or energy. — Temple Grandin

Our ingenuity in feeding ourselves is prodigious, but at various points our technologies come into conflict with nature's ways of doing things, as when we seek to maximize efficiency by planting crops or raising animals in vast mono-cultures. This is something nature never does, always and for good reasons practicing diversity instead. A great many of the health and environmental problems created by our food system owe to our attempts to oversimplify nature's complexities, at both the growing and the eating ends of our food chain. — Michael Pollan

Isn't man an amazing animal? He kills wildlife - birds, kangaroos, deer, all kinds of cats, coyotes, beavers, groundhogs, mice, foxes, and dingoes - by the millions in order to protect his domestic animals and their feed. Then he kills domestic animals by the billions and eats them. This in turn kills man by the million, because eating all those animals leads to degenerative - and fatal - health conditions like heart disease, kidney disease, and cancer. So then man tortures and kills millions more animals to look for cures for these diseases. Elsewhere, millions of other human beings are being killed by hunger and malnutrition because food they could eat is being used to fatten domestic animals. Meanwhile, some people are dying of sad laughter at the absurdity of man, who kills so easily and so violently, and once a year sends out a card praying for 'Peace on Earth. — C. David Coats

Given that eating animals is in absolutely no way necessary for my family - unlike some in the world, we have easy access to a wide variety of other foods - should we ear animals? — Jonathan Safran Foer

The justifications for eating animals and for not eating them are often identical: we are not them. — Jonathan Safran Foer

I think, if you were being cruel to animals, then the thought of eating them would be horrific. — Elizabeth Hurley

Nanabozho also had the task to learn how to live from his elder brothers and sisters. When he needed food, he noticed what the animals were eating and copied them. Heron taught him to gather wild rice. One night by the creek, he saw a little ring-tailed animal carefully washing his food with delicate hands. He thought, "Ahh, I am supposed to put only clean food in my body."
Nanabozho was counseled by many plants too, who shared gifts, and learned to treat them always with the greatest respect. After all, plants were here first on the earth and have had a long time to figure things out. Together, all the beings, both plants and animals, taught him what he needed to know. The Creator had told him it would be this way. — Robin Wall Kimmerer

Aspects that we consider normal today could very well be repugnant in the future - eating animals, for one thing, or abundant choice, or invasive surgery. I was simply trying to demonstrate that what is acceptable today may not be acceptable forever, and vice-versa. — Jasper Fforde

The historian William Cronon explains that packing plants
'distanced their customers most of all from the act of killing ... The more people became accustomed to the attractively cut, carefully wrapped, cunningly displayed packages that Swift had introduced to the trade, the more easily they could fail to remember that their purchase had once pulsed and breathed with a life much like their own ... As time went on, fewer of those who ate meat could say they had actually killed the animals themselves. In the packer's world, it was easy not to remember that eating meat was a moral act inextricably bound to killing. Such was the second nature that a corporate order had imposed on the American landscape. Forgetfulness was among the least noticed and most important of its by-products. — Steven M. Wise

I think if you're against cruelty and you look at what happens to animals in slaughterhouses and on factory farms, you have to be completely against eating meat. — Ingrid Newkirk

Well it's true, ever since I stopped eating meat I feel a lot better among animals, I feel I can be much more honest when I pat a dog. — Leonard Cohen

Inhabitants of urban industrial cultures have no point of contact with grain, chickens, cows, or, for that matter, with topsoil. We have no basis of experience to outweigh the arguments of political vegetarians. We have no idea what plants, animals, or soil eat, or how much. Which means we have no idea what we ourselves are eating. — Lierre Keith

I never touch sugar, cheese, bread ...
I only like what I'm allowed to like. I'm beyond temptation. There is no weakness. When I see tons of food in the studio, for us and for everybody, for me it's as if this stuff was made out of plastic. The idea doesn't even enter my mind that a human being could put that into their mouth. I'm like the animals in the forest. They don't touch what they cannot eat. — Karl Lagerfeld

I view cats as more like wild animals. We feed it, but a lot of times it's not eating the food because it's murdering other animals outside and eating their meat. — Jake M. Johnson

It's not important whether someone is a gourmet. Everyone wants to eat and knows that food is crucial to live. But everyone has his own special reaction toward food. One person can become so excited about a certain dish that his eyes sparkle and his muscles harden, while someone else shovels in the same dish without paying any thought to what he's eating. A gourmet appreciates beauty. Gourmets eat slowly and thoughtfully experience taste - they don't rush through a meal and leave the table as soon as they're done. People who are not gourmets don't see cooking as an art. Gourmandism is an interested in everything that can be eaten, and this deep affection for food birthed the art of cooking. Other animals have limited tastes, some eating only plants and others subsisting solely on but, but humans are omnivores. They can eat everything. Love for delicious food is the first emotion gourmets feel. Sometimes that love can't be thwarted, not by anything. — Kyung-ran Jo

Whether you are attending someone else's or holding your own dinner party, your main objective should be to lead guests away from the usual road of predictable behaviour and tedious conversation, and towards a shared voyage of epicurean delight.
In much the same way as caged animals in zoos are kept mentally healthy by being set mealtime tasks by their keepers, dinner guests will find their repast far more satisfying if it is presented as a challenge and an opportunity for self-expression. For example, instead of the dry old formula of a plate flanked by serried ranks of knives, forks and spoons, today's modern host should show a little more ingenuity when selecting eating utensils. The novelty of using a Black & Decker two-speed drill to sheer flakes of the roast beef or a 15-inch spanner to negotiate the foie gras, will firmly place your party in the minds of your guests as a night to remember. — Gustav Temple And Vic Darkwood

My respect and empathy towards animals includes sea dwellers too
from dolphins to fish to lobsters. So, of course, I wouldn't dream of eating them. — Alexandra Paul

In any case I just cannot imagine attaching so much importance to any food or treat that I would grow irate or bitter at the mention of the suffering of animals. A pig to me will always seem more important than a pork rind. There is the risk here of confusing realism with cynicism, moral stoicism with moral sloth, of letting oneself become jaded and lazy and self-satisfied
what used to be called an 'appetitive' person. — Matthew Scully

One of the rudest things you can do, food-wise, is to stare at someone in the act of eating. It draws attention to the unseemly fact that eating is a bodily function - like animals, we are trapped by our hungers, but we do our best to disguise them with such civilized props as menus and forks. — Bee Wilson

My favorite animal is steak. — Fran Lebowitz

Even as a child, I felt very guilty about eating animals and never knew that there was something to do about it. And as I got older, it became clearer that there are things that I can do and choices I can make. — Mayim Bialik

Language is never fully trustworthy, but when it comes to eating animals, words are as often used to misdirect and camouflage as they are to communicate. Some words, like veal, help us forget what we are actually talking about. Some, like free-range, can mislead those whose consciences seek clarification. Some, like happy, mean the opposite of what they would seem. And some, like natural, mean next to nothing. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Donald Watson, who founded The Vegan Society in 1944 and who lived a healthy, active life until passing on in 2005, maintained that dairy products, such as milk, eggs, and cheese, were every bit as cruel and exploitive of sentient animal life as was slaughtering animals for their flesh: "The unquestionable cruelty associated with the production of dairy produce has made it clear that lactovegetarianism is but a half-way house between flesh-eating and a truly humane, civilised diet, and we think, therefore, that during our life on earth we should try to evolve sufficiently to make the 'full journey.'" He also avoided wearing leather, wool or silk and used a fork, rather than a spade in his gardening to avoid killing worms.

Let us instil in others the reverence or life that Donald Watson had and that he passed on to us. — Gary L. Francione

it is the Mediterranean, specifically Italy, that gave us the poet Ovid, who in the Metamorphoses deplored the eating of animals, and the vegetarian Leonardo da Vinci, who envisioned a day when the life of an animal would be valued as highly as that of a person, and Saint Francis, who once petitioned the Holy Roman Emperor to scatter grain on fields on Christmas Day and give the crested larks a feast. — Mary Roach

If price spikes don't change eating habits, perhaps the combination of deforestation, pollution, climate change, starvation, heart disease and animal cruelty will gradually encourage the simple daily act of eating more plants and fewer animals. — Mark Bittman

It takes 16 lbs of grain to make 1 lb of beef. It takes 1 lb of grain to make 1 lb of bread. So, how many more plants are you eating if you eat a pound of beef? Secondly, I've harvested cabbages and pulled up carrots out of the ground and I've been in slaughter-houses and seen the animals have their brains bashed out with sledgehammers and their throats cut - the experiences are not comparable. — John Robbins

Almost always when I told someone I was writing a book about "eating animals", they assumed, even without knowing anything about my views, that it was a case for vegetarianism. It's a telling assumption, one that implies not only that a thorough inquiry into animal agriculture would lead one away from eating meat, but that most people already know that to be the case. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Humans are amazing ritual animals, and it must be understood that the Tzutujil, nor any other real intact people, do not 'practice' rituals. Just as a bear must turn over stumps searching for beetles, real humans can only live life spiritually. Birth itself was a ritual: there was not a ritual for birth, or a ritual for death, or a ritual for marriage, for death was a ritual, life a ritual, cooking a ritual, and eating were all rituals with ceremonial guidelines, all of which fed life. Sleeping was a ritual, lovemaking was a ritual, sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing food were rituals, even sweeping, insulting, fighting were rituals, everything human was a ritual, and to all Tzutujil, ritual was plant-oriented and based on feeding some big Holy ongoing vine-like, tree-like, proceedance that fed us it's fruit. — Martin Prechtel

But under the surface of both sky and water there is the grim business of preying. Men and birds against fish, fish against fish. The tortuous process of life continuing by the painful transformation of one form or body into another. To creatures who do not anticipate and reflect imaginatively on this holocaust of eating and being eaten, this is perhaps not so terrible. But poor man! Skillful beyond all other animals, by being able to think in time, and abstractly knowing the future, he dies before he is dead. He shrinks from the shark's teeth before they bite him, and he dreads the alien germ long, long before its banquet begins. At — Alan W. Watts

Eating Animals closes with a turkey-less Thanksgiving. As a holiday, it doesn't sound like a lot of fun. But this is Foer's point. We are, he suggests, defined not just by what we do; we are defined by what we are willing to do without. Vegetarianism requires the renunciation of real and irreplaceable pleasures. To Foer's credit, he is not embarrassed to ask this of us. — Elizabeth Kolbert

Our children think our world will end. It's a tragic thing. Adults don't think that. They don't see that we are eating the planet. But we are. If you take all the biomass of vertebrates on the planet, 98% are men and their domestic animals. All the wild animals in the world make up only 2%. — Yann Arthus-Bertrand

We spoke of religion, and how much of it is just a custom preserving practical codes of health, morality and justice that are no longer necessary for group survival (like not eating animals with cloven hooves). — Marilyn Manson

isn't there some philosophy about how it's the arts that separate humans from animals?
Really? I thought it was not eating our young. — Claire Zorn

One particularly poor argument in defence of eating meat is that if humans did not eat animals, those animals would not have been brought into existence in the first place. Humans would simply not have bred them in the numbers they do breed them. The claim is that although these animals are killed, this cost to them is outweighed by the benefit to them of having been brought into existence. This is an appalling argument for many reasons. First, the lives of many of these animals are so bad that even if one rejected my argument one would still have to think that they were harmed by being brought into existence. Secondly, those who advance this argument fail to see that it could apply as readily to human babies that are produced only to be eaten. Here we see quite clearly that being brought into existence only to be killed for food is no benefit. It is only because killing animals is thought to be acceptable that the argument is thought to have any force. — David Benatar

She was not a vegetarian and knew firsthand animals had to die for her delectation, but she never liked to think about it. — Thomm Quackenbush

We are already eating less animal foods since a few years ago, but we are still eating 8-9 billion animals per year. — Mark Bittman

And sometimes we discuss frightening and troublesome animals that might be nearby, and this topic always leads to much disagreement over which part of a frightening and troublesome beast is the most frightening and troublesome. Some say the teeth of the beast, because teeth are used for eating children, and often their parents, and gnawing on their bones. Some say the claws of the beast, because claws are used for ripping things to shreds. And some say the hair of the beast, because hair can make allergic people sneeze. But I always insist that the most frightening part of any beast is its belly, for the simple reason that if you are seeing the belly of the beast it means you have already seen the teeth of the beast and the claws of the of the beast and even the hair of the beast, and now you are trapped and there is probably no hope for you. — Lemony Snicket

July 4th, (ie, time to celebrate our freedoms as Americans by eating hormone-laden farm animals and blowing shit up)
-Geena (Triple Shot Betty) — Jody Gehrman

Whether it's the Axis of Evil, or the evils of eating meat, it is a concept that has all but lost the impact it once had, because everyone thinks different things in this world are evil. PETA thinks what we do to animals is evil, but I think their overzealous approach is evil. Evil, in more ways than one, is comparable to the truth: definitions vary from one individual to the next. — Corey Taylor

Animals were my pets, and the thought of eating my pets freaked me out. — Carrie Underwood

For the Mongols, the lifestyle of the peasant seemed incomprehensible. The Jurched territory was filled with so many people and yet so few animals; this was a stark contrast to Mongolia, where there were normally five to ten animals for each human. To the Mongols, the farmers' fields were just grasslands, as were the gardens, and the peasants were like grazing animals rather than real humans who ate meat. The Mongols referred to these grass-eating people with the same terminology that they used for cows and goats. The masses of peasants were just so many herds, and when the soldiers went out to round up their people or to drive them away, they did so with the same terminology, precision, and emotion used in rounding up yaks. — Jack Weatherford

What people need to understand is, that if they are eating animals, they are promoting cruelty to animals. — Pamela Anderson

Eating a RAW food lifestyle is the purest and best way to live. Many of the strongest and longest living animals are raw, such as the panda bear and gorillas. Self love has brought me to a RAW lifestyle. Feeding my body with pure natural energy. Most people's perception is what has been ingrained inside them by manipulation, but slowly there is a shift in consciousness, one person at a time. People will ask more questions, begin to stand up for themselves, go their "own way", take better care of themselves, which will benefit everyone and everything around them. — Eric Nies

I also became a vegetarian when I was 14 because I realized eating animals was cruel. — Julia Hill

Boredom is the consciousness of repetition. Because animals cannot remember the past, they cannot feel bored. They cannot remember the past, so they cannot feel bored. They cannot remember the past, so they cannot feel the repetition. The buffalo goes on eating the same grass every day with the same delight. You cannot. How can you eat the same grass with the same delight? You get fed up. — Rajneesh

You take this meat eating. Many people have to kill the animals because of your non-vegetarianism. You are responsible for the death of those animals. They are killed because you eat them. This is a sin. What a sin to kill innocent animals and eat them. — Sathya Sai Baba

Some people feel that humans have a right to eat other animals but not to trash the earth. They may choose veganism because a vegan's ecological footprint is light, but once they are not invested in eating animals, they are more likely to be willing to learn the details of what happens to them. That learning will encourage compassionate people to stick with a plant-based diet. — Karen Dawn

For many of us, it's too difficult to jump in to vegan full on because it's just so different than the way we grew up eating. But if we take small steps - like replacing cow's milk with almond or soy milk, or using veggie sausage instead of sausage made from animals - we can keep enjoying the things we grew up loving, just better versions of them. — Kathy Freston

I waited for him to come out. He didn't. I considered going in after him, but knew the fact that I had readied myself to kill him did not mean that he had readied himself to die. — Derrick Jensen

My view is that we stand up for treating the animals in a considerate way, for completely renouncing the eating of meat and also for speaking out against it. This is what I do myself. And in this way many a one becomes aware of a problem that was put forward so late. — Albert Schweitzer

Feeding plants to animals then eating the animals is like filtering water through a sewer then drinking it. — Bruce Friedrich

Are you a vegetarian?' I ask, based on the evidence in front of me.
She nods.
'Why?'
'Because I have this theory that when we die, every animal that we've eaten has a chance at eating us back. So if you're a carnivore and you add up all the animals you've eaten
well, that's a long time in purgatory, being chewed.'
'Really?'
She laughs. 'No. I'm just sick of the question. I mean, I'm a vegetarian because I think it's wrong to eat other sentient creatures. And it sucks for the environment. — David Levithan

If we didn't kill all of these animals and eat them, then we wouldn't have to breed all of these cows, pigs, chickens, and other livestock. If we didn't breed these animals, then we wouldn't have to feed these animals. If we didn't have to feed them, we wouldn't have to devote all of the land to growing grains and legumes to feed to them. So then the forest could come back, wildlife could return, ocean life would return, the rivers would be clean again, the air would be clean again, and our health would return. This is achievable by switching to a plant-based diet and encouraging other people to do the same. Educate yourself and others. Show them that there are delicious and nutritious alternatives to eating meat, and that by eating meat they are contributing to the pollution of the planet. There are plenty of plant foods that will provide you with more than enough nutrients to be healthy. — Joseph P. Kauffman

Eating, drinking, dying - three primary manifestations of the universal and impersonal life. Animals live that impersonal and universal life without knowing its nature. Ordinary people know its nature but don't live it and, if they think seriously about it, refuse to accept it. An enlightened person knows it, lives it, and accepts it completely. He eats, he drinks, and in due course he dies - but he eats with a difference, drinks with a difference, dies with a difference. — Aldous Huxley

When she passed on the ham the explanation was she was a vegetarian. Kat had asked why she was eating eggs, then, if she didn't eat meat. Smiling, she replied, I don't kill animals for food, but I am pro-choice. — James R Tuck

Oh, come! That boot is on the other leg. Why should you call me to account for eating decently? If I battened on the scorched corpses of animals, you might well ask me why I did that — George Bernard Shaw

Animals feed themselves; men eat; but only wise men know the art of eating — Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

When we walk around thinking we have a greater right to eat an animal than the animal has a right to live without suffering, it's corrupting. I'm not speculating. This is our reality. Look at what factory farming is. Look at what we as a society have done to animals as soon as we had the technological power. Look at what we actually do in the name of "animal welfare" and "humaneness," then decide if you still believe in eating meat. — Jonathan Safran Foer

We have 11 horses up at our country home, six of which are rescue animals ... Two of them are 'cop horses' from the mounted police, ages 4 and 5, who turned out to have physical problems that weren't suitable for the kind of work they have to do. Now, with us, they are just out to pasture and have nothing but a good time, eating their heads off, romping and frolicking, and just doing all good horsey things. — Mary Tyler Moore

The vegan lifestyle is a compassionate way to live that supports life, supports fairness and equality, and promotes freedom. — Robert Cheeke

It has been well said that the food one consumes determines one's thoughts. By eating the flesh of various animals, the qualities of these animals are imbibed. How sinful is it to feed on animals, which are sustained by the same five elements as human beings! This leads to demonic tendencies, besides committing the sin of inflicting cruelty on animals. — Sathya Sai Baba

Reality is an easy commodity in the Front Range. There's weather, and there are animals that are thinking about eating you, and there's all that beauty. It sort of whomps you on the head. It's strange that we use the word "unreal" to describe beauty-it's my experience that beauty drags us by the hair into the real. — Claire Dederer

If you are interested in preventing animal suffering, the first thing you should give up is eggs and milk because the animals who produce those foods lead the most unhappy lives. You would do better to eat meat and stop eating eggs and dairy products. — Cesar Chavez

Humans depend on the nutrients that food provides us with. Animals provide us with nutrients because the food that they eat gives them nutrients, and we eat them, consuming the nutrients that they have consumed. If animals are improperly fed and not provided with the right nutrients, eating them does not benefit us, it actually harms us. If chickens are fed chemicals, and we eat chickens, we are essentially eating those same chemicals. — Joseph P. Kauffman

The meat industry spends hundreds of millions of dollars lying to the public about their product. But no amount of false propaganda can sanitize meat. The facts are absolutely clear: Eating meat is bad for human health, catastrophic for the environment, and a living nightmare for animals — Chrissie Hynde

The way we eat has changed more in the last 50 years than in the previous 10,000 ... . Now our food is coming from enormous assembly lines where the animals and the workers are being abused, and the food has become much more dangerous in ways that are deliberately hidden from us. This isn't just about what we're eating. It's about what we're allowed to say. What we're allowed to know. — Eric Schlosser

But why must the system go to such lengths to block our empathy? Why all the psychological acrobatics? The answer is simple: because we care about animals, and we don't want them to suffer. And because we eat them. Our values and behaviors are incongruent, and this incongruence causes us a certain degree of moral discomfort. In order to alleviate this discomfort, we have three choices: we can change our values to match our behaviors, we can change our behaviors to match our values, or we can change our perception of our behaviors so that they appear to match our values. It is around this third option that our schema of meat is shaped. As long as we neither value unnecessary animal suffering nor stop eating animals, our schema will distort our perceptions of animals and the meat we eat, so that we feel comfortable enough to consume them. And the system that constructs our schema of meat equips us with the means by which to do this. — Melanie Joy

Plants, animals, and stars are all kept in place, bridled along appointed ways, with one another, and through the midst of one another
killing and being killed, eating and being eaten, in harmonious proportions and quantities. — John Muir

When they were naming the animals, somebody got lazy: anteater? What's it doing? It's eating ants. DONE! — Demetri Martin

What if I'm so broken I can never do something as basic as feed myself? Do you realize how twisted that is? It amazes me sometimes that humans still exist. We're just animals, after all. And how can an animal get so removed from nature that it loses the instinct to keep itself alive? — Amy Reed

It's really not rocket science. If animals are not mere things; if they have moral value, we cannot justify eating, wearing, or using them particularly when we have no better reason than palate pleasure or fashion. If you are eating, wearing, or using animals, then your actions say that you regard them as mere things, despite what your words say. — Gary L. Francione

Nobody can possibly be so hungry that they need to take a life in order to feel satisfied - they don't after all, take a human life, so why take the life of an animal? Both are conscious beings with the same determination to survive. It is habit, and laziness and nothing else. — Morrissey

Eating animals involves an intentional decision to participate in the suffering and death of nonhumans where there is no plausible moral justification. — Gary L. Francione

Goat cheese ... produced a bizarre eating era when sensible people insisted that this miserable cheese produced by these miserable creatures reared on miserable hardscrabble earth was actually superior to the magnificent creamy cheeses of the noblest dairy animals bred in the richest green valleys of the earth. — Russell Baker

Before it began to open new wounds, the war healed quite a few old ones: it shook us out of our lethargy, our life took on new meaning, we no longer lived without a purpose, eating and sleeping and excreting like animals. — Costas Taktsis

My grandmother lives on a farm. And growing up, I assumed that the animals that I was eating and the animals that I was wearing all came from farms like my grandmother's. They all had names, they were all smothered with love, and they all lived to be very old. — Ginnifer Goodwin

So?" I asked Vee. "What's the verdict?"
"The verdict? My doctor is a lard-arse. Closely resembles an Oompa-Loompa. Don't give me your severe look. Last time he came in, he broke into the Funky Chicken. And he's forever eating chocolate. Mostly chocolate animals. You know the solid chocolate bunnies they're selling for Easter? That's what the Oompa-Loompa ate for dinner. Had a chocolate duck at lunch with a side of yellow Peeps. — Becca Fitzpatrick

Cruelty ... prefers abstraction. Some have tried to resolved this gap by hunting or butchering an animal themselves, as if those experiences might somehow legitimize the endeavor of eating animals. This is very silly. Murdering someone would surely prove that you are capable of killing, but it woudln't be the most reasonable way to understand why you should or shouldn't do it. — Jonathan Safran Foer

If we pursue our habit of eating animals, and if our neighbour follows a similar path, will we need to go to war against our neighbour to secure greater pasturage, because ours will not be enough to sustain us, and our neighbour will have a similar need to wage war on us for the same reason. — Socrates

Animals are here to live their lives. We are here to live ours. We can live well without eating them. How pathetic it is that we have to eat a life just to live our lives! — Debasish Mridha