Vegetarian Quotes & Sayings

I don't understand why asking people to eat a well-balanced vegetarian diet is considered drastic, while it is medically conservative to cut people open and put them on cholesterol lowering drugs for the rest of their lives. — Dean Ornish

Even if you are vegetarian, you do want to have a stuffing for Thanksgiving. The stuffing is not so much about the vegetables, but it's very unique to the season. — Daniel Humm

Well, you can't expect a lion to stop pouncing on you just because you are a vegetarian, as the saying goes. Yes! Shit happens to everybody, regardless of how good at heart you are.This is karma and it will screw you. — Kavipriya Moorthy

It shouldn't be the consumer's responsibility to figure out what's cruel and what's kind, what's environmentally destructive and what's sustainable. Cruel and destructive food products should be illegal. We don't need the option of buying children's toys made with lead paint, or aerosols with chlorofluorocarbons, or medicines with unlabeled side effects. And we don't need the option of buying factory-farmed animals. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Going meat-free can make a huge difference. Studies show that vegetarians are, on average, 10 to 20 pounds lighter than meat-eaters and that a vegetarian diet reduces our risk of heart disease by 40 percent and adds seven or more years to our lifespan. — Ingrid Newkirk

For the last few years I've tried to force myself to write at least one page every day, which doesn't sound like much but it's actually pretty hard to manage. Because I'm not allowed to do a make-up day. I can't do two pages the next day. The punishment for not completing my page is that I have to eat a vegetarian meal the next day. — Dan Chaon

Aw, no. You're taking us to that vegetarian place,
aren't you?
It's a coffee place. You can't just automatically classify anything that isn't a steak house as vegetarian.
Yes, I can. This is America. You said Americans assert their own opinions as if they were facts and dismiss inconvenient facts as mere opinions. — Kevin Hearne

When it comes to meat, change is almost always cast as an absolute. You are a vegetarian or you are not. — Jonathan Safran Foer

I became a vegetarian out of concern for animals, but I wasn't a vegetarian long before I realized there's something to that. I don't think I would have worked for the past five years probably were it not for my vegetarian diet. — Bob Barker

You don't like it?" asked Luca, who loves this stuff.
"I bet Gandhi never ate lamb intestines in his life," I said.
"He could have."
"No, he couldn't have, Luca. Gandhi was a vegetarian."
"But vegetarians CAN eat this," Luca insisted. "Because intestines aren't even meat, Liz. They're just shit. — Elizabeth Gilbert

My disciples are vegetarian not as a cult, not as a creed. They are vegetarians because their meditations make them more human, more of the heart, and they can see the whole stupidity of people killing living beings for their food. It is their sensitivity, their aesthetic awareness that makes them vegetarians. — Rajneesh

For the gentle werelibrarian, who's strictly vegetarian, there's nothing like Tofillager the MEATLESS TOFU VILLAGER — Adam Rex

I didn't actually know what a vegetarian was until I was 13 years old. I know in this day and age it's hard to believe that, but I think because I grew up on a farm, I wasn't indulged in magazines, newspapers, Internet, television. And so, for some reason, I was never exposed to what a vegetarian was. — Abbie Cornish

CARNIVOROUS, adj. Addicted to the cruelty of devouring the timorous vegetarian, his heirs and assigns. — Ambrose Bierce

I don't really want to be fat, so I stop before I am. I'm not a vegetarian, but I might go through a phase when I'm not interested in eating protein for a week or so, and then I might go through a phase when I eat nothing but steak. — Sharon Stone

I am not a vegetarian. I subscribe to my own mantra: eat less, move more, eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, don't eat too much junk food, and enjoy what you eat. Or, to summarise: eat less, eat better, move more, and get political. — Marion Nestle

"You're wearing your Seduction Hat. Why am I not surprised?"
He offers a pirate's smile. "Did you notice ... I've a new embellishment?" He makes a show of adjusting an owl's tail feather in the band.
I bite back a giggle. "Vegetarian barn owl, I presume?"
"Won't be bothering me again for some time."
"I can guarantee it's not the only one out there."
He loops my arm through his. "Good. I'm always up for a worthy chase." — A.G. Howard

A cat met up with a big male rat in the attic and chased him into a corner. The rat, trembling, said, 'Please don't eat me, Mr. Cat. I have to go back to my family. I have hungry children waiting for me. Please let me go.' The cat said, 'Don't worry, I won't eat you. To tell you the truth, I can't say this too loudly, but I'm a vegetarian. I don't eat any meat. You were lucky to run into me.' The rat said, 'Oh, what a wonderful day! What a lucky rat I am to meet up with a vegetarian cat!' But the very next second, the cat pounced on the rat, held him down with his claws, and sank his sharp teeth into the rat's throat. With his last, painful breath, the rat asked him, 'But Mr. Cat, didn't you say you're a vegetarian and don't eat any meat? Were you lying to me?' The cat licked his chops and said, 'True, I don't eat meat. That was no lie. I'm going to take you home in my mouth and trade you for lettuce.' — Haruki Murakami

Vegetarians claim to be immune from most diseases but they have been known to die from time to time. — George Bernard Shaw

I made the choice to be vegan because I will not eat (or wear, or use) anything that could have an emotional response to its death or captivity. I can well imagine what that must feel like for our non-human friends - the fear, the terror, the pain - and I will not cause such suffering to a fellow living being. — Rai Aren

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

Whatever I decide will not work. It's what people want that will work. So no one decided whether you become a vegetarian or anything else. What determines that is the availability of food. If we run out of vegetation due to floods or natural disasters, people will consume meat and if we run out of meat they will consume vegetables. I have no control over that. That would be up to people. — Jacque Fresco

I'm going to kill him. Even as I said it, I couldn't believe my reaction. Apparently there's something in the Montana water that instantly transforms an agnostic, Starbucks-loving, vegetarian pacifist into a God-and-country-loving protector of all women and cattle. — Renee Carlino

I'm not a vegetarian. But I think people who are vegetarians, they are actually more virtuous than the rest of us. I think they should be admired. — Tyler Cowen

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

I'm vegetarian so eating right definitely gives me the energy you need. — Shannon Elizabeth

I don't eat meat. I've been a vegetarian since 1971. I've gradually become increasingly vegan. I am largely vegan, but I'm a flexible vegan. I don't go to the supermarket and buy non-vegan stuff for myself. But when I'm traveling or going to other people's places, I will be quite happy to eat vegetarian rather than vegan. — Peter Singer

Mr. Deacon, on the other hand, was in favour of abolishing, or ignoring, the existing world entirely, with a view to experimenting with one of an entirely different order. He was a student of Esperanto (or, possibly, one of the lesser-known artificial languages), intermittently vegetarian, and an advocate of decimal coinage. — Anthony Powell

The woman I am currently crazy about was a vegetarian for a year until I started dating her. As is the case with most vegetarians, she had never eaten properly prepared meat, only commercially packaged or otherwise abused flesh. — Steve Albini

I don't have hardly any caffeine, I don't drink alcohol and I watch my red meat intake. My diet at the minute seems to be verging towards the vegetarian, which is surprising me because I tend to just listen to what my body is fancying. — Jayne Middlemiss

What?" "She won't bite or scratch or she'll vomit. She's a vegetarian." Oh boy. "But when she's in beast form ... " He shook his head. "She eats grass. Don't ask. — Ilona Andrews

I'm not a vegetarian by any means; I eat fish. But the problem with shark finning is they catch the shark, cut their fins and throw them back in the ocean, and to me, that's wrong. If you're going to kill an animal, you should use the entire animal and do it humanely. I'm definitely not a big fan. — Bethany Hamilton

That we're not dealing with your ordinary serial killer. More the Twilight kind. And this one isn't a vegetarian. — Leanna Ellis

I'm not a vegetarian. — Carol Alt

After a conversation with someone that went on all night, but I didn't take much persuading, and the next day I was a vegetarian. It came down to one question, can you be healthy without killing animals? If the answer is 'yes' then the only reason you're killing is because you like the taste. But you can't take a life just because you like its taste. — Martin Shaw

From the vantage of a mid-1970's consensus that regarded the United States as having entered a post-Protestant era, the rise of a Religious Right dominated not only by Protestants but by fundamentalists was not the way the story was supposed to go. People like Jerry Falwell looked like party crashers who, rather than slikinking from bar to buffet in hopes of going unnoticed, demanded that the vegetarian, alcohol-imbibing hosts serve meat and tell the bartender to go home. — D.G. Hart

On going vegetarian." I was sitting here eating my plate of chicken salad, and suddenly I looked down and saw all the meat on my plate and just wasn't hungry anymore. So i've decided I'm not going to eat meat." — Shiri Appleby

Is a vegetarian permitted to eat animal crackers? — George Carlin

I was in my early 20s and open to alternative lifestyles. I thought, 'I bet you get a lot of attractive, interesting women in a vegetarian co-op.' — John Mackey

I am a vegetarian. I don't want to have anything injected into me that I can't eat. I am a real health nut. I look after myself well. — Marie Helvin

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

Vegetarian food leaves a deep impression on our nature. If the whole world adopts vegetarianism, it can change the destiny of humankind. — Albert Einstein

I'm not a vegetarian but I want you to know that my four dogs are safe. — Charlton Heston

An elementary particle is not an independently existing, unanalyzable entity. It is, in essence, a set of relationships that reaches outward to other things. — Henry Stapp

I don't teach vegetarianism; it is a by-product of meditation. Wherever meditation has happened, people have become vegetarian, always, for thousands of years. — Rajneesh

Part of my becoming a vegetarian was that I would look at my burger, then look at my dogs, and I wasn't able to see a difference. — Kristen Bell

I was vegetarian, trying to eat from fast-food restaurants without meat. I didn't know how to eat properly and I was starving. I was adrenalized to the eyeballs from performing. I was afraid that I was sick with AIDS. We were playing five shows a week. I even went through a period of abstinence where I didn't drink and stopped having sex. Which is crazy. Maybe I'm answering too many questions at once here, but this is where my mind was at the age of 25. — Michael Stipe

It is the other way round: food cannot make you spiritual, but if you are spiritual your food habits will change. Eating anything will not make much difference. You can be a vegetarian and cruel to the extreme, and violent; you can be a non-vegetarian and kind and loving. Food will not make much difference. In India there are communities who have lived totally with vegetarian food; many Brahmins have lived totally with vegetarian food. They are non-violent but they are not spiritual. — Rajneesh

I've been vegetarian for so long now that I don't remember anything different, so it's easy for me to put meals together and make sure my family is eating healthy, too. — Christina Applegate

If you live, ego disappears. Life knows no ego, it knows only living and living and living. Life knows no self, no center; life knows no separation. You breathe - life enters into you; you exhale you enter into life. There is no separation. You eat, and trees enter into you through the fruit. Then one day you die, you are buried in the earth, and the trees suck you up and you become fruits. Your children will eat you again. You have been eating your ancestors - the trees have converted them into fruits. You think you are a vegetarian? Don't be deceived by appearances. We are all cannibals. — Osho

He is by nature a vegetarian but would never consider giving up meat. — Michael Chabon

If slaughterhouses had glass walls, the whole world would be vegetarian. — Linda McCartney

I got a fur shawl once. I was so disgusted! And I couldn't re-gift it. I don't know anyone who'd want fur. — Jennie Garth

I remember eating in school in the years after the Second World War. Most of my friends had miserable portions of Spam with an inedible, glutinous pudding served in containers we called 'coffins.' As a vegetarian, I had a lump of loathsome cheese and some bread. — Robert Winston

You can't spell 'developer' without 'devel.' — John Mayer

For the first time, she became vividly aware of how much of her life she had spent with her husband. It had been a period of time utterly devoid of happiness and spontaneity. A time that she'd so far managed to get through only by using up every last reserve of perseverance and consideration. All of it self-inflicted. — Han Kang

Most people see a documentary about the meat industry and then they become a vegetarian for a week. — Jason Reitman

It's such a hopeful, almost utopian word, that word "phase." As if any minute, "we" would suffer some sort of Joad overload, come to "our" senses, and for heaven's sake, do something about our godforsaken shoes. But the book phase never ended. The book phase would bloom and grow into a whole series of seasonal affiliations including our communist phase, our beatnik phase, our vegetarian phase, and the three-year period known as Please Don't Talk to Me. Now that we are finishing up the third decade of the book phase, we ask ourselves if we have changed. Sure, we still dress in the bruise palette of gray, black, and blue, and we still haven't gotten around to piercing our ears. But we wear lipstick now, we own high-heeled shoes. Concessions have been made. — Sarah Vowell

Many people are turned off at eating vegetarian because of the misconception that all dishes are just an arrangement of bland vegetables. — Marcus Samuelsson

I don't do the gym and I don't diet. I'm vegetarian but I don't diet. — Pamela Anderson

I love seafood. I'm not a vegetarian but I'm probably a pescetarian. — Padma Lakshmi

I'm not a vegetarian, but I eat animals who are. — Groucho Marx

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

Only fools argue whether to eat meat or not. They don't understand truth, nor do they meditate on it. Who can define what is meat and what is plant? Who knows where the sin lies, being a vegetarian or a non-vegetarian? — Guru Nanak

Being vegan or vegetarian isn't just about compassion for animals. Most of the destruction of the planet is the result of all the clear-cutting, groundwater contamination, grain production, fuel consumption, greenhouse gas, viral proliferation - the direct result of livestock production. — William McNamara

I've been a vegetarian since I was 19. — Erykah Badu

Ralph Nader choose the man with whom to share the responsibility of running a distant third, California activist Peter Camejo. You may remember that Camejo ran for president in 1976 on the Socialist Workers Party ticket. Actually, you might only remember that if you run a lesbian, vegetarian, bookstore. — Jon Stewart

Arteriosclerosis can be considered a disease of protein intoxication. — Kilmer S. McCully

I am vegetarian, though, and so is my family. — Joely Fisher

I don't see why someone should lose their life just so you can have a snack. — Russell Brand

What every human being should do is eat a vegetarian diet based on whole foods. Period. That's it. Animal protein is bad for you. Dairy is bad for you. Forget the ads: Milk and eggs are bad for you. — Roger Ebert

Sure! Why should any experts be the arbiters ... That's like telling someone they can't be a vegetarian. — Virginia Johnson

I worked on the line, I've been an executive chef, I've worked for the Mets, I've worked for various steakhouses, vegetarian restaurants, a lot of Middle Eastern stuff. I've worked my fair share of a lot of different things. I've worked at festivals and street fairs, you know? I've been through it all. — Action Bronson

That was like being a vegetarian in Texas. — Kimberly Loth

I was a vegetarian when we shot the first film(Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle), and I generally eat organic as much as possible. I know this is so disappointing to the audience, which is why I don't talk about it a lot, but I don't smoke weed, I don't eat fast food. — Kal Penn

In 1968, I became a vegetarian after realizing that animals feel afraid, cold, hungry, and unhappy like we do.. — Cesar Chavez

Her life was no more than a ghostly pageant of exhausted endurance, no more real than a television drama. Death, who now stood by her side, was as familiar to her as a family member, missing for a long time but now returned. — Han Kang

But when, at the end of my sophomore year, I became a philosophy major and started doing my first seriously pretentious thinking, I became a vegetarian again. The kind of willful forgetting that I was sure meat eating required felt too paradoxical to the intellectual life I was trying to shape. I thought life could, should, and must conform to the mold of reason. You can imagine how annoying this made me. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Eating a vegetarian diet can contribute more to saving ourselves and the planet than any other single effort. — Sharon Gannon

When eating out while on tour, a great place to get vegetarian food is Thai restaurants, as they have lots of options. I absolutely adore salad and vegetables - I will eat salad until it's coming out of my ears. Although I think it's great in any form, my particular favourite has to be beetroot salad. — Kate O'Mara

The real challenge for a vegan is getting vitamin B and omega-3s, but you can get those in a vegetarian supplement. — Emily Deschanel

I've never dated anyone because they were vegetarian, just like I'm gay but don't only go to gay bars. I hang out with people because they are fun, smart, and kind, and if they happen to be veg I'm thrilled. — Dan Mathews

Goodwill to Spazzy up in gerbil heaven. Sorry sorry sorry. I stopped eating meat the day of the massacre, as penance for Spazzy. I've been a vegetarian since age six, all for the love of a gerbil. — Rachel Cohn

I've seen a big gain in cardio since I went vegetarian and even gained a little more going vegan. — Andy Lally

I, personally, no longer take part in the ecstatic public condemnation of people unless they've committed a transgression that has an actual victim, and even then not as much as I probably should. I miss the fun a little. But it feels like when I became a vegetarian. I missed the steak, although not as much as I'd anticipated, but I could no longer ignore the slaughterhouse. — Jon Ronson

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

In fact, just heading toward veganism lifts a not insignificant burden from the earth. According to food pundit Michael Pollan, who's not a vegetarian, if everybody did even "Meatless Monday," it would be the environmental equivalent of taking 20 million midsize cars off the road. — Victoria Moran

The way she told it, she was such a criminal even the most God-fearing church ladies got bored of reporting on her; she did the marketing on Sunday, dropped by any church she liked or none at all, was a feminist (which Mrs. Asher sometimes confused with communist), a Democrat (which Mrs. Lincoln pointed out practically had "demon" in the word itself), and, worst of all, a vegetarian (which ruled out any dinner invitations from Mrs. Snow). — Kami Garcia

Many refined people will not kill a fly, but eat an ox. — I.L. Peretz

Dating Advice: If you want your life partner to be a vegetarian, move to New York City. — Paul Oyer

There's no question that largely vegetarian diets are as healthy as you can get. The evidence is so strong and overwhelming and produced over such a long period of time that it's no longer debatable. — Marion Nestle

I was raised as a Catholic and received the body and blood of Jesus Christ every Sunday at communion until I was thirty years of age, when I became a vegetarian. — Joe Queenan

My wife is a vegetarian. When my wife is with me, I eat vegetarian. When she's not, I eat meat. I'm just being honest. — J. B. Smoove

I'm a big health food freak and a vegetarian devotee. — Chelsea Clinton

Right, I'll bet he's another vegetarian. Another Unitarian vegetarian who holds up peace signs at street corners every Saturday afternoon and aspires to live in a Mongolian yurt. — Elizabeth Berg

I love to cook, it's one of my most favorite things in the world. That's why I stopped being a vegetarian - I didn't want to serve people things I hadn't tasted myself. — Claudia Black

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

I have known many meat eaters to be far more nonviolent than vegetarians. — Mahatma Gandhi

I grew up in Texas, eating meat five times a day, and I liked meat. But I began being a vegetarian when I was 19 because I found that I felt better. — Dean Ornish

I became a vegetarian for about maybe a year. It was more of a little detox for me. I tend to do a lot of detoxes. I was on the Body Ecology Diet before I got pregnant, which I believe is one of the reasons I was able to get pregnant. — Tia Mowry