Where can you find Mahātmā Gandhi next to Miley Cyrus? Right here in this list of vegan quotes, slogans, and sayings, that’s where!
I know putting a post full of quotes about veganism and compassion together runs the risk of instigating a little eye-rolling from some quarters, but I genuinely love them. So much so that I collect them in all manner of places: journals, phone, computer…even on one or two napkins!
They have been gathered from books, interviews, radio, online, and just about everywhere else in between. Some are long, some are short. Some are from our contemporaries, others are from old-timers (yeah, I’m looking at you, Hippocrates!).
These vegan and vegetarian quotes come from all corners and I’ve toyed with the idea of bringing them all together in one handy document, but have never gotten round to it…until now!
What better place to put them all than on here, right? This way, you get to enjoy them too, and you can even add your own in the comment section at the bottom of the post.
Let’s make this the most comprehensive list of vegan quotes online, shall we? I’ve started you off nicely with 301 vegan slogans, sayings, and quotes from celebs, philosophers, activists, poets, authors…pretty much every walk of life, but I really want you to add to the list. So be sure to tell me what I’ve missed out!
Enough chat, let’s get to the quotes!
DISCLAIMER: I shouldn’t need to do this, but you know what the Internet’s like! The fact that I have featured any particular person in this post does not mean I endorse them, their product (should they have one), their other views, or anything other than the words included here.
Similarly, there are quotes from non-vegans here as well, and there may well be people who were once vegan who are no longer. I find my own life hard enough to keep track of, so please cut me a little slack.
To reiterate, these quotes are NOT necessarily from vegans, but they are generally words of compassion that we can all draw something from. I hope you “get” what I’m trying to achieve here. (Oh, and some are just outright daft, for the sake of levity.)
Finally, if I have misattributed any quote or made any mistakes when putting this together, I apologise. Feel free to email me or drop me a line in the comment box below and I will, of course, amend any errors I have made.
Enjoy!
VEGAN QUOTES, SAYINGS, AND SLOGANS
“I hold that the more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of man”
– Mahātmā Mohandas Gandhi
“Everything in food works together to create health or disease. The more we think that a single chemical characterizes a whole food, the more we stray into idiocy.”
– T. Colin Campbell
“I am a firm believer in eating a full plant-based, whole food diet that can expand your life length and make you an all-around happier person. It is tricky dining out, but I just stick to what I know – veggies, fruit and salad – then when I get home I’ll have something else.”
– Ariana Grande
“Even in the worm that crawls in the earth there glows a divine spark. When you slaughter a creature, you slaughter God.”
– Isaac Bashevis Singer
“When I turned vegan, I didn’t feel that way about every animal around. I’ve noticed it’s something that changes naturally. Nowadays I vacuum around a spider, catch flies to release them outside and let silverfish go about their business; a whole new world, a whole new-found mental peace.”
– Jaco van Drongelen
“It ill becomes us to invoke in our daily prayers the blessings of God, the Compassionate, if we in turn will not practice elementary compassion towards our fellow creatures.”
– Mahātmā Mohandas Gandhi
“Almost as soon as I went vegan, people started telling me that my skin looked great, and that I appeared younger, slimmer, and healthier. I’m convinced that of all the changes I’ve made to my lifestyle, it’s the adoption of a vegan diet that has been best for me – physically, mentally, and certainly spiritually.”
– Steve-O
“I think; therefore I’m vegan”
– Unknown
“It’s my firm intention to whop cancer into submission and I truly believe I’ve given myself the best start possible by radically overhauling my diet and by staying true to my motto, which is: Don’t worry, be happy, feel good. The first thing I did when I was diagnosed was to turn vegan.”
– Larry Hagman
“Going vegetarian – and then vegan – has calmed me down, and it has also made me physically and emotionally strong. I do crave meat once in a while, but I find that spiritually, non-vegetarian food works against my emotional health.”
– Kangana Ranaut
“My refusing to eat meat occasioned inconveniency, and I have been frequently chided for my singularity. But my light repast allows for greater progress, for greater clearness of head and quicker comprehension.”
– Benjamin Franklin
“Veganism – Saving Millions One Bite At A Time”
– Unknown
“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
“Animals are my friends, and I don’t eat my friends.”
– George Bernard Shaw
“I do not see any reason why animals should be slaughtered to serve as human diet when there are so many substitutes. After all, man can live without meat. It is only some carnivorous animals that have to subsist on flesh.
“Killing animals for sport, for pleasure, for adventures, and for hides and furs is a phenomenon which is at once disgusting and distressing. There is no justification in indulging in such acts of brutality. Life is as dear to a mute creature as it is to a man.
“Just as one wants happiness and fears pain, just as one wants to live and not to die, so do other creatures.”
– The Dalai Lama XIV
“Change What You Eat – Change The World”
– Unknown
“People eat meat and think they will become strong as an ox, forgetting that the ox eats grass.”
– Pino Caruso
“Being vegan helped me realize I can say and do what I believe is right. That’s powerful.”
– Alicia Silverstone
“Anyone who cares about the Earth – really cares – must stop eating animals.”
– Linda McCartney
“It is my view that the vegetarian manner of living, by its purely physical effect on the human temperament, would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind.”
– Albert Einstein
“It is more important to prevent animal suffering, rather than sit to contemplate the evils of the universe praying in the company of priests.”
– Buddha
“If You Wouldn’t Eat A Cat, Why Eat A Cow?”
– Unknown
“Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace.”
– Albert Schweitzer
“Perhaps in the back of our minds we already understand, without all the science I’ve discussed, that something terribly wrong is happening.
“Our sustenance now comes from misery. We know that if someone offers to show us a film on how our meat is produced, it will be a horror film. We perhaps know more than we care to admit, keeping it down in the dark places of our memory – disavowed.
“When we eat factory-farmed meat we live, literally, on tortured flesh. Increasingly, that tortured flesh is becoming our own.”
– Jonathan Safran Foer
“It takes nothing away from a human to be kind to an animal.”
– Joaquin Phoenix
“The vegan believes that if we are to be true emancipators of animals we must renounce absolutely our traditional and conceited attitude that we have the right to use them to serve our needs. We must supply these needs by other means.
“If the vegan ideal of non-exploitation were generally adopted, it would be the greatest peaceful revolution ever known, abolishing vast industries and establishing new ones in the better interests of men and animals alike.”
– Donald Watson
“No animals needs to die in order for me to live. And that makes me feel good.”
– Howard Lyman
“We all love animals. Why do we call some ‘pets’ and others ‘dinner’?”
– K.D. Lang
“Veganism is not a sacrifice, it’s a joy.”
– Gary L. Francione
“I dream of a vegan world – that’s where I want everything to go.”
– Gene Baur
“I’m a vegan. I respect the environment, and I do my best to spread the importance of such an issue.”
– Jared Leto
“YOU Have A Choice, They Don’t – Be Vegan”
– Unknown
“Cruelty might be very human, and it might be cultural, but it’s not acceptable.”
-Jodie Foster
“To face animal suffering is to face our responsibility in their suffering.”
– JoAnne McArthur
“It’s pretty amazing to wake up every morning, knowing that every decision I make is to cause as little harm as possible. It’s a pretty fantastic way to live.”
– Colleen Patrick-Goudreau
“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
“The vegan lifestyle is a compassionate way to live that supports life, supports fairness and equality, and promotes freedom.”
– Robert Cheeke
“Human beings have capitalized on the silence of animals, just as certain human beings have historically imposed silence on certain other human beings by denying slaves the right to literacy, denying women the right to own property, and denying both the right to vote.”
– Gary Steiner
“From the Buddhist point of view, all living beings – that is, beings with feelings, experiences, and sensations – are considered equal.
“Human beings can live without eating meat. As human beings, I think that deep down our nature tends towards vegetarianism and leads us to do everything in our power to prevent harming other species.”
– The Dalai Lama XIV
“Animal rights are not a gift we give to animals. They are a birthright we have taken from them.”
– Ryan Phillips
“Your perception of meat being nice is blurred by the likely fact that you are excluded from participating in, or even witnessing the untimely mortal demise of the animals you gluttonously devour.”
– Mango Wodzak
“Mainly I’m a vegan because I like animals, and I don’t want to be involved in their suffering. Also, it’s better for my health and for the environment.”
– Moby
“Being vegan is a glorious adventure. It touches every aspect of my life – my relationships, how I relate to the world.”
– Victoria Moran
“If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian.”
– Linda McCartney
“For as long as man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings, he will never know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seeds of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.”
– Pythagoras
“Being vegetarian here also means that we do not consume dairy and egg products, because they are products of the meat industry. If we stop consuming, they will stop producing. Only collective awakening can create enough determination for action.”
– Thich Nhat Hanh
“There is no fundamental difference between man and the higher animals in their mental faculties.… The lower animals, like man, manifestly feel pleasure and pain, happiness, and misery.”
– Charles Darwin
“Eating Other Animals? I Just Can’t Stomach It”
– Unknown
“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
“I can’t think if anything that makes me happier than seeing an animal’s contentment, witnessing a creature allowed to be who he wants to be in the world – and at peace. It’s a thing of beauty.”
– Jenny Brown
VEGAN QUOTES: 51 TO 100
“The best part of being a vegan is the purity and peace of mind one experiences and the strong connection I feel to the animal kingdom.”
– Uri Geller
“Being vegan just gives you such great karma.”
– Alicia Silverstone
“All we are saying, is give peas a chance…”
– Unknown
“If you don’t like seeing pictures of violence towards animals being posted, you need to help stop the violence, not the pictures.”
– Johnny Depp
“Needless to say, jamming deformed, drugged, overstressed birds together in a filthy, waste-coated room is not very healthy.
“Beyond deformities, eye damage, blindness, bacterial infections of bones, slipped vertebrae, paralysis, internal bleeding, anemia, slipped tendons, twisted lower legs and necks, respiratory diseases, and weakened immune systems are frequent and long-standing problems on factory farms.”
– Jonathan Safran Foer
“Animals on factory farms all face pain and fear, just like the animals we share our homes with, yet are repeatedly abused in shocking ways.”
– Peter Dinklage
“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect.”
– Mark Twain
“People may hate you for being different and not living by society’s standards but deep down, they wish they had the courage to do the same.”
– Unknown
“I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.”
– Henry David Thoreau
“An area of land used for crops will feed about ten times as many people as the same area of land used for grass-fed beef.”
– Peter Singer
“Things that seem morally obvious and intuitive now weren’t necessarily so in the past; many started with nonconforming reasoning.”
– Robert M. Sapolsky
“Don’t wait for a better world. Start now to create a world of harmony and peace. It is up to you, and it always has been. You may even find the solution at the end of your fork.”
– Sharon Gannon
“A man of my spiritual intensity does not eat corpses.”
– George Bernard Shaw
“Taking B12 is the price of getting to be vegan, the way wearing a helmet is the price of getting to ride a motorcycle and giving up alcohol for nine months is the price of getting to have a baby.”
– Victoria Moran
“The Gods created certain kinds of beings to replenish our bodies; they are the trees and the plants and the seeds.”
– Plato
“If we each had to butcher our own meat, there would be a great increase in the number of vegetarians.”
– Ernest Howard Crosby
“Being vegan is not always easy and accessible. But it’s a way of life and makes me as a person feel really good and physically look better.”
– Olivia Wilde
“If you visit the killing floor of a slaughterhouse, it will brand your soul for life.”
– Howard Lyman
“Animals love me, plants fear me”
– Unknown
“Man’s mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions.”
– Oliver Wendell Holmes
“Why are vegans made fun of while the inhumane factory farming process regards animals and the natural world merely as commodities to be exploited for profit?”
– Ellen Page
“Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.”
– Samuel Butler
“Any serious social, political, and economic change must include veganism.”
– Gary L. Francione
“I’ve been vegan for about 10 and a half years. It’s been all good. I’m obviously much healthier.”
– Woody Harrelson
“If you can’t stand watching it being produced, you shouldn’t be eating it.”
– Unknown
“It’s upsetting to me that so many people think of themselves as environmentalists and still eat meat and dairy products.
“I think it’s something people should be considering given the emergency situation we’re in regarding water supplies, global warming, and the destruction of ecosystems.
“There’s a lot of overlap between animal rights and the environment.”
– Emily Deschanel
“Vegan food is soul food in its truest form. Soul food means to feed the soul. And to me, your soul is your intent. If your intent is pure, you are pure.”
– Erykah Badu
“Beets not meats!”
– Unknown
“You can’t do anything violent humanely.”
– James Wildman
“Could you look an animal in the eyes and say to it, ‘My appetite is more important than your suffering’?”
– Moby
“Being vegan is easy.
“Are there social pressures that encourage you to continue to eat, wear, and use animal products? Of course there are. But in a patriarchal, racist, homophobic, and ableist society, there are social pressures to participate and engage in sexism, racism, homophobia, and ableism.
“At some point, you have to decide who you are and what matters morally to you. And once you decide that you regard victimizing vulnerable non-humans is not morally acceptable, it is easy to go and stay vegan”
– Gary L. Francione
“I’m a proud vegan, whistleblower, and animal rights activist.”
– Steve-O
“Personal purity isn’t really the issue. Not supporting animal abuse – and persuading others not to support it – is.”
– Peter Singer
“How pitiful, and what poverty of mind, to have said that the animals are machines deprived of understanding and feeling.
“Judge (in the same way as you would judge your own) the behaviour of a dog who has lost his master, who has searched for him in the road barking miserably, who has come back to the house restless and anxious, who has run upstairs and down, from room to room, and who has found the beloved master at last in his study, and then shown his joy by barks, bounds and caresses.
“There are some barbarians who will take this dog, that so greatly excels man in capacity for friendship, who will nail him to a table, and dissect him alive, in order to show you his veins and nerves. And what you then discover in him are all the same organs of sensation that you have in yourself.
“Answer me, mechanist, has Nature arranged all the springs of feeling in this animal to the end that he might not feel? Has he nerves that he may be incapable of suffering?”
– Voltaire
“I decided to pick the diet that I thought would maximize my chances of long-term survival.”
– Al Gore
“Give up animal foods for two months, or even for a week, and I promise you will look and feel better, and you’ll want to do it forever.”
– Alicia Silverstone
“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
“After all the information I gathered about the mistreatment of animals, I couldn’t continue to eat meat. The more I was aware of, the harder and harder it was to do.”
– Liam Hemsworth
“One day the absurdity of the almost universal human belief in the slavery of other animals will be palpable. We shall then have discovered our souls and become worthier of sharing this planet with them”
– Martin Luther King Jr
“Vegan is just pure love. Love for animals, love for the planet, and love for yourself.”
– Mischa Temaul
“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”
– Mahātmā Mohandas Gandhi
“Vegetarianism is a way of living consciously on the planet.”
– Amy Smart
“Eating meat is the most disgusting thing I can think of. It’s like biting into your grandmother.”
– Morrissey
“Teaching a child not to step on a caterpillar is as valuable to the child as it is to the caterpillar.”
– Bradley Miller
“I love being vegan; it’s the best thing that ever happened to me. I finally understand, we all have but one life, human, cow, ant, everyone, it is not our right to take it away on a whim, simply because we can, it’s their right to live their lives, just like us, just like me.”
– Jaco van Drongelen
“Even as a junkie I stayed true to vegetarianism – ‘I shall have heroin, but I shan’t have a hamburger.’ What a sexy little paradox.”
– Russell Brand
“If you can be anything, be kind.”
– Unknown
“My body will not be a tomb for other creatures.”
– Leonardo da Vinci
“I personally chose to go vegan because I educated myself on factory farming and cruelty to animals, and I suddenly realized that what was on my plate were living things, with feelings. And I just couldn’t disconnect myself from it any longer.”
– Ellen DeGeneres
“Cheap meat is the problem. The answer is to replace meat recipes with vegan meals.”
– Ingrid Newkirk
VEGAN QUOTES: 101 TO 150
“Only when we have become non-violent towards all life will we have learned to live well ourselves,”
– Cesar Chavez
“We choose to eat meat and have therefore built slaughterhouses for the animals and hospitals for us.”
– Akbarali Jetha
“To get mud off your hands, use soap and water. To get blood off your hands, go vegan.”
– John Sakars
“How can you eat anything with eyes?”
– Will Kellogg
“The mass of the population before the modern era rarely ate meat as the mass of the peasantry rarely do in underdeveloped countries today.
“In Europe, in the Middle Ages, meat, especially red meat, was associated with aristocracy, landed gentry and their militaristic and hunting culture.
“It was this, also, that tended to strengthen the association of meat with power and aggression.”
– Malcolm Hamilton
“You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Do you know why most survivors of the Holocaust are vegan? It’s because they know what it’s like to be treated like an animal.”
– Chuck Palahniuk
“This is a message to all those out there who think that you need animal products to be fit and strong. Almost two years after becoming vegan I am stronger than ever before and I am still improving day by day.”
– Patrik Baboumian
“I wouldn’t touch a hot dog unless you put a condom on it. You realize that the job of a hot dog is to use parts of the animal that the Chinese can’t figure out how to make into a belt!”
– Bill Maher
“Violence begins with the fork.”
– Mahātmā Mohandas Gandhi
“There is something about veganism that is not easy, but the difficulty is not inherent in veganism, but in our culture.”
– Will Tuttle
“If it has a heartbeat, don’t eat, retreat!”
– Unknown
“Don’t do nothing because you can’t do everything. Do something. Anything.”
– Colleen Patrick-Goudreau
“The food we eat masks so much cruelty.
“The fact that we can sit down and eat a piece of chicken without thinking about the horrendous conditions under which chickens are industrially bred in this country is a sign of the dangers of capitalism, how capitalism has colonized our minds.
“The fact that we look no further than the commodity itself, the fact that we refuse to understand the relationships that underlie the commodities that we use on a daily basis.
“And so food is like that.”
– Angela Y. Davis
“Earth was created for all of us, not some of us.”
– Anthony Douglas Williams
“Ethics is in its unqualified form extended responsibility with regard to everything that has life.”
– Brenda Davis RD
“I know that as a vegan, I’m in a minority. People love their meat. It’s up there with sugar and TV and maybe even coffee on the list of inalienable American rights.”
– Victoria Moran
“The most powerful bond we know of is the bond between mother and child, and we break it in order to make ‘comfort foods’ for ourselves”
– Michael Schwarz
“Baby rats need rat milk, baby cats need cat milk, baby dogs need dog milk, baby humans need human milk, baby cows need cow milk, baby chimps need chimp milk..
“Would anyone believe it if someone claimed adult giraffes need elephant milk? Or adult horses need squirrel milk? Or adult possums need goat milk? Or adult humans need cow milk?
“Oh, wait, no, that last one makes total sense…NOT!”
– Mango Wodzak
“A human body in no way resembles those that were born for ravenousness; it hath no hawk’s bill, no sharp talon, no roughness of teeth, no such strength of stomach or heat of digestion, as can be sufficient to convert or alter such heavy and fleshy fare.”
– Plutarch
“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 it is 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
“I don’t go around lecturing people and telling them they shouldn’t eat meat. I just don’t think that’s terribly effective. I just try to tell people how I have personally benefited from the vegan lifestyle.”
– Steve-O
“My own view is that being a vegetarian or vegan is not an end in itself, but a means towards reducing both human and animal suffering and leaving a habitable planet to future generations.”
– Peter Singer
“Humane slaughter is an oxymoron”
– Unknown
“Of all the creatures, man is the most detestable. Of the entire brood, he’s the one that possesses malice.
“He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain.
“The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot.”
– Mark Twain
“When people ask me why I don’t eat meat or any other animal products, I say, because they are unhealthy and they are the product of a violent and inhumane industry.”
– Casey Affleck
“As long as people will shed the blood of innocent creatures there can be no peace, no liberty, no harmony between people. Slaughter and justice cannot dwell together.”
– Isaac Bashevis Singer
“People don’t think about how each of these animals that we call dinner have the same kinds of personalities as our dogs and cats.”
– Emily Deschanel
“To shut your mind, heart, imagination to the sufferings of others is to begin slowly but inexorably to die. It is to cease by inches from being human, to become in the end capable of nothing, generous or unselfish; or sometimes capable of anything, however terrible.”
– John Austin Baker
“You cannot live a nonviolent life as long as you are consuming violence. Please consider going vegan.”
– Gary L. Francione
“I became a vegetarian out of compassion for animals and to live as healthy as possible. I realized soon after that I was truly concerned with nonviolent consumption and my own health, a vegan diet was the best decision.”
– Davey Havok
“Being vegan is not the key to immortality. We’re all going to get sick and die. But to know you’re living without harming? That’s the loveliest feeling.”
– Victoria Moran
“When you truly understand that your food choices are powerful and life affirming, you can exercise control and restraint without deprivation.”
– Marlene Adelmann
“I decided to become a vegan because it was the right thing to do. I don’t believe God put these precious creatures here for us to exploit and murder.
“As a cancer survivor, I appreciate that a plant based diet is proven to be the best way to prevent cancer cells from growing. And the fact that I’m lean, strong and healthier than ever, well those are just very exciting perks!”
– Amanda Riester
“If you knew how meat was raised…you wouldn’t eat it.”
– Justin Timberlake
“Cows scream louder than carrots.”
– Alan Watts
“Life is too short to make others shorter.”
– Unknown
“Everyone has to find what is right for them, and it is different for everyone. Eating for me is how you proclaim your beliefs three times a day. That is why all religions have rules about eating.
“Three times a day, I remind myself that I value life and do not want to cause pain to or kill other living beings. That is why I eat the way I do.”
– Natalie Portman
“We cannot have peace among men whose hearts find delight in killing any living creature.”
– Rachel Carson
“We strive for a world where every earthling has the right to live and grow. That’s why we don’t eat animals.”
– Ruby Roth
“We are, quite literally, gambling with the future of our planet – for the sake of hamburgers.”
– Peter Singer
“Be Human AND Humane”
– Unknown
“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
“The human body has no more need for cows’ milk than it does for dogs’ milk, horses’ milk, or giraffes’ milk.”
– Dr. Michael Klaper
“It was all so very businesslike that one watched it fascinated.
“It was pork-making by machinery, pork-making by applied mathematics. And yet somehow the most matter-of-fact person could not help thinking of the hogs; they were so innocent, they came so very trustingly; and they were so very human in their protests – and so perfectly within their rights!
“They had done nothing to deserve it; and it was adding insult to injury, as the thing was done here, swinging them up in this cold-blooded, impersonal way, without pretence at apology, without the homage of a tear.”
– Upton Sinclair
“I am very proud of the fact that 20 years’ on people tell me they became a vegetarian as a result of ‘Meat is Murder’. I think that is quite literally rock music changing someone’s life – it’s certainly changing the life of animals. It is one of the things I am most proud of.”
– Johnny Marr
“Look into their eyes and tell them ‘I’m sorry, you have to die, but I need to eat.’
Look into their eyes, and tell them ‘I know there is an abundance of plant based foods I could eat, but I would still rather eat you.’
Look into their eyes and tell them ‘I know I don’t NEED to eat you, but I am going to pay someone else to murder you anyway.’
Look into their eyes and tell them ‘I’m sorry you lived a short enslaved, abused and tortured life, but I don’t care because I am selfish.’
Look into their eyes and tell them ‘I love my cat/dog, but your life doesn’t matter as much.’
Go ahead, take a look into their eyes and tell them that!”
– Jenn V Keller-Lowe
“I remember looking at the fear in her eyes. How could someone be so cruel? I thought as the hens cried. When will people realize that other animals have just as much the right as we do.”
– Zoe Rosenberg
“In the 1980’s, vegetarianism was considered to be “radical” by most people; just a handful of restaurants, stores, and food companies catered to the community.
PETA was promoting GO VEGETARIAN, Vegetarian Times was the go-to magazine for recipes and lifestyle information, and veggie burgers contained eggs and cheese.
I don’t know why it took so long for Veganism to catch on, or why I didn’t make the connection, myself, and change sooner, but I guess in some weird way I was part of a wave of consciousness.”
– Anji Bee
“Honestly, I would eat cardboard rather than go back to eating animals.”
– Ellen DeGeneres
VEGAN QUOTES: 151 TO 200
“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
“Eat beans, not beings!”
– Unknown
“Veganism is about nonviolence. It is about not engaging in harm to other sentient beings; to oneself; and to the environment upon which all beings depend for life.
“In my view, the animal rights movement is, at its core, a movement about ending violence to all sentient beings. It is a movement that seeks fundamental justice for all. It is an emerging peace movement that does not stop at the arbitrary line that separates humans from nonhumans.”
– Gary L. Francione
“For me, going vegan was an ethical and environmental decision. I’m doing the right thing by the animals.”
– Alexandra Paul
“Being vegan for me is a cleaner way of not participating in practices that don’t align with my values.”
– Cory Booker
“I got into being vegan because I was simply looking to benefit from being more compassionate. I have since come to learn that it is an animal-based diet that is responsible for the overwhelming majority of cases of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, multiple sclerosis, and all kinds of other problems.”
– Steve-O
“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 D. Barnard
“To become vegetarian is to step into the stream which leads to nirvana.”
– Buddha
“Being vegan doesn’t make you a stronger, better athlete. But it allows you to make yourself a stronger, better athlete.”
– Brendan Brazier
“What I like best about traveling is exploring new places, cultures, and cuisines, and learning to look at the world through a different lens.
“Travel really is the world’s best teacher. And actually, veganism offers the same thing. Becoming vegan completely changed my worldview and enabled me to connect with nature and with my fellow earthlings in a way I never had before.
“By combining travel with veganism, I’m able to view the world through a whole new window and experience places in a way that most other tourists don’t.”
– Wendy Werneth
“Vegetarianism preserves life, health, peace, the ecology, creates a more equitable distribution of resources, helps to feed the hungry, encourages nonviolence for the animal and human members of the planet, and is a powerful aid for the spiritual transformation of the body, emotions, mind, and spirit.”
– Gabriel Cousens
“The difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind.”
– Charles Darwin
“I abhor vivisection. It should at least be curbed.
“Better, it should be abolished. I know of no achievement through vivisection, no scientific discovery, that could not have been obtained without such barbarism and cruelty.
“The whole thing is evil.”
– Charles Mayo
“If you don’t want to be beaten, imprisoned, mutilated, killed or tortured, then you shouldn’t condone such behavior towards anyone, be they human or not.”
– Moby
“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 A Edison
“We don’t need to eat anyone who would run, swim, or fly away if he could.”
– James Cromwell
“Going vegetarian – and then vegan – has calmed me down, and it has also made me physically and emotionally strong.”
– Kangana Ranaut
“The vegan diet is healthy and leads to a compassionate lifestyle. I’ve gotten so many benefits. My weight is easily maintained, my skin glows, I sleep better and I feel more energized.”
– Meagan Duhamel
“You may choose to look the other way, but you can never say again that you didn’t know.”
– William Wilberforce
“We know we cannot be kind to animals until we stop exploiting them – exploiting animals in the name of science, exploiting animals in the name of sport, exploiting animals in the name of fashion, and yes, exploiting animals in the name of food.”
– Cesar Chavez
“If you truly care about animal rights and have a passion for it, take some action. Whether it’s hands-on or political, just go for it. No matter what path you choose in life or what you decide to do, you can use your voice to educate other people and help the cause.”
– Mac Danzig
“The reason that I started this was because I had a fish that was highly intelligent. He really knew who I was, he really got excited when I was home.
“One day I went to a sushi restaurant with a few of my friends and they were serving blowfish. And I thought, this is an intelligent animal.”
– Miley Cyrus
“Live life simply so that others may simply live.”
– Mahātmā Mohandas Gandhi
“Now I can look at you in peace; I don’t eat you anymore.”
– Franz Kafka (whilst watching a fish in an aquarium)
“He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.”
– Immanuel Kant
“If you could see or feel the suffering you wouldn’t think twice. Give back life. Don’t eat meat.”
– Kim Basinger
“Love animals, eat plants”
– Unknown
“When I see bacon, I see a pig, I see a little friend, and that’s why I can’t eat it. Simple as that.”
– Paul McCartney
“I refuse to eat animals because I cannot nourish myself by the sufferings and by the death of other creatures.”
– Edgar Kupfer-Koberwitz
“I was not raised vegan.
“I did not become vegan because I did not like the taste of meat, dairy, or eggs. I became vegan because one day, I had the courage to take responsibility for my choices.
“I no longer believe animals are here for us for food, clothing, entertainment, testing, or any other purpose.
“I am Vegan.”
– Unknown
“I’ve found that a person does not need protein from meat to be a successful athlete. In fact, my best year of track competition was the first year I ate a vegan diet.”
– Carl Lewis
“The most ethical diet just so happens to be the most environmentally sound diet and just so happens to be the healthiest.”
– Dr. Michael Greger
“By eating meat we share the responsibility of climate change, the destruction of our forests, and the poisoning of our air and water. The simple act of becoming a vegetarian will make a difference in the health of our planet.”
– Thích Nhất Hạnh
“Being a vegan just helps me build up my self-esteem. I feel good about it every time I eat a meal.”
– Steve-O
“The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man.”
– Charles Darwin
“Humans-who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals have had an understandable penchant for pretending animals do not feel pain.
“A sharp distinction between humans and ‘animals’ is essential if we are to bend them to our will, make them work for us, wear them, eat them without any disquieting tinges of guilt or regret.
“It is unseemly of us, who often behave so unfeelingly toward other animals, to contend that only humans can suffer. The behavior of other animals renders such pretensions specious.
“They are just too much like us.”
– Carl Sagan
“If the whole world went vegan, there would be less war. How you eat determines your mood and your outlook on life.”
– Alexandra Paul
“We don’t ‘crave’ animal-based meat, dairy, and eggs, but we do crave fat, salt, flavor, texture, and familiarity.”
– Colleen Patrick-Goudreau
“Choose a compassionate frame of mind. Always choose love. Always be kind.”
– Beth Arnold
“Cruelty is one fashion statement we can all do without.”
– Rue McClanahan
“Our deeply-rooted beliefs about the wholesomeness of milk and dairy products should be re-considered under careful, scientific evaluation.”
– Bodo Melnik
“We cannot justify treating any sentient nonhuman as our property, as a resource, as a thing that we an use and kill for our purposes.”
– Gary L. Francione
“I choose not to make a graveyard of my body for the rotting corpses of dead animals.”
– George Bernard Shaw
“If we observe nature, we will find that all creatures are born with or develop everything they need to secure their natural food. No human has yet been born with a stove on his back or the keys to a tractor in her hand.”
– Douglas N. Graham
“Fish aren’t vegetables!’
– Unknown
“The sixteen hundred dairies in California’s Central Valley alone produce more waste than a city of twenty-one million people-that’s more than the populations of London, New York, and Chicago combined.”
– Gene Baur
“Becoming vegan is the most important and direct change we can immediately make to save the planet and its species.”
– Chris Hedges
“Dairy farmers routinely remove calves from their mothers at an early age so that the milk will be available for humans; anyone who has lived on a dairy farm will know that, for days after the calves have gone, their mothers keep calling for them.”
– Peter Singer
“Violence takes on many forms, sadly violence is such an everyday part of our lives that we have mostly become oblivious to it.
“It goes on behind closed doors, far away from our vision. Screams that go unheard by the masses.
“Yet the butchered remains of miserable lives land with a sizzle on our dinner plates, and are rarely fully recognised for what they really are.”
– Mango Wodzak
“I mostly eat healthy. I just do. I’m not a vegan for health reasons – although obviously I’m 20 pounds lighter than when I started. I stayed 20 pounds lighter. I feel better. My friends say I look better. All that’s true. But I’m a vegan for compassionate reasons.”
– Russell Simmons
VEGAN QUOTES: 201 TO 250
“I suppose I am one: an activist – for animals and a vegan lifestyle. I hear that word, however, and look around to see if someone is indeed referring to me.”
– Victoria Moran
“Every person I have met who has gone vegan says it is the best decision they have ever made.”
– Lewis Hamilton
“Love animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled. Do not trouble their joy, don’t harass them, don’t deprive them of their happiness, don’t work against God’s intent.
“Man, do not pride yourself on superiority to animals; they are without sin, and you, with your greatness, defile the earth by your appearance on it, and leave the traces of your foulness after you – alas, it is true of almost every one of us!”
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“I became a vegetarian after realizing that animals feel afraid, cold, hungry and unhappy like we do.”
– Cesar Chavez
“Whenever people say ‘We mustn’t be sentimental,’ you can take it they are about to do something cruel. And if they add ‘We must be realistic,’ they mean they are going to make money out of it.”
– Brigid Brophy
“I’ve always just loved animals and you just start making the connection between what you’re eating and what happens to these poor animals and once you start making those connections and realizing the truth behind what you’re eating, it just, there wasn’t any other option for me.”
– Tony Kanal
“The word “veganism” denotes a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude – as far as is possible and practical – all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of humans, animals and the environment.
“In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals.”
– Donald Watson
“We do not need to eat animals, wear animals, or use animals for entertainment purposes, and our only defense of these uses is our pleasure, amusement, and convenience.”
– Gary L. Francione
“Non-violence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man.”
– Mahātmā Mohandas Gandhi
“What man with a human heart, who has ever cared for domestic animals, could look into their eyes, so full of confidence and affection, and willingly give them over to the butcher’s knife? How could he devour their flesh as a sweet morsel?”
– Ellen G White
“Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.”
– Albert Einstein
“One should not kill a living being, nor cause it to be killed, nor should one incite another to kill. Do not injure any being, either strong or weak, in the world.”
– Buddha
“Nothing has benefited me more physically, mentally and most important spiritually, than adopting a vegan diet. The best decision I have made as a human for me and the planet.”
– Timothy Shieff
“Some people think the ‘plant-based whole foods diet’ is extreme.
“Half a million people a year will have their chests opened up and a vein taken from their leg and sewn on their coronary artery.
“Some would call that extreme.”
– Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn
“Veganism extends compassionate, gentle benevolence to all sentient beings.”
– Stanley Sapon
“Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow creatures is amusing in itself.”
– James A. Froude
“Animals are not ingredients.”
– Barbara Thompson
“The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?”
– Jeremy Bentham
“The problem is that humans have victimized animals to such a degree that they are not even considered victims.
“They are not even considered at all. They are nothing; they don’t count; they don’t matter.
“They are commodities like TV sets and cell phones. We have actually turned animals into inanimate objects – sandwiches and shoes.”
– Gary Yourofsky
“It’s not hard to make decisions once you know what your values are.”
– Roy E. Disney
“Animal factories are one more sign of the extent to which our technological capacities have advanced faster than our ethics.”
– Peter Singer
“If you think that being vegan is difficult, imagine being a factory farmed animal.”
– Davegan Raza
“Meat is murder”
– The Smiths
“I am grateful to realize that my desires do not entitle me to add to another’s suffering.”
– Zoe Weil
“With lentils, tomatoes and rice, olives and nuts and bread, Why does a man care to gnaw a slice of something bleeding and dead?”
– Henry Bailey Stevens
“If a kid ever realized what was involved in factory farming, they would never touch meat again.”
– James Cromwell
“This may surprise you, because it surprised me when I found out, but the single biggest thing that an individual can do to combat climate change is to stop eating animals because of the huge, huge carbon footprint of animal agriculture.
“I was shocked to find out that animal agriculture directly or indirectly accounts for 14.5% of all greenhouse gas emissions, compared to all transportation – every ship, car, truck, plane on the planet only accounts for 13%. Less than animal agriculture.
“So most people think that buying a Prius is the answer, and it’s certainly not wrong, but it’s not the biggest agent of climate change.”
– James Cameron
“I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being.”
– Abraham Lincoln
“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
“Raw food is the best way to have the cleanest energy.
“We take so much care about what kind of fuel we put in our car, what kind of oil. We care about that sometimes more than the fuel that we’re looking at putting in our bodies.
“It’s cleaner burning fuel.”
– Woody Harrelson
“All children should be encouraged to love and respect animals, not turn a blind eye to their suffering and stab forks into their dead bodies.”
– Mango Wodzak
“Our economic order is tightly woven around the exploitation of animals, and while it may seem easy to dismiss concern about animals as the soft-headed mental masturbation of people who really don’t understand oppression and the depths of actual human misery, I hope to get you to think differently about suffering and pain, to convince you that animals matter, and to argue that anyone serious about ending domination and hierarchy needs to think critically about bringing animals into consideration.”
– Bob Torres
“You humans drink our milk and eat the eggs of the chickens and the ducks. Isn’t that enough for you?
“Isn’t it enough that we give you our children and what’s meant for our children? And if not, when is it enough? All you humans do is take, take, take from the earth and its beautiful creatures, and what do you give back? Nothing.
“I know humans consider it a grave insult to be called an animal. Well, I would never give a human the fine distinction of being called an animal, because an animal may kill to live but an animal never lives to kill.
“Humans have to earn the right to be called animals again.”
– David Duchovny (from his book, Holy Cow)
“An animal’s eyes have the power to speak a great language.”
– Martin Buber
“Not your mom, not your milk”
– Unknown
“Every time sitting at a dining table, we make a choice. Please choose vegetarianism. Do it for the animals. Do it for the environment and for the sake of your own health.”
– Alec Baldwin
“Elsewhere the paper notes that vegetarians and vegans (including athletes) ‘meet and exceed requirements’ for protein. And, to render the whole we-should-worry-about-getting-enough-protein-and-therefore-eat-meat idea even more useless, other data suggests that excess animal protein intake is linked with osteoporosis, kidney disease, calcium stones in the urinary tract, and some cancers.
“Despite some persistent confusion, it is clear that vegetarians and vegans tend to have more optimal protein consumption than omnivores.”
– Jonathan Safran Foer
“I never cooked before I became vegan. Preparing a meal as opposed to ordering in all the time, you start thinking about where your food comes from and how it gets to your table. You notice that chain.”
– Robin Quivers
“So it is always preferable to discuss the matter of veganism in a non-judgemental way. Remember that to most people, eating flesh or dairy and using animal products such as leather, wool, and silk, is as normal as breathing air or drinking water.
“A person who consumes dairy or uses animal products is not necessarily or usually what a recent and unpopular American president labelled an “evil doer.”
– Gary L. Francione
“Basically, the reason I’m vegan is because when I was about 16 or 17 years old, I began to understand that we don’t need to contribute to the killing and exploitation of animals to feed our bodies correctly.”
– Daniel Johns
“I wasn’t a vegan when I came to Congress. It was a decision I made soon after I got here, and it’s had such a positive impact on my life that I decided to try to help others as well.”
– Ted Deutch
“I’m vegan, though not completely religious about it. While writing ‘Sapiens,’ I became familiar with how we treat animals in the meat and dairy industries. I was so horrified that I didn’t want to be a part of it anymore.”
– Yuval Noah Harari
“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
“The wild, cruel beast is not behind the bars of the cage. He is in front of it.”
– Axel Munthe
“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. If any man were to refer to it, he would be thought ridiculous. And that is the unpardonable crime.”
– Romain Rolland
“Think of the fierce energy concentrated in an acorn! You bury it in the ground, and it explodes into an oak! Bury a sheep, and nothing happens but decay.”
– George Bernard Shaw
“I thought I was healthy and strong before, but after adopting a plant-based diet, I started to feel energetic and I was having quicker recovery after training”
– Frank Medrano
“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
“At the moment our human world is based on the suffering and destruction of millions of non-humans. To perceive this and to do something to change it in personal and public ways is to undergo a change of perception akin to a religious conversion.
“Nothing can ever be seen in quite the same way again because once you have admitted the terror and pain of other species you will, unless you resist conversion, be always aware of the endless permutations of suffering that support our society.”
– Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
“My diet is a whole food, plant based or vegan diet. So, basically I want you to eat whole grains, legumes, tonnes of vegetables and fruits, nuts and seeds. No meat whatsoever, and no processed foods.
“It’s amazing what it can do for your body, and it reduces your risk for chronic disease.”
– Julieanna Hever
VEGAN QUOTES: 251 TO 301
“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
“We consume the carcasses of creatures of like appetites, passions and organs as our own, and fill the slaughterhouses daily with screams of pain and fear.”
– Robert Louis Stevenson
“In fact, if one person is unkind to an animal it is considered to be cruelty, but where a lot of people are unkind to animals, especially in the name of commerce, the cruelty is condoned and, once large sums of money are at stake, will be defended to the last by otherwise intelligent people.”
– Ruth Harrison
“I look forward to the day when animals will have the right to run if they have legs, swim if they have fins, and fly if they have wings.”
– Gretchen Wyler
“Flesh eating is simply immoral, as it involves the performance of an act, which is contrary to moral feeling: killing.
“By killing, man suppresses in himself, unnecessarily, the highest spiritual capacity, that of sympathy and pity towards living creatures like himself and by violating his own feelings becomes cruel.”
– Leo Tolstoy
“Without pushing an agenda (okay, maybe I’ve pushed a bit), I’ve spread a little veganism wherever I’ve gone.
“I’ve become friends with chefs at the meatiest restaurants you can imagine, and shown them a few things that opened their minds (and their menus) to vegan options.
“It’s easy to be convincing when the food is delicious. It doesn’t feel like a sacrifice–it feels like a step up.”
– Tal Ronnen
“You don’t have to choose between being scientific and being compassionate.”
– Robert M. Sapolsky
“Animal liberation is also human liberation. Animal liberationists care about the quality of life for all.
“We recognize our kinship with all feeling beings. We identify with the powerless and the vulnerable the victims, all those dominated, oppressed and exploited.
“And it is the non-human animals whose suffering is the most intense, widespread, expanding, systematic and socially sanctioned of all.”
– Henry Spira
“Embrace compassion without exception.”
– Janice Anderson
“Compassion for animals is intimately associated with goodness of character, and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man.”
– Arthur Schopenhauer
“The soul is the same in all living creatures, although the body of each is different.”
– Hippocrates
“Humanity’s true moral test, its fundamental test…consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect humankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it.”
– Milan Kundera
“To cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.”
– Samuel Johnson
“I don’t normally get into this, but I’m a vegan. And I try not to, well, I don’t want to torture anything. I guess it’s about trying to live a life where I’m not contributing to the cruelty in the world.
“While I am on this planet, I want everyone I meet to know that I am grateful they are here.”
– Jessica Chastain
“The concept that you are not ingesting rotting flesh sort of sums it up for me.”
– Bryan Adams
“I love animals. All animals. I wouldn’t hurt a cat or a dog – or a chicken, or a cow. And I wouldn’t ask someone else to hurt them for me. That’s why I’m a vegetarian.”
– Peter Dinklage
“Behind every beautiful fur coat, there is a story.
“It is a bloody, barbaric story.”
– Mary Tyler Moore
“Plants are not cognizant. When we cut a leaf, we assume that the plant is suffering. But that’s our own anthropomorphism about what’s going on.”
– Daniel Chamovitz
“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
“When interacting with people, I’m always aware that I might be the first vegan this person has ever met. So I try to be a good ambassador for the movement and show that I am grateful for whatever they are able to serve me, even if it’s just some boiled vegetables.”
– Wendy Werneth
“All vegans and vegetarians have heard it: ‘But what about the plants? What about their feelings? They feel pain, too. Don’t you feel bad for the carrots? You are killing them, you know.’
“Sorry, but the above represent the dumbest set of excuses I’ve ever heard as to why some people claim eating animals is morally equivalent to eating plants. Tellingly, these people’s concern for plant feelings has not reared its head over eating a baked potato with steak, or seeing capers in chicken piccata.
“No, it’s arisen because the conversation has turned to cruelty toward the animals we eat, something that’s difficult to swallow.”
– Mikko Alanne
“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
“Speciesism is morally objectionable because, like racism, sexism, and heterosexism, it links personhood with an irrelevant criterion. Those who reject speciesism are committed to rejecting racism, sexism, heterosexism, and other forms of discrimination as well.”
– Gary L. Francione
“Remember at all time that just as your life is precious to you, so too is all life precious to those living one.”
– Mango Wodzak
“The path of the norm is the path of least resistance; it is the route we take when we’re on auto-pilot and don’t even realize we’re following a course of action that we haven’t consciously chosen.
“Most people who eat meat have no idea that they’re behaving in accordance with the tenets of a system that has defined many of their values, preferences, and behaviors. What they call ‘free choice’ is, in fact, the result of a narrowly obstructed set of options that have been chosen for them.
“They don’t realize, for instance, that they have been taught to value human life so far above certain forms of nonhuman life that it seems appropriate for their taste preferences to supersede other species’ preference for survival.”
– Melanie Joy
“Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.”
– Anatole France
“I won’t eat anything that has intelligent life, but I’d gladly eat a network executive or a politician.”
– Marty Feldman
“The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.”
– John Kenneth Galbraith
“Deliberate cruelty to our defenceless and beautiful little cousins is surely one of the meanest and most detestable vices of which a human being can be guilty.”
– William Ralph Inge
“It is much easier to show compassion to animals. They are never wicked.”
– Haile Selassie
“Life is life – whether in a cat, or dog or man. There is no difference there between a cat or a man. The idea of difference is a human conception for man’s own advantage.”
– Sri Aurobindo
“It’s hard to imagine calling the dairy industry anything but “inhumane” when you consider that on dairy farms, cows are artificially inseminated and forced to give birth, only to have their beloved babies torn away from them so the milk that nature intended for them can instead be consumed by humans.
“Both mother cows and their calves are emotionally traumatised when forcibly separated from one another. The mother cows bellow in desperation, and their calves bawl in distress. They cry out for each other for days – in vain.
“The male calves – often referred to as ‘by-products’ – are either shot at birth or destined to become veal. The female calves, like their mothers, face a lifetime of repeated forcible impregnation and anguish over their stolen babies. Their bodies are strained to the limit in order to squeeze out every last drop of milk.
“Today, British cows typically produce 10 times more milk than they would naturally in order to feed their calves.”
– Mimi Bekhechi
“I don’t see why someone should lose their life just so you can have a snack.”
– Russell Brand
“Refrain at all times from such foods as cannot be procured without violence and oppression.”
– Thomas Tryon
“No other animal on Earth has portrayed such a disregard for life than mankind.”
– Anthony Douglas Williams
“The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong in the world.”
– Dr. Paul Farmer
“The future depends on what we do in the present.”
– Mahātmā Mohandas Gandhi
“If intelligence and capability are not criteria for the possession of rights, why would animals – who have the capacity to feel fear and pain – be excluded from our moral consideration?”
– Jack Norris
“You either approve of violence or you don’t, and nothing on earth is more violent or extreme than the meat industry.”
– Morrissey
“If you think eating meat is just a personal choice, you are forgetting someone.”
– Unknown
“As I improved my diet, I started to learn to love myself, probably for the first time ever.”
– Frank Ferrante
“The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.”
– Albert Einstein
“Nobody really needs a mink coat…Except the mink.”
– Glenda Jackson
“Never, never be afraid to do what’s right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. Society’s punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way.”
– Martin Luther King Jr
“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
“Animals don’t have a voice, but I do. A loud one. A big f***ing mouth. My voice is for them. And I’ll never shut up while they suffer.”
– Ricky Gervais
“Nothing hurts a good soul and a kind heart more than to live amongst people who can’t understand it.”
– Ali Ibn Abi Talib
“Recognize meat for what it really is: the antibiotic- and pesticide-laden corpse of a tortured animal.”
– Ingrid Newkirk
“The intrinsic meaning of animal rights is that no animal should be used or killed for human purposes. Their rights as individuals are sacred, and no benefit to myself or my taste buds can trump their right to be.”
– Eddie Lama
“Be kind to every kind”
– Unknown
“Our thinking about non-human animals is very confused, and people who have chosen to live a cruelty-free plant-based lifestyle are baffled as to why other people have not made the connection.
“Many of us live with companion animals such as dogs, cats, and rabbits. We share our homes with them, consider them members of the family and we grieve when they die. Yet we kill and eat other animals who, if you really think about it, are no different from the ones we love.”
– Benjamin Zephaniah
That’s it! My collection of vegan quotes, sayings, and slogans all loaded up into one (pretty lengthy) post. Now it’s your turn!
What vegan quote have I missed that should definitely be included? Know any animal rights quotes that would be a good fit? Got some clever vegan slogans that should be here as well as on a t-shirt? Let me know!
Whether they’re funny or serious, I want to hear from YOU! Let’s make this the number one place for people to find vegan quotes online ?
Post yours in the comments section below and share on social so we can get these amazing messages and words of wisdom out to more people. Thank you!
About The Author:
Lisa Williams
Lisa Williams is a committed vegan, passionate animal welfare advocate, and keen follower of too many v-friendly food blogs to mention. She started happyhappyvegan.com back in 2016 because she felt there was a need for more straightforward information on plant-based living.
Back then, too many sites seem to either concentrate solely on recipes or be too intimidating or inaccessible for the v-curious, and she wanted to change that. The landscape is certainly a whole lot different now!
ATTRIBUTION FOR IMAGES USED:
- George Bernard Shaw – By Eugenio Hansen, OFS , via Wikimedia Commons
- Will Tuttle – By Pax Ahimsa Gethen (Own work) , via Wikimedia Commons
- Peter Singer – By Bbsrock (Own work) , via Wikimedia Commons
- Thomas Edison – By Louis Bachrach, Bachrach Studios, restored by Michel Vuijlsteke , via Wikimedia Commons
- Ricky Gervais – By Matt Hobbs (Ricky Gervais @ Tribeca Performing Arts #2) , via Wikimedia Commons
Thank you! Amazing resource.
Pleasure! Thanks for taking the time to comment ?
I love all of these quotes! Whenever I feel blue because someone is giving me sh*t about being vegan, I turn to these quotes as comfort ❤
Great to hear from you May, glad you like the quotes ?
Thanks for these amazing quotes and for taking the time and effort to put them all in one place! XXX
Change What You Eat – Change The World”
– Maria Donnellan Mella