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Eating Quotes

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Eating Quotes

“Now that I know how supermarket meat is made, I regard eating it as a somewhat risky proposition. I know how those animals live and what's on their hides when they go to slaughter, so I don't buy industrial meat.”

Knows Made Animal Know How Eating Regard Meat Propositions Slaughter Supermarkets

Author:Michael Pollan

“Once when we were fifteen, River (Phoenix) and I went out for this fancy dinner in Manhattan and I ordered soft-shell crabs. He left the restaurant and walked around on Park Avenue, crying. I went out and said, "I love you so much. Why?" He had such a pain that I was eating an animal, that he hadn't impressed on me what was right. I loved him for that. For his dramatic desire that we share every belief, that I be with him all the way”

“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.”

Trying Wells May Today Choices Animal Forever One Thing Normal Eating Aspect Vices Acceptable Surgery Vice Versa Eating Animals

Author:Jasper Fforde

“Many people will first be attracted to veganism for their health but find themselves far more open to learning about the animal issues when they don't have to block them out three times a day in order to enjoy eating. Then once people learn, it is hard to forget and go back. Come for the body, stay for the soul.”

People Firsts Soul Hard Body Order Three Enjoy Forget Animal Issues Eating Block Three Times Veganism

Author:Karen Dawn

“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.”

“The dangers of eating animal products occur after the age of reproduction. If people developed cardiovascular disease that was fatal by the age of twelve or thirteen, eating animals would have died out long ago. You get it after you've already reproduced.”

People Ifs Long Age Animal Danger Products Disease Eating Died Twelve Long Ago Reproduction Thirteen Eating Animals Cardiovascular Cardiovascular Disease

Author:Neal Barnard

“The beginning of mindful eating is the realization that eating meat is not about the meat-eater; it is about the animals who are tormented and killed.”

Animal Eating Realization Buddhist Meat Eating Meat

Book:The Great Compassion: Buddhism and Animal Rights

Source: The Great Compassion: Buddhism and Animal Rights

“When virtuous mental attitudes, like mindfulness, respect, and compassion, are invoked to justify nonvirtuous acts like hunting, fishing, and eating animal products, the mental attitudes are insincere. They are self-deceptions that we create to justify habits that in our hearts we know are wrong, but to which we have become attached.”

Knows Heart Self Animal Attitude Compassion Products Habit Mindfulness Eating Buddhist Deception Fishing Justify Hunting Virtuous Self Deception Mental Attitude Eating Animals Insincere

Author:Norm Phelps

“When we hunt or fish, we deliberately kill a defenseless being who wishes us no harm. This is a direct violation of the First Precept. It is absolutely forbidden to Buddhists. As to eating meat, we know that the only way we can obtain it is for an animal to be killed. Therefore, when we eat meat, it is our intent that an innocent animal should die to satisfy our addiction to flesh. And that underlying intention, no matter how well hidden behind a smokescreen of rationalizations will block the growth of compassion and create negative karma.”

“Focus all your meals around high-quality animal protein. You should eat a large variety, and plan your meals around which kind of protein you'll be eating.”

Should Kind Loss Animal Quality Focus Plans Eating Variety Meals Weight Loss Protein High Quality

Author:Al Sears

“As humans, we do get to choose what we eat, and when we choose to eat a plant, we are eating (i.e., harming) just that plant, plus indirectly whatever nutrients that plant consumed over its lifetime (and we are also harming whatever beings may have been living on that plant or who were injured or killed in the harvesting process). But when we eat an animal, we are eating not just that animal, but also indirectly all of the plants and other beings that that animal ate over its lifetime - those plants became the flesh that we eat.”

Humans May Has Beens Process Animal Eating Plant Lifetime Flesh Over It Plus Consumed Injured Living On Nutrients

Author:Sharon Gannon

“Eating vegetables, fruits and grains rarely causes total destruction of the plant or tree on which the food grew; after harvesting, seeds remain to be replanted the next season. But this certainly does not happen when an animal is slaughtered - death is final; that animal will not reproduce again!”

Doe Happens Next Causes Animal Tree Grew Eating Destruction Seasons Plant Fruit Finals Seeds Vegetables Grain

Author:Sharon Gannon

“If we want to consider the sanctity of life in deciding what to eat, the choice is clear. Eating a plant based diet causes less harm, to ourselves, to the other animals, to the planet.”

Ifs Want Choices Causes Animal Clear Planets Eating Plant Harm Diets Sanctity Plant Based Diet Sanctity Of Life

Author:Sharon Gannon

“Because we lack sharp claws, aren't very fast on our feet, and aren't exactly endowed with lightning reflexes, it would be very difficult if not impossible for us to run down an animal, catch it with our bare hands, and tear through its fur and skin in order to eat it. Biologically, we are designed to be frugivorous herbivores eating mainly fruits, seeds, roots, and leaves.”

Ifs Hands Would Be Running Order Difficult Animal Impossible Feet Tears Eating Roots Skins Fruit Seeds Lightning Fur Claws Reflexes

Author:Sharon Gannon

“We have been conditioned, taught, and coerced by the agents of our culture (parents, grandparents, advertisers, food critic, etc.) to eat the flesh and drink the milk of other animals. Because of this conditioning, which has occurred over a long period of time (thousands of years), we have developed addictive eating habits and blinded ourselves to the facts of our biological system and its true needs.”

“In fact, we would know ourselves that we are not meant to be meat eaters, and we would not have allowed ourselves to become conditioned to meat eating in the first place, if the effects of meat eating were felt right away. But since heart disease, cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis, etc. usually take many years to develop, we are able to separate them from their cause (or contributing factors) and go on happily eating an animal-based diet.”

Ifs Knows Years Firsts Heart Facts Able Felt Causes Animal Effects Goes On Disease Eating Cancer Factors Meat Diets Etc Meant To Be Contributing Diabetes Heart Disease Meat Eating Osteoporosis

Author:Sharon Gannon

“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.”

Humans Force Human Beings Animal Planets Eating Greed Billions Destructive Fragile Our Planet Ecosystems

Author:Sharon Gannon

“It is true that every being is enjoying life or suffering as a direct result of his or her own past actions. The animals in the factory farms may have been meat-eating human beings in a previous birth; we don't know, and it is not our place to judge.”

Knows Humans May Has Beens Action Past Suffering Enjoy Human Beings Animal Results Judging Birth Eating Direct Meat Farms Factories Enjoy Life Meat Eating

Author:Sharon Gannon

“Some meat eaters defend meat eating by pointing out that it is natural: in the wild, animals eat one another. The animals that end up on our breakfast, lunch, and dinner plates, however, aren't those who normally eat other animals. The animals we exploit for food are not the lions and tigers and bears of the world. For the most part, we eat the gentle vegan animals. However, on today's farms, we actually force them to become meat eaters by making them eat feed containing the rendered remains of other animals, which they would never eat in the wild.”

World Ends Today Force Natural Animal Bears Eating Remains Dinner Gentle Meat Breakfast Farms Lions Lunch Vegan Plates Tigers Pointing Exploits Containing Wild Animal Meat Eating Dinner Plates

Author:Sharon Gannon

“Lions and other carnivorous animals do a lot of things besides eat meat. They live outdoors, not in houses; they don't wear clothes or drive around in cars; they usually sleep for many hours after eating a meal. Why cite just one of the many things that they do and argue that we should imitate them? This doesn't make much sense.”

Should House Hours Sleep Animal Car Eating Clothes Arguing Meat Meals Just One Lions Citing

Author:Sharon Gannon

“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.”

People Kids Used Felt Water Animal Dog Dad Creatures Eating Cat Twenties My Dad Fishes Fishing Vegan Panic Cat And Dog

Author:Dan Mathews

“Eating meat and dairy products is the SAD (Standard American Diet) diet. The SAD diet can only make you sad. It causes heart disease, cancer, diabetes and makes you fat. Raising animals for food destroys the environment... And those animals are not happy. They are enslaved and live humiliating, fearful lives of abuse and tremendous suffering. Veganism turns sadness into joy.”

“The fact is that eating meat and dairy is bad for your health, the health of the animals eaten, as well as the health of the planet.”

Wells Facts Animal Planets Eating Meat Dairy Eating Meat

Author:Sharon Gannon

“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.”

Ifs Way Made Different Enjoy Difficult Animal Steps Grew Eating Grew Up Versions Vegan Milk Cows Sausage Small Steps Almonds Soy Soy Milk

Author:Kathy Freston

“If I'm training I'm cutting weight for a competition. I'm hard. I'm pretty much eating animal protein and that's it. No rice, no beans, certainly no sweets.”

Ifs Hard Animal Cutting Sweet Eating Training Weight Competition Rice Beans Protein Eating Animals

Author:Anthony Bourdain

“Years of cultural programming have taught us to love some animals while eating others, when in all reality, all animals are sentient beings with the capacity to feel, both physically and emotionally.”

Feels Years Reality Animal Taught Eating Capacity Programming Taught Us Sentient Beings

Author:Kat Von D

“Have you ever known an alcoholic, a cigarette smoker, or a heroin user to be rational when it came to alcohol, cigarettes, or heroin? Of course not. And there is NO such thing as a rational - or ethical - meat, dairy, egg and honey-eater when it comes to animal issues and whether humans should be enslaving, murdering and eating animals, or using them as test subjects, clothing and entertainment.”

“My perception of the human animal is as an extremely dangerous predator. That's who I perceive us to be as a species. Maybe the most dangerous predator on the planet, with the exception of a few microbes. I'm really grateful for the degree of socialization that prevents us, most of the time, from killing and eating each other. And I admire all the social structures that have been designed and layered and niched in that encourage bonding toward a kind of social harmony that is meant to contain and counteract our natural inclinations toward predation, ferocity, and eating whatever moves.”

Kind Moving Natural Animal Dangerous Perception Eating Harmony Grateful Killing Admire Perceive Exception Predator

Author:Katherine Dunn

“My favorite animal is steak.”

Life Animal Food Eating Cooking My Favorite Culinary Steak

Author:Fran Lebowitz

“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.”

Ifs Thinking Looks Happens Animal Eating Cruelty Meat Farms Factories Slaughterhouses Eating Meat

Author:Ingrid Newkirk

“Greed is a basic part of animal nature. Being against it is like being against breathing or eating. It means nothing.”

Mean Animal Eating Greed Breathing

Author:Ben Stein

“Crocodiles are easy. They try to kill and eat you. People are harder. Sometimes they pretend to be your friend first.”

People Trying Firsts Sometimes Funny Easy Animal Eating Harder Killing Betrayal Pretending Cunning Hypocrite I Hate You Predator Crocodiles Plainness Friend Betrayal

Author:Steve Irwin

“Delaying a meal brings about symptoms most people call "hunger." These symptoms include abdominal cramping, weakness, and feeling ill-the same as during drug withdrawal. This is not hunger. Our dietary habits, especially eating animal-protein-rich foods three times a day, are so stressful to the detoxification system in our liver and kidneys that we start to get withdrawal, or detoxification, symptoms the minute we aren't busy processing such food. Real hunger is not that uncomfortable.”

Source: Eat to Live: The Amazing Nutrient-Rich Program for Fast and Sustained Weight Loss

“The shared meal elevates eating from a mechanical process of fueling the body to a ritual of family and community, from the mere animal biology to an act of culture.”

Body Culture Process Community Animal Food Eating Mere Meals Biology Ritual Real Food

Book:In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

Source: In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

“Would the last animal, eating garbage and living on the last scrap of land, his mate dead, would he still forgive you?”

Stills Lasts Animal Land Eating Forgiving Mates Garbage Living On Scrap

Book:Light Action in the Caribbean: Stories

Source: Light Action in the Caribbean: Stories

“We need a better way to talk about eating animals. We need a way that brings meat to the center of public discussion in the same way it is often at the center of our plates. This doesn't require that we pretend we are going to have a collective agreement. However strong our intuitions are about what's right for us personally and even about what's right for others, we all know in advance that our positions will clash with those of our neighbors. What do we do with that most inevitable reality? Drop the conversation, or find a way to reframe it?”

Knows Way Needs Reality Strong Animal Position Conversation Eating Intuition Neighbor Inevitable Discussion Meat Collectives Agreement Plates Better Ways Clash Eating Animals

Author:Jonathan Safran Foer

“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?”

Source: Eating Animals

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

Book:Bite-Size Einstein: Quotations on Just About Everything from the Greatest Mind of the Twentieth Century

Source: Bite-Size Einstein: Quotations on Just About Everything from the Greatest Mind of the Twentieth Century

“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.”

People Knows Writing Book Animal Views Cases Knowing Eating Meat Assumption Agriculture Inquiry Vegetarianism Writing A Book Thorough Eating Animals Eating Meat Animal Agriculture

Author:Jonathan Safran Foer

“I became a vegetarian after realizing that animals feel afraid, cold, hungry and unhappy like we do. I feel very deeply about vegetarianism and the animal kingdom. It was my dog Boycott who led me to question the right of humans to eat other sentient beings.”

“If we are not given the option to live without violence, we are given the choice to center our meals around harvest or slaughter, husbandry or war. We have chosen slaughter. We have chosen war. That's the truest version of our story of eating animals. Can we tell a new story?”

Ifs War Stories Choices Given Animal Violence Eating Chosen Versions Meals Harvest Slaughter Truest Eating Animals

Author:Jonathan Safran Foer

“Pleasure is never as pleasant as we expected it to be and pain is always more painful. The pain in the world always outweighs the pleasure. If you don't believe it, compare the respective feelings of two animals, one of which is eating the other.”

Ifs World Believe Two Feelings Pain Pleasure Animal Eating Don't Believe Painful Expected Compare Pleasant

Book:101 Facts of life

Source: 101 Facts of life

“I have lived temperately, eating little animal food, and that not as an aliment, so much as a condiment for the vegetables, which constitute my principal diet.”

Littles Animal Eating Diets Vegetarian Vegetables Principal Vegetarianism Vegetarian Diet Vegetarian Food Condiments Vegan Food Animal Food

Book:Life of Thomas Jefferson: with selections from the most valuable portions of his voluminious and unrivalled private correspondence : with portrait

Source: Life of Thomas Jefferson: with selections from the most valuable portions of his voluminious and unrivalled private correspondence : with portrait

“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.”

Ifs Way Should Might Animal Prove Eating Capable Killing Silly Cruelty Reasonable Gaps Endeavor Hunting Abstraction Eating Animals

Author:Jonathan Safran Foer

“Humans are the only animals that have children on purpose, keep in touch (or don't), care about birthdays, waste and lose time, brush their teeth, feel nostalgia, scrub stains, have religions and political parties and laws, wear keepsakes, apologize years after an offense, whisper, fear themselves, interpret dreams, hide their genitalia, shave, bury time capsules, and can choose not to eat something for reasons of conscience. The justifications for eating animals and for not eating them are often identical: we are not them.”

“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.”

“We live in a culture that has institutionalized the oppression of animals on at least two levels: in formal structures such as slaughterhouses, meat markets, zoos, laboratories, and circuses, and through our language. That we refer to meat eating rather than to corpse eating is a central example of how our language transmits the dominant culture's approval of this activity.”

Source: The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory

“This isn't animal experimentation, where you an imagine some proportionate good at the other end of the suffering. This is what we feel like eating. Tell me something: Why is taste, the crudest of our sense, exempted from the ethical rules that govern our other sense? If you stop and think about it, it's crazy. Why doesn't a horny person has as strong a claim to raping an animal as a hungry one does to killing and eating it?”

Ifs Thinking Feels Persons Doe Ends Suffering Strong Animal Imagine Crazy Taste Eating Claims Killing Hungry Ethical Experimentation Horny Animal Experimentation

Author:Jonathan Safran Foer

“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.”

Ifs Thinking Wells Mean Long Dies Asks Chance Animal Laughing Environment Fronts Theory Creatures Eating Long Time Evidence Sick Add Vegetarian Purgatory Carnivores

Author:David Levithan

“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.”