What do great minds say
about eating pieces of animal carcass?
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"THE RELIGIOUS REVERENCE FOR WHAT IS BELOW US
NATURALLY INCLUDES THE ANIMAL WORLD, AS WELL,
AND OBLIGATES MAN TO HONOR AND TREAT THE CREATURES
UNDER HIM WITH CARE ."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), German author
Pythagoras
"Everything that humans do to the animals comes back to them. The one who
cuts the throat of a cow with a knife and remains deaf to the bellows of
fear, the one who is able to slaughter the screaming little goat in cold
blood and eat the bird which he himself has fed – how far is such a one
still from crime?"
"The Earth lavishly provides abundant, peaceful food. And it ensures you
foods that are free of murder and blood."
Pythagoras (6th century B. C.), Greek philosopher and mathematician
Leo Tolstoy
"A human can 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."
"It is only a step from the murder of animals to the murder of humans and
thus also from the torture of animals to the torture of humans."
"When you can kill no person – good, when you can kill no cow or a bird –
even better; no fish and insects – even better. Endeavor to come as far as
possible. Do not brood about what is possible and what not – do what you can
accomplish with your efforts – that is what it all depends on."
"The eating of meat is a holdover from the greatest brutality; the
transition to vegetarianism is the first and most natural result of
enlightenment."
"As long as there are slaughterhouses there will be battlefields."
"A human can live and be healthy without killing animals for his food.
Therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life, merely
for the sake of his appetite. To act thus is immoral. This is so simple and
indubitable, that it is impossible not to agree. But because the majority
still cling to eating meat, people feel it is justified and say laughing: ‘A
piece of beefsteak is a nice thing, and I will eat it with enjoyment at my
midday meal today’."
"If he be really and seriously seeking to live a good life, the first thing
from which he will abstain will always be the use of animal food, because
...its use is simply immoral, as it involves the performance of an act which
is contrary to the moral feeling – killing."
"Vegetarianism is a criterion by which we can recognize whether the striving
of mankind toward moral perfection is seriously meant."
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), Russian author
Empedokles (490-430 B.C.),
Greek physician
"It is the greatest defilement to tear away life and gulp down noble joints."
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950),
Irish playwright; Nobel Prize winner 1950:
“Animals are my friends – and I don’t eat my friends!”
“While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we
expect any ideal conditions on this earth?"
Wilhelm Busch (1832-1908), German author and artist:
"There will be a true human culture only when not only human gluttony but all eating of meat is considered to be cannibalism."
"Until further notice, the knife flashes, the pigs scream, for one has to make use of them. For everyone thinks: ‘Why the pig, if we don’t polish it off?’ And everyone smiles to himself, and gnaws like the cannibals, until one day someone says ‘how disgusting!’ to the ham from Westfalen."
François Voltaire (1694-1778),
French philosopher and author in the Age of Enlightenment:
"Certain is that this monstrous bloodbath that never stops in our slaughterhouses and kitchens no longer seems to be an evil to us; on the contrary, we view these monstrous acts, which often have a pestilential effect, as a blessing of the Lord and thank him in our prayers for our murderous acts. But can there be something more revolting than to constantly nourish oneself with the flesh of a carcass?"
Plutarch (45-125), Greek philosopher and author:
"Can you really ask what reason Pythagoras had for abstaining from flesh?
For my part, I rather wonder both by what accident and in what state of mind
or soul the first man did so, touching his mouth to gore and bringing his
lips to the flesh of a dead creature, and who set forth tables of dead,
stale bodies and ventured to call food and nourishment the pieces that had
little before bellowed and cried, moved and lived. How could his eyes endure
the slaughter when throats were slit and hides flayed and limbs torn from
limb? How could his nose endure the stench? How was it that the pollution
did not turn away his taste, which made contact with the sores of others and
sucked juiced and serums from mortal wounds ... It is certainly not lions
and wolves that we eat out of self-defense; on the contrary, we ignore these
and slaughter harmless, tame creatures without stings or teeth to harm us.
... For the sake of a little flesh we deprive them of sun, of light, of the
duration of life to which they are entitled to by birth and being ... If you
now want to claim that nature foresaw such food for you, then kill what you
plan to eat yourselves – but with the means given you by nature, not with
the help of a slaughtering knife, a club or a cleaver."
"For a tiny piece of meat we take the soul as well as sunlight and a
lifetime from the animals, for which they were born and for which they are
here, as foreseen by nature."
"Humans should never forget themselves so far that they treat living
creatures like old shoes and dead implements, old and worn, which they want
to throw away when they are no longer useful. We should not do it and should
never ask about the usefulness of old, living beings, which are only
slightly or even no longer useful."
Leonard Nelson (1927- ), German philosopher:
"The most unmistakable criterion for the upright spirit of a society is the extent to which it acknowledges the rights of animals. For while people can join together out of necessity, when as individuals they are too weak to stand up for their rights, thus gradually pushing through their rights by speaking up through coalitions, the possibility of such self-help is denied to animals, and it is therefore solely left to the righteousness of humans as to what extent they of themselves want to respect the rights of animals."
Albert Einstein (1879-1955),
physicist and Nobel Prize winner (1905), father of the theory of relativity:
"Nothing will increase the chances of survival for life on Earth as much
as the evolution to a vegetarian diet."
"Purely through its physical effect on the human temperament, a vegetarian
way of life would be able to influence the fate of mankind most positively."
Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931), inventor of the light-bulb:
"I am a vegetarian as well as a passionate anti-alcoholic, because I can thus make better use of my brain."
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), German philosopher:
"Reason begins already in the kitchen."
Helmut Kaplan (1952- ), German philosopher:
"We do not need any new morals for animals. We must merely stop arbitrarily excluding animals from our present morals."
Horace (65-8 B. C.), classical Roman author:
"Dare to be wise! Stop killing animals! The one who puts off the hour of a just life is merely like the farmer who waits for the river to dry up before he crosses it."
Nelly Moia, Luxembourg English professor, animal protector and author:
"Today, since animal protection is visibly ‘in,’ the church propagandists
are jumping on the wagon in a well-tried fashion. By making much of St.
Francis, the Church wants to have invented, so to speak, love for animals –
and yet for 2000 years it has betrayed the poor animals, justified their
exploitation, and considered their suffering null and void."
"Animals have no rights at all still today, and people no obligations at all
toward them according to the official teachings of the Catholic Church.
Morality and sin, all that takes place exclusively between God and humans,
and person to person; what happens to animals is of no consequence."
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1869), German philosopher:
"The one who is cruel to animals cannot be a good person."
"The principles of Christian morals have been limited to encompass only
people, leaving the entire animal world without rights. Just see how our
Christian rabble acts against the animals, laughing as they kill them
totally pointlessly, or mutilate or martyr them, pushing their aged horses
to the limit, in order to squeeze the last penny out of their poor bones,
until they succumb under their beating. People are the devils of the Earth
and the animals their plagued souls."
"The world is not a factory and animals are not products for our use. Not
pity, but justice is what one owes to the animals."
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), German philosopher:
"If (man) is not to stifle his human feelings, he must practice kindness
towards animals, for 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."
"The cruelty toward animals is in contrast to the duty of man toward
himself."
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), Italian artist and universal genius:
"Man is truly the king of all animals, because his cruelty surpasses
theirs. We live from the death of others. We are walking graves!”
"You have described man as the king of the animals – but I would say: king
of the predators, among whom you are the greatest; for have you not killed
them so that they serve to satisfy your palate, making you the grave of all
animals? Does not nature produce enough vegetables with which you can sate
yourself?"
"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." "The time will come when we will
condemn the eating of animals just as today we condemn the eating of our own
kind, the consuming of humans."
"Already in my youngest years I swore off eating meat, and the time will
come when like me the people will see the murderers of animals with the same
eyes as they now see the murderers of humans."
Romain Rolland (1866-1944), French author and Nobel Prize winner:
"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!"
Karlheinz Deschner (1924- ), Dr. of Philosophy, historian, literary specialist, philosopher and repeated award-winning author:
"The menu – the bloodiest page that we write."
"Man is a habitual criminal toward the animals."
"Moral misgivings toward roast veal? Not from the side of the educator. Not
from the side of jurisprudence. Not from the side of moral theology. Not
from thousands of other sides. Perhaps from the side of the calf?"
"A society that copes with slaughterhouses and battlefields is itself ripe
for slaughter."
"The one who eats animals is beneath the animals."
"Meat does not make the meal worse, but the eater."
"Animal friends: First petting the little lamb, then roast lamb; first
cursing the angler, then poached trout. You don’t like hunters, then you eat
game!"
"Doesn’t mankind, which kills trillions of animals, deserve just what it
does to the animals?"
"Man: a down and out shoddy animal."
George Sand (1804-1876), French author:
"It will be a great progress in the development of our race [the human race] when we become fruit-eaters and the meat-eaters disappear from the face of the Earth. Everything will be possible on our planet from the moment we overcome the bloody meals of meat and overcome war."
Charles Darwin (1809-1882), British natural scientist and founder of Darwinism:
"Like humans, the animals feel joy and pain, happiness and unhappiness."
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), American author and politician:
"You have just dined; and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity."
Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948), leader of the Indian independence movement, Nobel Prize winner, 1913:
"I feel most deeply that spiritual growth compels us in a certain phase
to stop slaughtering our fellow creatures for the satisfaction of our
physical wants."
"I believe that spiritual progress demands from us at a certain point that
we stop killing our fellow living beings to satisfy our physical cravings."
"To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human
being. And I would never want to take the life of a lamb for the sake of the
human body. The more helpless a living being is, the greater is its claim to
human protection from human cruelty."
"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way
its animals are treated."
"The Earth has enough for the needs of every single person, but not for his
greed."
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), Austrian nerve doctor, founder of psychoanalysis:
"I prefer the society of animals to that of humans. Certainly, a wild animal is terrible. But meanness is the prerogative of a civilized person."
Rue McClanahan (1936- ), American actress:
"Compassion is the foundation of everything positive, everything good. If you carry the power of compassion to the marketplace and the dinner table, you can make your life really count."
Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), founder of scientific geography:
"Cruelty to animals can exist neither with true education nor true learning. It is one of the most typical vices of a base and ignoble people. All peoples today are more or less barbarians toward animals. It is untrue and grotesque when they emphasize their supposed high culture at every opportunity, thereby day after day committing or indifferently allowing the most terrible cruelties to millions of defenseless creatures. Can we wonder that these so-called cultured peoples are heading toward a dreadful path of decline more and more? "
"The same stretch of land, which as a meadow, that is, cow fodder, feeds ten people with the flesh of animals fattened on it second hand, can, when planted with millet, peas, lentils and barley, maintain and feed one hundred people."
Sven Hedin (1865-1952), Swedish Asian explorer:
"I have never been able to bring myself to extinguish a light of life; I lack the power to ignite it anew."
Theodore Heuss (1884-1963), First President of the Republic of Germany:
"The sooner our youth learn on their own to view every brutality against animals as reprehensible, the more they will take care that torment does not develop from play and contact with animals, and the clearer their ability will be later to distinguish between right and wrong in the world of the prominent."
Laotse (ca. 3-4 centuries before Christ), Chinese philosopher:
"Be good to people, to plants and to animals! Chase neither man nor animal, nor cause them suffering."
Paul McCartney (1942- ) singer, former Beatles guitarist:
"One may not eat what has a face."
"I believe in peaceful protest and not eating animals is a protest free of
violence."
"We have become almost-vegetarians. During a Sunday lunch we happened to
look out of the kitchen window at our young lambs playing happily in the
fields. Glancing down at our plates, we suddenly realized we were eating the
leg of an animal which had until recently been playing in the field itself.
Afterward we ate sausage just now and then. Later, on vacation on Barbados,
we drove behind a truck loaded with magnificent hens. Suddenly it
disappeared into a poultry plant. Since then we no longer eat something that
has to be killed beforehand."
"If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegetarian. We feel
better about ourselves and better about the animals, knowing we’re not
contributing to their pain."
Prophet Mohammed (570-632)
"A good deed done to an animal is as meritorious as a good deed done to a human being, while an act of cruelty to an animal is as bad as an act of cruelty to a human being."
Feodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881), Russian author:
"Love the animals, love every plant and each thing” If you love everything, then the mysteries of God will reveal themselves to you in all things and in the end you will encompass all the world with love."
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), Scottish author:
"If modern man himself had to kill the animals that he helps himself to as food, the number of plant-eaters would rise immeasurably."
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), German philosopher:
"All ancient philosophy was oriented toward the simplicity of life and taught a certain kind of modesty in one’s need. In light of this, the few philosophic vegetarians have done more for mankind than all new philosophers, and as long as philosophers do not take courage to seek out a totally changed way of life and to demonstrate it by their example, they are worth nothing."
Shakespeare (1564-1816) English playwright and poet:
(From Twelfth Night)
"He is a heavy eater of beef. Me thinks it doth harm to his wit."
Professor Elly Ney (1882-1968), pianist:
"Vegetarianism has been a concern of mine for decades, and I think it is the natural way of living for people. It is incomprehensible to me that not every animal friend is at the same time a vegetarian."
Ovid (43-18 B.C.), Roman philosopher and author:
"The age that we called the Golden Age was blessed with the fruits of the trees and with the plants that the Earth brings forth and the mouth of man was not stained with blood. Then, the birds moved their wings in the air securely and the rabbit roamed through the field without fear. Then, the fish was not the unsuspecting victim of man. Every place was without betrayal; no injustice prevailed – everything was filled with peace. In later ages, an evil-doer defamed and despised this pure, simple food and buried in his greedy belly foods that originated from carcasses. With this, he opened the path to wickedness."
Sir Isaac Pitman (1813-1897), inventor of English stenography:
"One reason for vegetarianism should be mentioned more than normally happens. I mean the appeal to the moral principle, that we may not call upon others to do for us what we would not do ourselves. I have no moral reservations about cleaning my boots, dusting my table or sweeping my office. My feelings would not be offended by doing these and a hundred other manual tasks. But I could not kill an ox, slaughter a sheep, especially a lamb, or twist the neck of a bird. If I cannot do this without offending my best feelings, then I cannot let another do it for me and offend his feelings. If no other reason would speak in favor of our organization, then this would be sufficient to make me take up a meatless diet."
Plinius (79-23 B.C.), Roman author:
"You should rather stick to healthy cabbage and grain soup than to pheasant and guinea hens."
Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), English philosopher:
"What is it that should trace the insuperable line? ... The question is not, Can they reason? Nor, Can they talk? But, Can they suffer?"
Thomas More (1478-1535), English humanist and statesman:
"The Utopians feel that slaughtering our fellow creatures gradually destroys the sense of compassion, which is the finest sentiment of which our human nature is capable."
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), American author:
"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, just as primitive tribes have stopped eating each other after coming into contact with civilized people."
"No humane being past the thoughtless age of boyhood, will wantonly murder any creature which holds its life by the same tenure that he does."
Richard Gere (1949 - ), American film star:
"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."
Jeremy Rifkin, American activist, anti-biotechnologist:
"The transition of world agriculture from food grain to feed grains represents an ... evil whose consequences may be far greater and longer lasting than any past examples of violence inflicted by men against their fellow human beings."
Rachel Carson (1907-1964), American author:
"Until we have the courage to recognize cruelty for what it is – whether its victim is human or animal – we cannot expect things to be much better in this world ... We cannot have peace among men whose hearts delight in killing any living creature. By every act that glorifies or even tolerates such moronic delight in killing we set back the progress of humanity."
Dr. of Philosophy C. Anders Skriver (1903-1983),
German philosopher and author:
"The ethics of nourishment is targeted at the purity of the hands from bloody deeds, the purity under the skin and the purity of the heart. But one cannot speak of the purity of the heart with an unclean eater of all, who gives no thought to, and has no pangs of conscience about, the cruel crimes against the animal world, which take place daily in the Christian world merely for the sake of food for people."
Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965), physician, musician and theologian; Nobel Prize winner 1952:
"It is the fate of every truth to be an object of ridicule when it is first acclaimed. It was once considered foolish to suppose that black men were really human beings and ought to be treated as such. What was once foolish has now become a recognized truth. Today it is considered as exaggeration to proclaim constant respect for every form of life as being the serious demand of a rational ethic. But the time is coming when people will be amazed that the human race existed so long before it recognized that thoughtless injury to life is incompatible with real ethics. Ethics is in its unqualified form extended responsibility to everything that has life."
"The thinking man must oppose all cruel customs no matter how deeply rooted in tradition and surrounded by a halo. When we have a choice, we must avoid bringing torment and injury into the life of another, even the lowliest creature; to do so is to renounce our manhood and shoulder a guilt which nothing can justify."
"Reverence for life means a loathing of killing."
"Wherever an animal is forced to serve humans, the suffering that it endures concerns us all."
"My thinking is that we work for the consideration of the animals, completely renounce eating meat and also speak out against it. This is what I do myself. And in this way many a one becomes aware of a problem that has been exposed so late."
"I admit that the habit of eating meat is not in accordance with sublime feelings."
Alice Walker (1944- ), American author:
"As we spoke one day about freedom and justice, we were at the dinner table eating steaks. I’m eating misery, I thought, as I took the first bite. Then I spit it out."
Richard Wagner (1813-1883), German composer:
"If the sight of the bulls sacrificed to the gods became an abomination to us, now in clean slaughterhouses rinsed thoroughly with water, a daily blood bath takes place unnoticed by those who at their midday meal relish eating morsels of murdered animal carcass prepared and presented beyond recognition and offered at the dinner table. It should henceforth be our sole aim to provide fertile soil for newly cultivating a religion of compassion, in defiance of those who support the dogma of utilitarianism. What do we expect from a religion when we exclude compassion for the animals?"
Joseph von Görres (1776-1848), German author of the Romantic Era:
"The one who wants to go beyond normal life shuns bloody food and does not chose death for his dining master."
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) 16th US President:
"I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being."
Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904-1991), Jewish-American author; Nobel Prize winner 1978:
"Where animals are concerned, everyone becomes a Nazi ... every day is Treblinka for the animals."
"Fish, which swam through the water a few hours ago lay with glassy eyes, injured mouths and blood-stained fins on the boat deck. The fishermen, rich sport anglers, weighed the fish and bragged about their catch. Every time that Hermann witnessed how animals are killed, he had the same thought: In their behavior toward creatures, all men are Nazis."
"People often say that humans have always eaten animals, as if this is a justification for continuing the practice. According to this logic, we should not try to prevent people from murdering other people, since this has also been done since the earliest of times."
"For some time he had been thinking of becoming a vegetarian. At every opportunity, he pointed out that what the Nazis did with the Jews is the same as what people do with animals."
"We are all God’s creatures – that we pray for grace and righteousness while we continue to eat the flesh of animals that were slaughtered for our sake is incompatible."
"I will continue to live as a vegetarian, even if the whole world were to begin to eat meat. This is my protest against the state of the world. Atomic power, starvation, cruelty – we must undertake steps against this. Vegetarianism is my step. And it think it is an important one."
Bryan Adams (1959- ), Canadian rock star:
"I have been vegetarian for twelve years. And I was never seriously ill. Vegetarian food strengthens the immune system. I think that meat makes you sick."
Günther Weitzel (1915-1984), German chemist:
"The Christian conscience cannot be satisfied with not applying the fifth commandment to animals for slaughter. Anyone who has seen a slaughterhouse just one time is more or less shocked and repelled by it. Almost everyone comes to realize that brutally killing animals, first raised and fattened, in order to finally eat them, is unworthy of mankind today and especially of Christianity."
Franz Kafka (1883-1924), Austrian author:
"Now I can watch you in peace, I do not eat you any longer.” [while watching fish in an aquarium]
Nikola Tesla (1856-1943), Croatian physicist and electric technician:
"Many races that live almost exclusively from vegetables exhibit an excellent physique and strength."
Bertha von Suttner (1843-1914), Austrian pacifist;
Nobel Peace Prize 1905:
"I am convinced that the time will come when no one will want to nourish
himself with carcasses, when no one will be willing to do the work of
slaughtering. How many among us are there already who never would have eaten
meat if they themselves had had to plunge the knife into the throat of the
animal in question!"
"From one hundred educated and sensitive people, already today ninety would
never eat meat again if they had to kill or stab to death the animal that
they eat themselves."
"The one who cannot hear the victims screaming or see them jerking, but who, as soon as he is far enough away not to see or hear, is indifferent to the fact that it screams and jerks, has nerves indeed – but he has no heart."
Jean Jaques Rousseau (1712-1778), French-Swiss philosopher, educator, author and musician:
"One proof that the taste for meat is not natural to humans is also found in the fact that children have an aversion to such foods and prefer vegetable foods, like milk dishes, baked goods, fruit and the like. It is highly important not to ruin this original and natural taste, by turning the children into meat-eaters. For however one may want to explain the facts, it is certain that those who eat a lot of meat are generally crueler and wilder than other people."
Prof. Dr. Hubertus Mynarek (1929- ),
German humanist and church critic, author:
"The slaughtering of the animals, this concentration camp that has gone
on through the centuries, is essentially caused by the ‘Mother Church’."
"I am sure that eating meat not only darkens the soul but even hardens it.
It hardens it and makes it insensitive."
"True Christianity can and must get along without meat. For how can we work
toward and realize our own humanity, our own humaneness, our own perfection,
when at the same time we know that we are killing our brothers and sisters?
It is impossible to attain a higher spirituality when one slaughters
animals."
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