Top 1200 Eating Animals Quotes & Sayings

While self-interest arising from the enjoyment of meat eating is obviously one reason for its entrenchment, and inertia another, a process of language usage engulfs discussions about meat by constructing the discourse in such a way that these issues need never be addressed. Language distances us from the reality of meat eating, thus reinforcing the symbolic meaning of meat eating, a symbolic meaning that is intrinsically patriarchal and male-oriented. Meat becomes a symbol for what is not seen but is always there--patriarchal control of animals and of language.

I'll never stop eating animals, I'm sure, but I do think that for the benefit of everyone, the time has come to stop raising them industrially and stop eating them thoughtlessly

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

If you like eating meat but want to eat ethically, this is the book for you. From the hard-headed, clear-eyed, and sympathetic perspective of butchers who care deeply about the animals whose parts they sell, the customers who buy their meats, and the pleasures of eating, this book has much to teach. It’s an instant classic, making it clear why meat is part of the food revolution. I see it as the new Bible of meat aficionados and worth reading by all food lovers, meat-eating and not.

It is not how we breed, keep and kill animals for human consumption that has been the impetus for vegetarianism for thousands of years. It is that we breed, keep and kill animals for human consumption. Throughout the centuries the common thread in the arguments against eating animals is the fact that since we have no nutritional requirement for the flesh or fluids of animals, killing them to simply satisfy our taste-buds or habits or customs amounts to senseless slaughter, and senseless slaughter is no small thing.

To me nature is... spiders and bugs, and big fish eating little fish, and plants eating plans, and animals eating... It's like an enormous restaurant, that's the way I see it.

We're one of the only animals in the world that don't really think of ourselves as animals, but we are animals, and we must respect our fellow animals.

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

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

Way back in the 1970s, I was eating a steak, and I looked down, and for the first time it suddenly looked like flesh to me - like a dead creature. In a flash, I realized that every time I ate any kind of meat, something had been killed for me, and I stopped eating all animals, not just cows and pigs but chickens and fish.

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.

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.

The logical conclusion to a compassionate and respectful relationship to sentient animals is that we stop eating them.

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

...eating animals involves an intentional decision to participate in the suffering and death of nonhumans where there is no plausible moral justification.

I stopped eating beef in high school, and in college I stopped eating poultry. I am not a huge fan of factory farming and what we're doing to animals. I try to eat as clean as possible because I want to know what I'm putting into my body.

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.

I have no doubt that it is part of the destiny of the human race in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals.

Animals feed themselves; men eat; but only wise men know the art of eating

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

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.

Many things that human words have upset are set at rest again by the silence of animals. Animals move through the world like a caravan of silence. A whole world, that of nature and that of animals, is filled with silence. Nature and animals seem like protuberances of silence. The silence of animals and the silence of nature would not be so great and noble if it were merely a failure of language to materialize. Silence has been entrusted to the animals and to nature as something created for its own sake.

Consider the biggest animals on the planet: elephants, and buffaloes, and giraffes. These are vegetarian animals. They grow to thousands of pounds of muscle and bone without ever eating cheeseburgers and pepperoni pizzas.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Animals don't lie. Animals don't criticize. If animals have moody days, they handle them better than humans do.

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.

I'll never stop eating animals, I'm sure, but I do think that for the benefit of everyone, the time has come to stop raising them industrially and stop eating them thoughtlessly.

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

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.

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

We know we cannot defend to 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.

But it’s compounded by the fact that I love animals and feel better not eating them.

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

Basically, though, I believe in eating well, not eating too much but eating a variety of foods.

Eating animals is not our God-given right, but being kind to them is.

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

Animals can seem more pure. Without complication, I mean, animals are selfless. What animals do for us, they do out of instinct.

When I started researching the eco effects of eating meat, I'd assumed, for no good reason, that environmental irresponsibility would correspond to both animal size and deliciousness: Eating cows would be worst, eating pigs would be a bit less bad, and eating chickens would be basically harmless.

One of the things that I always think about is the emotional sophistication of animals and how much we're learning about the emotional sophistication of animals. If you're eating a pig, you're essentially eating the equivalent of a four-year-old human being.

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

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. Every day, I have the choice to live a life of compassion that not only saves animals but helps the environment.

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

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

When I was 8 years old, my brother was making the noises of the animals I was eating, so I decided to go vegetarian. Then I would give up because I was 8.

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.

I don't feel I'm taking the moral high ground, telling people to stop eating animals because I've done it. It just works for me.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

The fact that most kids aren't eating at home with their families any more really means they are eating elsewhere. They are eating out there in fast food nation.

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

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.