37 Inspiring Vegetarianism Quotes

In a world where dietary choices are as diverse as the individuals making them, vegetarianism stands out not just as a choice of nourishment but as a philosophy that embraces compassion, sustainability, and health. Whether you're a lifelong vegetarian or exploring plant-based living for the first time, the power of words can be a profound source of motivation and reflection. Within this handpicked selection of 37 inspiring vegetarianism quotes, you'll find wisdom from thinkers, activists, and innovators who articulate the virtues and values of a vegetarian lifestyle. Allow these words to resonate with you, sparking hope, understanding, and perhaps, a new perspective on the world around you.

1. “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.” - Neal Barnard

2. “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

3. “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

4. “Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace.” - Albert Schweitzer

5. “Now I can look at you in peace; I don't eat you any more.” - Franz Kafka

6. “My refusing to eat flesh occasioned an inconveniency, and I was frequently chided for my singularity, but, with this lighter repast, I made the greater progress, for greater clearness of head and quicker comprehension. Flesh eating is unprovoked murder.” - Benjamin Franklin

7. “The thought of two thousand people crunching celery at the same time horrified me.” - George Bernard Shaw

8. “Meat isn't murder, it's delicious.” - John Lydon

9. “Ethically they had arrived at the conclusion that man's supremacy over lower animals meant not that the former should prey upon the latter, but that the higher should protect the lower, and that there should be mutual aid between the two as between man and man. They had also brought out the truth that man eats not for enjoyment but to live.” - Mahatma Gandhi

10. “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

11. “The symbolism of meat-eating is never neutral. To himself, the meat-eater seems to be eating life. To the vegetarian, he seems to be eating death. There is a kind of gestalt-shift between the two positions which makes it hard to change, and hard to raise questions on the matter at all without becoming embattled.” - Mary Midgley

12. “Whether we change our lives or do nothing, we have responded. To do nothing is to do something.” - Jonathan Safran Foer

13. “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.” - Thich Nhat Hanh

14. “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

15. “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

16. “Vegetables are a must on a diet. I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread, and pumpkin pie.” - Jim Davis

17. “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

18. “Do you eat chicken because you are familiar with the scientific literature on them and have decided that their suffering doesn't matter, or do you do it because it tastes good?” - Jonathan Safran Foer

19. “Ironically, the utterly unselective omnivore -- "I'm easy; I'll eat anything" -- can appear more socially sensitive than the individual who tries to eat in a way that is good for society.” - Jonathan Safran Foer

20. “The lamb misused breeds public strifeAnd yet forgives the butcher's knife.” - William Blake

21. “Understand: the task of an activist is not to negotiate systems of power with as much personal integrity as possible--it's to dismantle those systems.” - Lierre Keith

22. “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.” - Thomas Jefferson

23. “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

24. “Not responding is a response - we are equally responsible for what we don't do.” - Jonathan Safran Foer

25. “It can be challenge enough to have to eat with myself.” - Jonathan Safran Foer

26. “I can't count the times that upon telling someone I am vegetarian, he or she responded by pointing out an inconsistency in my lifestyle or trying to find a flaw in an argument I never made. (I have often felt that my vegetarianism matters more to such people than it does to me.)” - Jonathan Safran Foer

27. “You can't possibly ask me to go without having some dinner. It's absurd. I never go without my dinner. No one ever does, except vegetarians and people like that.” - Oscar Wilde

28. “I love sushi, I love fried chicken, I love steak. But there is a limit to my love,” - Jonathan Safran Foer

29. “I remember one bobcat they had in here - now bobcats are an endangered species in this neck of the woods - they'd caught it somewhere and they must have put that cat through a dozen rounds of burn experiments before they finally determined that it was utterly useless to them. Like an empty beer can. And then you know what they did to it? Claudius was late for a lunch date so rather thanput the destroyed but still breathing animal to sleep, he picked it up by its hind legs and simply smashed its head against a wall repeatedly until it was dead. How can I forget it: I was the one told to clean up the mess. The head dented in. The eyes slowly closing. The once proud claws hanging down, stunned and lifeless, the utter senselessness of it all, and the hate, a hatred that was consummated in me which is as dangerous a hormone, or chemical, or portion of the brain, as any neutron bomb. Except that I didnt know how to explode. I was like a computer without a keyboard, a bird without wings. Roaring inside. I wanted to kill that man. To do unto others what they had done unto me. I was that bobcat, you better believe it.” - michael tobias

30. “God loves and cares for creation and has the right to expect this loving care be replicated by humans. Creation exists, not for the glory of humanity, but for the glory of God. God has the right to see that earthly creatures are free to live according to their nature and without unnecessary abuse, exploitation, and pain, so that their lives can glorify their Creator.…[S]ince God values and cares for all creation, creation has a derived right to be valued and cared for by humans for God’s glory.” - Richard A. Young

31. “Humans do have authority over creation—but it is a delegated authority to care for animals as God would and not to destroy them. All life still belongs to the Creator of life, as it did the in the beginning.” - Richard A. Young

32. “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? -timecode 1:11:10” - Bill Maher

33. “Meat is necessary when there is hard physical work to be done, or in a very cold climate, or when edible plants cannot be found...Animal flesh provides all the substances we need, both for the intensive working of our organism and for maintaining a normal temperature in cold climates.” - G.I. Gurdjieff

34. “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?” - Jonathan Safran Foer

35. “This for many people is what is most offensive about hunting—to some, disgusting: that it encourages, or allows, us not only to kill but to take a certain pleasure in killing. It's not as though the rest of us don't countenance the killing of tens of millions of animals every year. Yet for some reason we feel more comfortable with the mechanical killing practiced, out of view and without emotion by industrial agriculture.” - Michael Pollan

36. “Will you dance for me? Let your breasts roam for a moment -- I need to see how they dance.''Okay.' She danced, and as she danced, she tried to think of the most delicious salads she could imagine -- with artichokes and sundried tomato and blue cheese dressing, and beets, lots of beets.” - Nicholson Baker

37. “A man of my spiritual intensity does not eat corpses.” - George Bernard Shaw