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THE FOLLOWING QUOTATIONS COMPILED
BY DR. MURAD KHAN (a vegan and founder of Pakistan Vegetarian Society.
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“While we ourselves are the
living graves of murdered beasts how can we expect any ideal conditions
on the earth?”
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“Why should you call
me to account for eating decently? If I battened on the scorched corpses
of animals, you might well ask me why I did that.”
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“I am a human being
and not a yard for dead animals.”
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“Animals are my
friends ——and I don’t eat my friends.”
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“My will contains
directions for my funeral, which will be followed not by mourning
coaches, but by herds of oxen, sheep, swine, flocks of poultry, and a
small traveling aquarium of live fish, all wearing white scarves in
honor of the man who perished rather than eat his fellow creatures.”
(George Bernard Shaw
1856-1950— British dramatist and critic)
(Arthur Schopenhauer 1788-1860 —
German philosopher)
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“For my part I have
never been able to see, without displeasure, an innocent and defenseless
animal, from who we receive no offense or harm, pursued and
slaughtered.”
(Michel de Montaigne 1533-1592 —
French essayist)
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“Alas, what
wickedness to swallow flesh in to our own flesh, to fatten our bodies by
cramming in other bodies, to have one living creature fed by the death
of another!!”
(Ovid 43 BC-17 AD — Roman poet 43
BC)
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“Vegetarianism
serves as a criterion by which we know that the pursuit of moral
perfection on the part of man is genuine and sincere.”
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“This is dreadful!
Not the suffering and death of the animals, but that 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. And how deeply seated in the
human heart in the injunction no to take life!”
(Leo Tolstoy 1828-1920 — Russian
novelist and social theorist)
(Rabindranath Tagore 1861-1941 —
Nobel Prize winner Hindu poet)
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“I have an early age
abjured the use of meat, and time will come when men such as I will look
upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men
(from da Vinci’s Notes).”
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“Truly man is the
king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds theirs. We live by the death
of others: We are burial places! (from Merijkowsky’s Romance of
Leonardo da Vinci).”
(Leonardo da Vinci 1452-1519 —
Italian painter, sculptor, architect, scientist and engineer)
(Diogenes 412-323 BC — Greek
philosopher)
(Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803-1883 —
American essayist, philosopher and poet)
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“Granted that any
practice causes more pain to animals than it gives pleasure to man; is
that practice moral or immoral? And If, exactly in proportion as human
beings raise their heads out of the sloughs of selfishness, they do not
with one voice answer IMMORAL, let the morality of the principle of
utility be forever condemned.”
(John Stuart Mill 1806-1873 —
English philosopher and economist)
(Mohandas Gandhi 1869-1948 —Hindu
social reformer and nationalist)
(Franz Kafka 1883-1924 —
Austrian-Czech writer)
(Buddha 563-483 — from Lankavatara
Sutra)
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“ . . . . (people
who eat meat) are responsible for all the pain that grows out of
meat-eating, and which is necessitated by the use of sentient animals as
food — all starvation and the thirst and the prolonged misery of fear
which these unhappy creatures have to pass through for the gratification
of the appetite of man — all pain acts as a record against humanity and
slackens and retards the whole of human growth . . .”
(Annie Besant 1748-1832 — English
philosopher and social reformer)
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“Vegetarianism is
the diet of the future, as flesh-food is the diet of the past — I
suggest that in proportion as man is truly humanized, not by schools of
cookery but by schools of thought, he will abandon the barbarous habit
of flesh-eating, and will make gradual progress towards a purer,
simpler, more humane, and therefore more civilized diet-system.”
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“You take a
beautiful girl down to supper and you offer her — a ham sandwich! It is
proverbial folly to cast peals before swine. What are we to say of the
politeness which casts swine before pearls?”
(Henry S. Salt 1851-1939 — English
humanitarian and reformer; friend of Gandhi and Shaw)
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“Wherever any animal
is forced into the service of man the sufferings which it has to bear on
that account are the concern of every one of us. No one ought to permit,
in so far as he can prevent it, pain or suffering for which he will not
take the responsibility. No one ought to rest at ease in the thought
that in so doing he would mix himself up in affairs which are not his
business. Let no one shirk the burden of his responsibility. When there
is so much maltreatment of animals, when the cries of thirsting
creatures go up unnoticed from the railway trucks, when there is so much
roughness in our slaughterhouses, when in our kitchens so many animals
suffer horrible deaths from unskillful hands, when animals endure
unheard-of agonies from heartless men, or are delivered to the dreadful
play of children, then we are all guilty and must bear the blame.”
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“It is good to
maintain and cherish life; it is evil to destroy and to check life.”
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“A man is really
ethical only when he obeys the constraint laid on him to help all life
which he is able to succor, and when he goes out of his way to avoid
injuring anything living. He does not ask how far this or that life
deserves sympathy as valuable in itself, nor how far it is capable of
feeling. To him life as such is sacred. He shatters no ice crystal that
sparkles in the sun, tears no leaf from its tree, breaks off no flower,
and is careful not to crush any insect as he walks. If he works by
lamplight on summer evening, he prefers to keep the window shut and to
breathe stifling air rather than to see insect after insect fall on his
table with singed and sinking wings.”
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“The very fact that the animal, as
a victim of research, has in his pain rendered such services to
suffering men has itself created a new and unique relation of solidarity
between him and ourselves. The result is that a fresh obligation is laid
on each of us to do as much god as we possibly can to all, creatures in
all sorts of circumstances. When I help an insect
(Albert Schweitzer 1875-1965—
theologian and musician; and winner of Nobel Peace Prize of 1952)
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“You only hunger
for the sweet and gentle creatures which harm no one, which follow
you, serve you and are devoured by you as the reward of their
service.”
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“Those whose minds
are at peace and who are free from passions do not desire to live at
the expense of others . . .”
(Mahavira . . . from Acranga Sutra
— Jainism)
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“To a man whose
mind is free, there is something even more intolerable in the
suffering of animals than that in the sufferings of men. For with the
latter it is at least admitted that suffering is evil and that the man
who causes it is 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 — it cries vengeance upon
all the human race. If God exists and tolerates it, it cries vengeance
upon God. If there is no justice for the weak and lowly, for the poor
creatures who are offered up as a sacrifice to humanity, then there is
no such thing as justice.”
(Romaine Rolland)
(Confucius)
(Fredrich Nietzche)
(R. J. Porteares)
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“How can he be possessed of
kindness who to increase his own flesh, eats the flesh of other
creatures?”
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“Let us not forget that we can
all take life, but none of us can give it. There is no possession more
precious than self-control. Watch therefore as you would watch
treasure.”
(Thiruvallauer)
“Life is short,
The vanities of the world are
transient,
but they alone live who live for
others,
the rest are more dead than
alive.”
(Swami Vivekananda)
(James Anthony Froude)
(Max Tooley)
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“Vegetarianism, in
its highest moral form, can do much to level the sagging equilibrium
of our chaotic world. In an unbalanced world where man is the victim
of the tragic conflict between the rational laws of nature and human
liberty, moral vegetarianism and a rational and scientific mode of
living and thinking can do much to restore the world to its normal
equilibrium.”
(Richard Calore)
(Benzion Liber)
I am the voice of the voiceless.
Through me the dumb shall speak
Til’ the deaf world’s ear shall be made
to hear
The wrongs of the wordless weak.
The same force formed the sparrow
That fashioned man, the king.
The God of the whole gave a speak of
soul
To furred and feathered thing;
And I am my brother’s keeper,
And I will fight his fight.
And speak the word for beast and bird
Till the world shall set things right
(Ella Wheeler Wilcox 1853-1919 —
American poet and novelist)
We are the living graves of murdered
beasts,
Slaughtered to satisfy our appetites.
We never pause to wonder at our feasts,
If animals, like man, can possibly have
rights.
We pray on Sundays that we may have
light,
To guide our foot-steps on the paths we
tread.
We’re sick of war, we do not want to
fight,
The thought of it now fills our hearts
with dread
And yet we gorge ourselves upon the
dead.
Like carrion crows, we live and feed on
meat,
Regardless of the suffering and pain
We cause by doing so. If thus we treat
Defenseless animals for sport or gain,
How can we hope in this world to attain
The Peace we say we are so anxious for?
We pray for it, o’er hecatombs of
slain,
To God, while outraging the moral law,
Thus cruelty begets its offspring—War.
(Song of Peace by George Bernard
Shaw)
For hundreds of thousands of years
the stew in the pot
has brewed hatred and resentment
that is difficult to stop.
If you wish to know why there are
disasters
of armies and weapons in the world,
listen to the piteous cries
from the slaughterhouse at midnight.
(An ancient Chinese verse. Translation
by Gold Mountain Monastery Staff)
Compiled by:
Dr. Murad Khan
pakveg@hotmail.com
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