What famous people were talking about eating meat and animal suffering

Paul McCartney (musician):

If slaughterhouses had glass walls,

half the people would become vegetarians ...

("Principles of morals and legislation")

Annie Besant (1847-1933, English philosopher, humanist and social activist, active member of the liberation movement in India):

Consumers of meat are responsible for all the pain and suffering that result from meat eating and are caused by the fact of the UPR consumption of living creatures for food. Not only the horrors of slaughterhouses, but any preceding torture transportation, hunger, thirst, the endless torment of fear that these poor creatures are doomed to endure in order to satisfy their culinary whims of man ... All this pain is a heavy burden on the human race, slowing, slowing its progress and development ...

Shakyamuni Buddha (563-483 years. BC):

In the name of ideals of goodness and purity of Bodhisattva should refrain from eating the flesh of dead animals, born from a seed, the blood and the like. To avoid frightening the animals and release them from the bondage of fear, the Bodhisattva, striving for the attainment of compassion, but do not eat the flesh of living things ...

(Lankavatara Sutra)

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519, Italian painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, inventor and scientist):

Truly a man - the king of beasts, for which another beast compared to it in severity. We live by killing other - we are walking the grave!

("Romance of Leonardo da Vinci", DS Merezhkovsky)

From an early age I avoided eating meat, and I believe that the time will come when men such as I will look on the murder of animals as they now look on the murder.

("Notes da Vinci")

Diogenes (412? -323?'s. Century BC, the Greek philosopher):

We may as well eat human flesh, as we do with the meat of animals.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1883, American essayist, philosopher and poet):

You have just dined, and however carefully hidden was no slaughterhouse of your accidental glance how many miles you have not shared - there is complicity.

Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948, leader and ideologue of the Indian national liberation movement, and prominent social and political figure):

An indicator of the greatness of the nation and of morality in a society that can serve as its representatives treat the animals.

I do not see the flesh of dead animals as necessary for us to eat. On the contrary, I am convinced that for a person acceptable to eat meat for food. We are mistaken in their attempts to copy the lower animals, in fact exceeding them in development.

The only way to live - is let live.

Cow protection to me is one of the most exciting events in all of human evolution because it takes people beyond the individuals of the same species. The cow symbolizes for me the whole animal world. Man, through the cow, is designed to understand our oneness with all life ... Cow - it is a song of pity ... Cow protection symbolizes the protection of all the dumb creatures of the Lord ... Plea standing below us on the ladder of evolution in silence, and that is its strength.

Jesus (3 BC-36 AD):

And the flesh of slain beasts in his body will become his own tomb. For I tell you truly, he who kills - kills himself, eating the flesh of slain - eats of the body of death.

(Essinskoe gospel of peace)

Franz Kafka (1883-1924, a famous Austrian-Czech writer):

Now I can look at you quietly, and I no longer have it.

(As the writer said, admiring the fish in the aquarium)

Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832, English philosopher, economist and lawyer):

There will come a day when all members of the animal kingdom will find those inalienable rights, that dares to break the tyranny of a power ... In one day, we finally realize that the number of limbs, fur quality and structure of the spine is not a reason sufficient to determine the fate of a living being. What else can be a criterion to determine which features of which we are not allowed to cross? Maybe this is a meaningful reason or speech? But then a grown horse or dog - much more sensible and sociable creature, rather than a baby, which day, a week or even a month old. Let us assume that the reality would be the opposite, but what difference does it make in the end? The question is not how can they reason? Can they talk? But in what can they suffer?

John Harvey Kellogg (1852-1943, American surgeon and founder of the Battle Creek Sanatorium Hospital):

The flesh is not the best food for human and historically not included in the diet of our ancestors. Meat - a secondary, derivative work, because all the food originally comes fauna. In the meat and animal products, there is nothing useful or indispensable to the human body, which can not be found in plant foods. A dead cow or sheep lying in a meadow called scavengers. The same corpse, embellished and hung in the butcher shop, is the category of gourmet food! Careful microscopic examination shows only minimal differences between the fence and the carrion meat carcasses in the store (or the absence thereof). Both are teeming with pathogenic bacteria and exude a putrid odor.

Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949, Belgian playwright, essayist and poet):

If only one person is aware of the opportunity to do without animal food, it would mean not only a fundamental economic revolution, but significant progress in ethics and morals.

John Stuart Mill (1806-1873, British philosopher and economist):

Realizing that the suffering experienced by animals as things is disproportionately greater than the pleasure derived from a person, should we recognize is the practice of moral or immoral? And if people in an unsuccessful effort to lift his head out of the mire of selfishness and self-love, in a single voice will say "immoral", then let the moral component of the principle of utility will be forgotten forever.

Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592, French philosopher and humanist, essayist)

As for me, I have never been able to look without flinching at how innocent and defenseless animals do not contain in itself any threat and do not cause us any harm, ruthlessly persecuted and destroyed by man.

In his description of the Golden Age of Saturn by Plato, among other things, depicts the qualities of the human race, as the ability to communicate with the animal kingdom. Exploring and learning the aforesaid, the man knows his true quality and led him to the differences among its members. Through this man finds the perfect knowledge and prudence, living happily in peace and harmony, which we can only dream of. Do we need other, more compelling reasons to condemn the human folly in dealing with our smaller brethren?

("Apology for Raymond Sebonda")

Ovid (43 BC - 17? AD, the Roman poet):

O mortals! Afraid to defile,

Their bodies this unholy food,

Look - your fields are full of grains,

And the branches of trees bent under the weight of the fruit,

You are vegetables and herbs that are tasty,

When cooked skilful hand,

Rich cluster of vine

And honey gives sweet clover,

Indeed, Mother Nature is generous,

Giving us these delicacies abound,

In it there is all to your table

All .. to avoid killing and bloodshed.

Plutarch (46? -120?'s. BC, the Greek historian and biographer, best known for their work Comparative biography)

I, for one, wonder what should be the sense of a state of mind or the mind of the first man, he who killed the animal, lifted it to his lips bloody flesh of the victim? How can he, having placed on the table before the guests feast of eerie corpses and dead bodies, to give the names of the "meat" and "edible" that yesterday passed around, lowing, bleating, looked around? How can a picture of his vision to demolish the shed blood of innocent victims, stripped and mutilated bodies? How to smell it blowing away this terrible smell of death and how these horrors will not spoil his appetite when he chews the flesh, full of pain, savoring blood fatal wound.

But how to explain the fact that this is crazy extravagance and greed pushes you to sin bloodshed, when all around in excess of resources, to provide us with a comfortable living? What makes you slander the Earth as incapable of providing all necessary? ... You should be ashamed to put one step product farming torn victim carnage? Verily among you opened call snakes, lions, leopards and wild animals, while you yourself are covered with blood, and nothing they do not concede. The fact that they killed - their only food, but what kills you - you just a fad, a treat.

However, we are not eating lions and wolves in retaliation and revenge, we leave them in peace. We catch the innocent and defenseless, or deprived of the deadly sting of sharp fangs and kill them mercilessly.

But if you believe that they are born with a predisposition to flesh foods, as is customary among people to believe you then why do not you kill it, then what will you eat? Be consistent and do everything themselves, without knives, clubs and axes - like wolves, bears or lions do it, killing and eating their prey. Killed a bull with his own teeth, throat peregryzu boar, lamb or rabbit rip apart and devour them, lashed out at the still-living, such as predators do. But if you prefer to stand by and let your sacrifice will not die, and can not stand personally send someone to the light, why is contrary to the laws of nature you keep poedaet living beings?

("On the eating of the flesh")

Alexander Pope (1688-1744, English poet)

How depraved luxury dream

Decay and disease succeeds,

Since death is a vengeance,

And shed blood cries out for retribution.

Mad fury wave

Born of the blood of this century,

Go down to the human race is to attack,

Ferocious Beast - Man.

("Essay on Man")

Porphyry (232 -? BC, the Greek philosopher, the author of a number of philosophical treatises):

He who refrains from harming living things ... will be much more careful in order not to harm members of their own species. He who loves his brothers, does not bear hatred to other living beings.

Send animals to the slaughterhouse and into the boiler, thus taking part in the murder and not the gastronomic inevitable, following the natural laws of nature, but for the sake of pleasure and indulging in the demon of gluttony, - a monstrous injustice.

Is not it absurd, seeing as many members of the human species live only instinct, lacking reason and intelligence, and seeing how many of them excel in anger, aggression and brutality of their most fierce beasts, killing the children and their parents, becoming tyrants and instrument of tyranny, (whether it is not absurd) to imagine that we have to be fair to add-and reject any notion of justice in relation to the bull, who plow our fields, a dog who protects us, to those who give milk to our table and clothe our bodies in their fur? Is this state of affairs over the absurd and illogical?

("The failure of animal food")

Rajendra Prasad (1884-1963, the first president of the Republic of India):

Any integrated view of life as a whole will inevitably reveal the relationship between what an individual eats and what his attitude towards others. By further reflection (not so fabulous), we arrive at the conclusion that the only way to avoid a hydrogen bomb will go on the base state of mind, which led to the bomb, and the only way to avoid this mentality will be the development of respect for all living things, all forms life under any circumstances. And all this - just another synonym for vegetarianism.

Henry S. Salt (1851-1939, English humanist and reformer, a friend of Gandhi and Shaw)

If the "Rights" do exist (and intuition and practice hard evidence that's about it), it would be at least a fair empower people by denying the add animals, for one and the same principle of justice and compassion apply in both cases. "Pain is pain - says Humphrey Praymatt - regardless of whether it is experiencing a person or animal", and tormented creature, whether animal or human, experiencing pain, suffering from Evil. Evil causes pain that unfairly and without cause, which is not a punishment for their actions, which will not serve any good purpose and that are only a manifestation of power and authority to do away with the crime. The reason for this should be sought in the cruelty and injustice inherent in the people.

("Animal Rights")

On the contrary, I believe that people in the "humanization" of no culinary schools, but schools of thought, to withdraw from the barbaric habit of eating flesh of dead animals, and gradually develop a clean, simple, more human and, therefore, more civilized diet.

Today's ships for transportation of animals remind me of the worst case the slave ships of fifty years ago .... The current practice of killing animals for human consumption, in its barbarity and cruelty, is the direct opposite of what I mean by "humane diet."

You invite a pretty girl for dinner and offers her ... a ham sandwich! The old adage that it is foolish to cast pearls before swine. What we can say about the courtesy, which throws the pearl before swine?

Vegetarianism - a diet of the future. This is as true as the fact that eating meat belongs to the past. This is so familiar and at the same time as striking contrast - vegetable shop next to the meat - life gives us an invaluable lesson. On the one hand we can see the barbarity and savagery in action - the headless carcass, frozen in an eerie likeness of the living creatures, joints, pieces of bloody flesh, internal organs, with their sickening odor piercing shriek hacksaw, cut through bone, thumping ax - all this incessant cry protest against the horrors of meat eating. At the peak of this frightening spectacle, immediately next to you can see the wealth of placer gold fruits worthy of the pen of the poet, - the food is appropriate to the physical structure and innate instincts of man, the food is more than able to meet all possible needs of the human body. Seeing this striking contrast and realizing all the hard steps that must be done, and the difficulties to be overcome, there is still room for doubt that the path of development that we have to go from barbarism to humanity is clearly presented here and now before us .

("Humanity diet")

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860, German philosopher)

Since compassion for animals is so inextricably linked to the positive traits of human nature, we can with certainty say that the person who abused animals, can not be a good person.

Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965, the famous missionary doctor, who made a significant contribution to health development in Africa, theologian, musician, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for 1952):

When kokoe-or animal forcibly compelled to serve man, who is suffering as a result of this experience is our common problem. No one, so far as he is able to prevent it, should not tolerate the pain and suffering, for which he does not want to be responsible. No one should remove ourselves from the problem, thinking that this is not the case of the mind. No one should shy away from the burden of responsibility. As long as there is a wholesale cruelty to animals, while moaning hungry and thirsty creatures undetected hear from rail cars, while in slaughterhouses fiercely and so many animals meet a horrible death at the hands of inept our kitchens, up to that time until the animals are forced to endure unspeakable flour from the heartless people, or an object of violent games our children, until we are all guilty, and together carry the burden of responsibility for everything that happens.