(
Guru
Nanak ji)
|
Be
kind to all beings-this is more meritorious than
bathing at the sixty-eight sacred shrines of
pilgrimage and the giving of charity.
(
Ref:
Guru Granth)
|
(
Guru
Nanak ji)
|
They
are produced from the blood of their mothers and
fathers, but they do not eat fish or meat.
|
(
Guru
Nanak ji)
|
They
eat the uneatable; they reject and abandon what they
could eat. They have a teacher who is blind.
|
"Vegetarian food leaves a
deep impression on our nature. If the whole world
adopts vegetarianism, it can change the destiny of
humankind."
--
Albert Einstein
|
"There is just no reason
why animals should be slaughtered to serve as human
diet when there are so many substitutes. Man can
live without meat."
--
The Dalai Lama
|
"If man wants freedom why
keep birds and animals in cages? Truly man is the
king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds them. We
live by the death of others. We are burial places! I
have since an early age abjured the use of
meat."
--
Leonardo-da-Vinci
|
"I do feel that spiritual
progress does demand at some stage that we should
cease to kill our fellow creatures for the
satisfaction of our bodily wants."
--
Gandhi
|
"Flesh
eating is unprovoked murder."
-- Benjamin Franklin
|
"Behold, a virgin shall conceive
and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. He
shall eat butter and honey, so that he may know the
evil from the good."
-- Isaiah 7:14-15
|
"...Behold I have given you every
herb bearing seed which is upon the face of all the
earth and every tree in which is the fruit of a tree
yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat..."
--
Genesis 1:29
|
"Thou shalt not kill."
--
Exodus 20:13
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"One should treat animals such as
deer, camels, asses, monkeys, mice, snakes, birds
and flies exactly like one's own son. How little
difference there actually is between children and
these innocent animals."
--
Srimad Bhagavatam 7.14.9
|
"To
avoid causing terror to living beings, let the
disciple refrain from eating meat...the food of the
wise is that which is consumed by the sadhus (holy
men), it does not consist of meat.. There may be a
few foolish people in the future who will say I
permitted meat-eating and that I partook of meat
myself, but meat-eating I have not permitted to
anyone, I do not permit, I will not permit
meat-eating in any form in future, in any manner and
in any place. It is unconditionally prohibited for
all.
--
Lord Buddha
|
"We
pray on Sundays that we may have light/To guide our
footsteps on the path we tread;/We are sick of war,
we don't want to fight,/And yet we gorge ourselves
upon the dead."
--
George Bernard Shaw
|
"Every act of irreverence for life,
every act which neglects life, which is indifferent
to and wastes life, is a step
towards the love of death.
This choice man must
make at every minute.
Never were the
consequences of the wrong choice as total and as
irreversible as they are today. Never was the
warning of the Bible so urgent: "I have put
before you life and death, blessing and curse.
Choose life, that you and your children may live."
(Deuteronomy
30:19) --Erich Fromm
|
"Cruelty
to animals is as if man did not love God."
--
Cardinal John H. Newman
|
"Plant life instead of animal food
is the keystone of regeneration. Jesus used bread
instead of flesh and wine in place of blood at the
Lord's Supper."
--
German Composer Richard Wagner (1813)
|
"Man
did not weave the web of life: he is merely a strand
in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to
himself. To harm the earth is to heap contempt on
its creator."
--
Red Indian Chief (1854)
|
"If
you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures
from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will
have men who will deal likewise with their fellow
men."
--
St. Francis of Assisi
|
"Killing is a denial of love. To
kill or to eat what another has killed
is to rejoice in cruelty. And cruelty hardens our hearts and
blinds our vision, and we are unable to see that
they whom we kill are our fellow brothers and
sisters in the One Family of Creation."
--
G.L. Rudd, author of "Why Kill For Food?"
|
"Vegetarianism
is a way of life that we should all move toward for
economic survival, physical well-being and spiritual
integrity."
--
Father Thomas Berry,
Fordham University, New York
|
"To be non-violent to human beings
and to be a killer or enemy of poor animals is
Satan's philosophy. In this age there is always
enmity against animals, and therefore the poor
creatures are always anxious. The reaction of the
poor animals is being forced on human society, and
therefore there is always the strain of cold or hot
war between men, individually, collectively or
nationally... "The earth affords a lavish
supply of riches, of innocent foods, and offers you
banquets that involve no bloodshed or
slaughter; only beasts satisfy their
hunger with flesh, and not even all of those,
because horses, cattle, and sheep live on grass. As
long as men massacre animals, they will kill each
other. Indeed, he who sows the seeds of murder and
pain cannot reap joy and love."
--
Pythagoras
|
"For
my part I rather wonder both by what accident
and in
what state of mind the first man touched
his mouth
to gore and brought his lips to the flesh
of a dead
creature, set forth tables of dead, stale bodies,
and ventured to call food and nourishment the parts
that had a 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 sores of others and sucked
juices and serums from mortal
wounds? It is certainly not lions or 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 by birth
and being."
"If
you declare that you are naturally designed for such
a diet, then first kill for yourself what you want
to eat. Do it, however, only through your own
resources, unaided by cleaver or cudgel or any kind
of axe."
----
Plutarch in his essay "On Eating
Flesh"
|
"The
steam of meat darkens the light of the spirit...One
hardly can have virtue when one enjoys meat meals
and feasts..."
--
St. Basil (AD 320 - 79)
|
"...Ethics has not only to do with
mankind but with the animal creation as well.
This is witnessed in the purpose of St. Francis of
Assisi. Thus we shall arrive that ethics is
reverence for all life. This is the ethic of love
widened universally. It is the ethic
of Jesus, now recognized as a necessity
of thought... Only a
universal ethic which embraces every living creature
can put us in touch with the universe and the will
which is there manifest..."
--
Albert Schweitzer
|
"I
am full of the burnt offering of rams and the fat of
fed beasts. I delight not in the blood of
bullocks,
or of lambs, or of goats...Bring no more
vain offerings... When you spread forth your hands,
I
will hide mine eyes though you make many prayers,
and I will not hear you. For your hands are full of
blood."--Isaiah1:11-15
|
"I will have mercy and not
sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt
offerings..."
-- Hosea 6:6
|
"...Therefore
the Lord will give you meat and you shall eat. You
shall not eat one day or two days, or ten days or
twenty days, but till it comes out at your nostrils
and becomes loathsome to you, because you have
rejected the Lord..." (a
devilish punishment for disobedience)
--
Numbers 11:18-20
|
"...He
who gives permission, he who kills the animal, he
who sells the slaughtered animal, he who cooks the
animal, he who administers the distribution of the
flesh, and at last he who eats the flesh products are all
murderers and all of them are punishable under the
law of karma."
--
The Laws of Manu (5:55)
|
"Meat can never be obtained without
injury to living creatures, and injury to sentient
beings is detrimental to the attainment of heavenly
bliss; let him therefore shun the use of meat."
-- Manu
|
"Having well considered the
disgusting origin of flesh and the cruelty of
fettering and slaying of corporeal beings, let him
entirely abstain from eating flesh."
--
Manu
|
"Those
who never harm others by (physical deeds), by
thought and speech, in whatever condition they may
be, do not go to Yama's abode. Men who harm other
creatures do not go to heaven, in spite of their
reciting Vedas, giving gifts, practicing austerities
or performing sacrifices. Harmlessness is a great
form of piety. Harmlessness alone is a great
penance. Harmlessness is a great gift. This what the
sages say."
--
Padma Purana III 31-25-28
|
"Whoever eats raw or cooked flesh,
and whoever destroys a fetus shall be destroyed by
us from here."
--
Atharva Veda 8.6.23
|
- "A cruel and wretched person who
maintains his existence at the cost of others' lives
deserves to be killed for his own eternal well
being, otherwise he will go down by his own
actions."
Bhagavatam 1.7.37
|
"The
devotees of the Lord are released from all kinds of
sins because they eat food which is offered first
for sacrifice. Others, who prepare food for personal
sense enjoyment, verily eat only sin."
Bhagavad Gita3:13
|
- "One
who loves Krishna will give Him
whatever He
wants, and he avoids offering anything
which is
undesirable or unasked for. Thus, meat, fish and
eggs should not be offered to
Krishna... Vegetables, grains, fruits, milk and
water are the proper foods for human beings and
are prescribed by Lord Krishna Himself. Whatever
else you eat, can not be offered to Him, since
He will not accept it." Swami Prabhupada
|
It is the order of the true Lord to the
entire body of the Khalsa, that they shall abstain
from bhang, tobacco, opium,
alcohol and desist from eating meat, fish, eggs,
nor indulge in theft and lust..."
Hukum-nama
|
"All tremble at Violence; all fear
death. Putting oneself in the place of another, one
should not kill or cause another to kill."
--
Dhammapada 130
|
"He who has renounced all Violence
towards all living beings, weak or strong, who
neither kills nor causes other to kill - him do I
call a holy man"
--
Dhammapada 405
|
"It is said about Lord Buddha
sadaya-hrdaya darsita-pasu-ghatam. He saw the whole
human race going to hell by this animal killing. So
he appeared to teach ahimsa, nonviolence, being
compassionate on the animals and human beings.
In the Christian religion also, it is clearly
stated, 'Thou shall not kill'. So everywhere animal
killing is restricted. In no religion the killing of
animals is allowed. But nobody is caring. The
killing process is increasing, and so are the
reactions. Every ten years you will find a war.
These are the reactions."
–
H.D.G. A.C.B.
Swami Prabhupada
|
"We
cannot separate ourselves from those whom we call
the 'lower' animals. They are lower in the scale of
evolution, but they, like us, are members
of the One
Family. We must not take away the life of any
creature. Indeed, we must never take away that which
we cannot give. And as we cannot restore a dead
creature to life, we have no right to take away its'
life."
--
J.P. Vaswani, "Why Kill For Food?"
|
"There
is not an animal on the earth, nor a flying creature
flying on two wings, but they are peoples like unto
you."
--
Koran, surah 6 verse 38
|
"Therewith He causes crops to grow
for you, and the olive and the date-palm and grapes
and all kinds of fruit. Lo! Herein is indeed a
portent for people who reflect."
--
Koran, surah 16, verse 11 |
"A token unto them is the dead
earth. We revive it, and we bring forth from it
grain so that they will eat thereof. And we have
placed therein gardens of the date-palm and grapes,
and We have placed therein. That they may eat of the
fruit thereof, and their hands created it not. Will
they not, then, give thanks? "
.
--
Koran, surah 36, verses 33-35
|
"Maim not the brute
beasts...Whoever is kind to the lesser creatures is
kind to himself...He who takes pity (even) on a
sparrow and spares its life. Allah will be merciful
on him on the day of judgment."
--
Prophet Mohammed
|
Once
someone asked George Bernard Shaw how it was that he
looked so youthful. "I don't," Shaw
retorted. "I look my age. It is the other
people who look older than they are. What can you
expect from people who eat corpses?" "A
diet consisting of any staple grain with milk, milk
products and green leafy vegetables contains not
only the right kind and amount of protein but
everything else the body needs for health, strength
and well-being of balanced mind ."
--
Sir Robert McCarrison
|
"Flesh
eating is simply immoral, as it involves the
performance of an act which is contrary to moral
feeling: killing. By killing, 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
rule."
.
--
Leo Tolstoy
|
|
|
"I thank all of my
friends and well wishers for their co-operation in
sending me these quotations for the holy cause of
global peace." A Devotee.
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