The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man.

There is no fundamental difference between man and animals in their ability to feel pleasure and pain, happiness, and misery.

The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that’s the essence of inhumanity.

We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.

The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men.

Life is as dear to a mute creature as it is to man. Just as one wants happiness and fears pain, just as one wants to live and not die, so do other creatures.

The most energetic workers I have encountered in my world travels are the vegetarian miners of Chile.

When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.

Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.

The eating of meat extinguishes the seed of Great Kindness.

Violence begins with the fork.

Compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind.

I love vegan choices, raw food choices, and I’ll eat whatever I have to in order to get into whatever shape I need to get into for any one particular role.

Being vegan just gives you such great karma.

If a man aspires towards a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from injury to animals.

In all the round world there is no meat. There used to be. But now we cannot stand the thought of slaughterhouses.

The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest.

I think what I’d really like to see would be a mass consciousness-raising movement so that we would all become vegetarian.

Our economic order is tightly woven around the exploitation of animals, and while it may seem easy to dismiss concern about animals as the soft-headed mental masturbation of people who really don’t understand oppression and the depths of actual human misery, I hope to get you to think differently about suffering and pain, to convince you that animals matter, and to argue that anyone serious about ending domination and hierarchy needs to think critically about bringing animals into consideration.

Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans … are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit.

Being vegan truly is the secret to my life’s joy and peace. I feel physically and spiritually better than I could have ever imagined knowing that I am doing everything I can to reduce animal suffering with simple lifestyle choices like being vegan, never wearing any products made from animals (like wool and leather), and buying only from companies that NEVER test their products or ingredients on animals.

I’d like to see animals removed from the entertainment business. Chimpanzees and apes won’t perform unless you beat them. Circuses keep elephants in chains 90 percent of the time. Elephants need freedom of movement. In circuses, they live in cramped quarters, which is not the life intended for them by nature. Some are beaten daily, forced to do ridiculous tricks and robbed of every shred of dignity.

How come regional pandering only works in one direction, right? You never see a Southern politician trying to win votes in New York State by saying, ‘I read books and make a mean vegan meatloaf.’

I don’t hold animals superior or even equal to humans. The whole case for behaving decently to animals rests on the fact that we are the superior species. We are the species uniquely capable of imagination, rationality, and moral choice – and that is precisely why we are under an obligation to recognize and respect the rights of animals.

Being a vegan is a first-world phenomenon, completely self-indulgent.

Any religion or philosophy which is not based on a respect for life is not a true religion or philosophy.

As we talked of freedom and justice one day for all, we sat down to steaks. I am eating misery, I thought, as I took the first bite. And spit it out.

Remember that as a vegan, you save dozens of animals every year from the horrors of factory farms, which is great. And when you convince one person to also become vegan, in that moment you double your lifetime impact as a vegan! That’s power – and we should use it as effectively as possible. Check out the ‘Be a better advocate’ videos and essays at www.FarmSanctuary.org.

Gert: Wake me when the fight scene’s over. Kitty Pryde: Oy, tell me about it. Hey, I’m Kitty. You the token pacifist of your group? Gert: Not exactly. Pacifists are like vegans, I’m more of a vegetarian. I enjoy fish and occasional maulings.

I’m still vegetarian – no, pescatarian, because I eat fish. I eat pretty much vegan at home, but when I’m on the road, I’m a bit more flexible. That was the kind of thing I learned as I got older – being flexible with it and listening to my body.

For me, going vegan was an ethical and environmental decision. I’m doing the right thing by the animals.

A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him.

Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.

Truth has no special time of its own. Its hour is now – always.

There slowly grew up in me an unshakable conviction that we have no right to inflict suffering and death on another living creature, unless there is some unavoidable necessity for it.