ETHICS
Looking at the world's history we find that many scholars, philosophers, scientists,
artists, poets, writers and religious leaders of the world were pure vegetarian. The
vegetarian diet enlightened their minds and blessed them with noble qualities of
tolerance, compassion, love and non-violence: The Buddha, Zoroaster, Asoka, Plotinus
Appolonius, Pyphagoras, Plato, Plutarch, Socrates, Aristotles, Diogenes, Ovid, Origen,
Clement, Chrisostom, Swedenborg, Isaac Newton, Leonardo da Vinci, Rousseau, Michelet,
Voltaire, Shelly, Wesley, Dr. Annie Besant, Wagner, Kellogg, Albert Einstein, Szekely,
Rev. Dr. Walter Walsh, George Bernard Shaw, Tolstoy, Milton, Pope - all were vegetarians
and abhorred the use of flesh food.
The Leader of the Hare Krishna Movement, His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami
Prabhupada introduced vegetarianism in the Western World on a very large scale in the 60s
and 70s, influencing the lives of millions towards purity and compassion.
Leonardo-da-Vinci used to buy caged birds and set them free. He said: "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."
"The 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 cruel." - Leo
Tolstoy
"As long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows
the seeds of murder and pain cannot reap joy an love." - Pythagoras.
"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
"I have no doubt that it is a part of destiny of the human race, in its gradual
improvement, to leave off eating animals." - Henry David Thoreau
"Vegetarian food leaves a deep impression on our nature. If the whole world adopts
vegetarianism, it can change the destiny of humankind." - Albert Einstein
"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
indifferent to and waste 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)
"How can he be possessed of kindness who, to increase his own flesh, eats the
flesh of other creatures."
"As those possess no property who do not care of it, so those posses no kindness
who feed on flesh."
"Like the (murderous) mind of him who carries a weapon (in his hand), the mind of
him who feast with pleasure on the body of another (creature), has no regard for
goodness."
"If it be asked what is kindness and what its opposite, the answer would be
preservation and destruction of life; and therefore it is not right to feed on the flesh
(obtained by taking away life)..."
- Thirukkural
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