Erik Aquino, Unsplash
Vegan quotes are something I enjoy reading and thinking about.
Actually, I like all kinds of quotes. They are a big part of my life as a journalist. Most journalists count on them to add flair and colorful language to a story. Quotes also help prevent reporters from misquoting sources and help readers more fully understand what someone is saying.
Quotes are important for other reasons too. Vegan quotes inspire us to think about our lifestyle choices and what it really means at our deepest core to have compassion for animals.
A quote can open minds to new perspectives about our lifestyles and enlighten our world view. Quotes impart wisdom and remind us that life is bigger than the small private world we magnify in our own minds.
I have bundled this collection of vegan quotes to provoke thought and to encourage introspection on the inconsistent and perplexing disconnect between our human actions and our human heart and mind. I assembled the quotes in this article to trigger critical thinking and analysis on questions like:
- Why do we love some animals and go to heroic lengths to prevent them from suffering while, on the other hand, giving no consideration to the agony and cruelty other animals endure, most notably those being raised for slaughter and butchering.
- Why do we eat animal-based foods that make us sick, give us diseases, and kill us?
- Why do we continue to eat animals, knowing full well that zoonotic are the repeated cause of global pandemics?
- Why do we march, sign petitions, and protest in the streets to save the environment but still eat meat, knowing the foremost contributor to the climate crisis is animal agriculture?
Sander Dalhuisen, Unsplash
Thought provoking vegan quotes to make us question why we still eat meat
There are many thought-provoking vegan quotes on the internet connected to animal rights. While researching the origin of some of the most popular quotes ascribed to animal rights, I discovered that many of the quotes were made by people who eat meat. I don’t consider those quotes to be valid inspiration and have not included them in my blog for Vegan Storyteller.
I hold true to the adage of walking your talk. You can’t claim to be compassionate about animals if you are complicit in having them murdered to satisfy your palate or fashion sense.
Therefore, my curated collection of vegan quotes is from people who are authentic in living the vegan lifestyle. I have not included quotes by vegetarians because this blog is about being vegan and the dairy industry is no less cruel than the meat industry.
There are many good reasons for living a vegan lifestyle. Having a clear conscious and being authentic in my compassion for animals are the top contenders for me.
I will circle back to interview some of the people quoted here for my On Being Vegan interview series, so keep coming back to read new stories.
If you know a vegan thought leader or influencer who would make a good interview, please contact me. I will also add to this list of vegan quotes as I feel moved and inspired by what people say about the vegan lifestyle.
If you have a favorite vegan quote you would like to see on this page, please contact me and we can add it. I look forward to seeing you here again.
ANIMAL WELFARE
It’s pretty amazing to wake up every morning, knowing that every decision I make is to cause as little harm as possible. It’s a pretty fantastic way to live.
vegan influencer and YouTube cooking show host who advocates veganism as a means for preventing cruelty to animals
The problem is that humans have victimized animals to such a degree that they are not even considered victims. They are not even considered at all. They are nothing; they don’t count; they don’t matter. They are commodities like TV sets and cell phones. We have actually turned animals into inanimate objects — sandwiches and shoes.
No animal needs to die in order for me to live. And that makes me feel good.
I began to wonder about the appropriateness of cuddling one animal while sticking a knife and fork into another.
HUMAN HEALTH
As a public health nutritionist, I can tell you that we’ve known for decades that plant foods are the healthiest foods to eat. The research has been clear and consistent for more than 50 years. Plant foods can prevent and reverse heart disease, our number one killer, as well as prevent and often reverse our other leading causes of death and disability, including stroke, diabetes, certain cancers, and obesity.
30-year vegan, public health nutritionist, and best-selling author of By Any Greens Necessary
The beef industry has contributed to more American deaths than all the wars of this century, all natural disasters, and all auto-mobile accidents combined. If beef is your idea of “real food for real people” you’d better live real close to a real good hospital.
Some people think the plant-based, whole-foods diet is extreme. Half a million people a year will have their chests opened up and a vein taken from their leg and sewn onto their coronary artery. Some people would call that extreme.
VEGAN LIFESTYLE
For health, environmental, and ethical reasons, it’s imperative that we lose the baggage, drop the stereotypes, and begin to change our attitudes about what constitutes ‘good’ food.
Co-founders of Detroit Vegan Soul, a restaurant that serves the Black community, chipping away at misconceptions that vegan food is out of reach for people of color.
I want to try to live my own values as consciously and purposefully as I can. Being vegan for me is a cleaner way of not participating in practices that don’t align with my values.
I think getting the information, watching the documentaries, really understanding the whole propaganda behind the meat industry and the animal industry in general—there’s so much corruption in it … gives you this mental clarity.
VEGAN ATHLETICISM
Being vegan is a philosophy not a diet. Once you reunite with your compassion and choose the vegan way of life, it’s almost impossible to go back.
World champion lethwei boxer (full contact combat sport) and vegan convert after watching the documentary The Game Changers
Being raised vegan was second nature for me and my five siblings. I never wanted to change my lifestyle, as animals, in my opinion, were not meant to be eaten. What motivates me to continue being vegan is proving to the world that you can be strong and healthy without eating animals. I’m living proof!
From Homecoming Queen in high school to Buff Queen in bodybuilding competitions. Born and raised vegan.
There is no question that the combination of a low-fat vegan diet and daily, vigorous exercise are the keys to radiant good health, and if so desired, to set new limits in the fields of human athletic endeavors, especially as one ages!
Survivor of an aggressive breast cancer, turned vegan in 1982 in response to the diagnosis. Author of six books.
ACTIVISM
If you don’t want to be beaten, imprisoned, mutilated, killed or tortured, then you shouldn’t condone such behavior towards anyone, be they human or not. Could you look an animal in the eyes and say to it, ‘My appetite is more important than your suffering?'
Vegan, DJ, singer, songwriter, musician, photographer, and animal rights activist mixes electronic ambient recordings to help people feel a great calmness of spirit.
We rarely stop to consider that the animal who kills with the least reason to do so is the human animal. We think of lions and wolves as savage because they kill; but they must kill, or starve. Humans kill other animals for sport, to satisfy their curiosity, to beautify their bodies, and to please their palates.
There is no difference between sitting around the pit watching dogs fight and sitting around a summer barbecue roasting the corpses of tortured animals or enjoying the dairy or eggs from tortured animals.
ENVIRONMENT
We’re creating irreversibility in areas of global depletion. If we’re going to make it as a civilization or species, we have to change. To move the world in the direction that’s truly more sustainable, the most efficient way possible means adopting fully organic, plant-based agricultural systems.
Activist, lecturer and author who has spent 40 years studying the effects food choices have on our planet and on us. His books “Food Choice and Sustainability” and “Comfortably Unaware” document seven areas of global depletion.
SPIRITUALITY
Cruelty to animals is as if Man did not love God. There is something so dreadful, so satanic, in tormenting those who have never harmed us, and who cannot defend themselves, who are utterly in our power.
Many human beings treat animals as if they were inanimate objects devoid of feelings, intelligence, consciousness or souls. I don’t see an animal as an “it.” I see other animals as people—male and female persons, each a distinct individual with feelings, thoughts, memories and ambitions. We should not forget that we (human beings) are animals too, and all animals are not the same; there are differences. I see human beings as different from other animals in the same way that I see a cat as different from an elephant and an elephant as certainly different from a bluebird. The differences are mainly in outer form; inside in our minds, hearts, and souls we are much the same.
I am determined not to kill, not to let others kill, and not to support any act of killing in the world. We should consume in such a way that helps to reduce the suffering of living beings. And that way we can preserve compassion in our hearts.
PHILOSOPHY
I dream of a vegan world - that's where I want everything to go.
Veganism affirms what is best for us, what is best for the animals, and what is best for the environment. Everywhere you look, you find veganism entwined with what is best.
Legendary animal rights theorist and American philosopher. Author of The Case for Animal Rights and “Empty Cages – Facing the Challenge of Animal Rights. (1938-2017)
I am truly following my BLISS when I’m creating music because music is the pathway for me to send messages out into the universe to love and protect all animals.
Read next ON BEING VEGAN interview with songwriter Lois Chazen
