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Food Quotes

The page leans toward the ethics of eating more than cooking. The Buddha, Gandhi and two writers on vegetarian and vegan diets, Victoria Moran and Joanne Stepaniak, head the list. Shelley’s A Vindication of Natural Diet (1813) is the oldest sourced piece, and Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790) adds the remark that all wholesome food is caught without a net or a trap.

For a lighter line, Shaw’s Man and Superman (1903) holds that there is no love sincerer than the love of food. None of the entries on this page is flagged as misattributed.

Random quote on Food

Most quoted on food:

For fear of causing terror to living beings, Mahāmati, let the Bodhisattva who is disciplining himself to attain compassion, refrain from eating flesh.

Gautama Buddha

We will one day think it as horrible to eat animals as we now think it horrible to eat each other.

Rose Scott

I do recommend the vegan diet because you wake up and feel great!

Jennifer Lopez

A plant-based diet is like a one-stop shop against chronic diseases.

Michael Greger

There can be no purity whilst the flesh of creatures is partaken of and inhumanity towards the creatures practised.

John Todd Ferrier The Inner Meaning of the Food Reform Movement (1934)

In the final analysis, despite our diversity, there is only one type of vegan — a person who is committed to and practices reverence and respect for all life.

Joanne Stepaniak Being Vegan (2000)

People eat meat and think they will become strong as an ox, forgetting that the ox eats grass.
Eating an animal with gusto is premeditated lust murder, and digesting it is concealment of corpse.

Pino Caruso

Men are so imprudent that they take up a diet which, though it tastes sweet, is poisonous.

Niccolò Machiavelli The Prince (1532)

You must be careful about what you eat, unless you want your body making heart valves out of things like bean dip.

Dave Barry Stay Fit & Healthy Until You're Dead (1985)

The destruction of animals for food, in its details and tendencies, involves so much of cruelty as to cause every reflecting individual — not destitute of the ordinary sensibilities of our nature — to shudder.

William Alcott Vegetable Diet (1838)

No child, I think, can walk through a common market or slaughter-house without receiving moral injury; nor am I quite sure that any virtuous adult can.

William Alcott Vegetable Diet (1838)

If you look at the incidence of hypertension and diabetes and mortality in men, they actually get reduced when you get higher and higher in how much you restrict animal products.

Kim A. Williams Interview in the documentary-film What the Health by Kip Andersen (2017)

Vegetarians should have that moral basis—that a man was not born a carnivorous animal, but born to live on the fruits and herbs that the earth grows.

Mahatma Gandhi

All wholesome food is caught without a net or a trap.

William Blake The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790)

The fleshless diet contributes to health and to a suitable endurance of hard work in philosophy.

Porphyry

For me, the essence of veganism is compassion … not just compassion for animals, but all the way around.

Victoria Moran

Going veg is one of the best decisions you can make for your health and the planet. Period. Your organs, blood, bones, teeth, and private parts will thank you.

Kris Carr Crazy Sexy Diet (2011)

One who eats meat kills the seed of great compassion.

Gautama Buddha

Vegetarianism is one of the priceless gifts of Hinduism.

Mahatma Gandhi

Widespread vegetarianism in Hinduism is a practical expression of this jīva-dayā, of the sense of larger unity.

Ram Swarup

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