George Bernard Shaw 1856-1950— British dramatist and critic

“While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts how can we expect any ideal conditions on the earth?”
“Why should you call me to account for eating decently? If I battened on the scorched corpses of animals, you might well ask me why I did that.”
“I am a human being and not a yard for dead animals.”

“Animals are my friends ——and I don’t eat my friends.”

“My will contains directions for my funeral, which will be followed not by mourning coaches, but by herds of oxen, sheep, swine, flocks of poultry, and a small traveling aquarium of live fish, all wearing white scarves in honor of the man who perished rather than eat his fellow creatures.”

“Since compassion for animals is so intimately associated with goodness of character, it may be confidently asserted that whoever is cruel to animals cannot be a good man.”

“For my part I have never been able to see, without displeasure, an innocent and defenseless animal, from who we receive no offense or harm, pursued and slaughtered.”

“Alas, what wickedness to swallow flesh in to our own flesh, to fatten our bodies by cramming in other bodies, to have one living creature fed by the death of another!”

“Vegetarianism serves as a criterion by which we know that the pursuit of moral perfection on the part of man is genuine and sincere.”
“This is dreadful! Not the suffering and death of the animals, but that 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. And how deeply seated in the human heart in the injunction no to take life!”

“We manage to swallow flesh only because we do not think of the cruel and sinful thing we do — we persist in throttling our feelings simply in order to join others in preying upon life, we insult all that is good in us. I have decided to try a vegetarian diet.”

“I have an early age abjured the use of meat, and time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men (from da Vinci’s Notes).”
“Truly man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds theirs. We live by the death of others: We are burial places! (from Merijkowsky’s Romance of Leonardo da Vinci).”

“We might as well eat the flesh of men as the flesh of other animals.”

“You have just dined; and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in a graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.”

“Granted that any practice causes more pain to animals than it gives pleasure to man; is that practice moral or immoral? And If, exactly in proportion as human beings raise their heads out of the sloughs of selfishness, they do not with one voice answer IMMORAL, let the morality of the principle of utility be forever condemned.”

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated — but there is something much higher which calls us to vegetarianism.”

“Now I can look at you in peace; I do not eat you any more.”

“For fear of causing terror to living beings — let the Bodhsattva who is disciplining himself to attain compassion refrain from eating flesh.”

“ . . . . (people who eat meat) are responsible for all the pain that grows out of meat-eating, and which is necessitated by the use of sentient animals as food — all starvation and the thirst and the prolonged misery of fear which these unhappy creatures have to pass through for the gratification of the appetite of man — all pain acts as a record against humanity and slackens and retards the whole of human growth . . .”

“Vegetarianism is the diet of the future, as flesh-food is the diet of the past — I suggest that in proportion as man is truly humanized, not by schools of cookery but by schools of thought, he will abandon the barbarous habit of flesh-eating, and will make gradual progress towards a purer, simpler, more humane, and therefore more civilized diet-system.”
“You take a beautiful girl down to supper and you offer her — a ham sandwich! It is proverbial folly to cast peals before swine. What are we to say of the politeness which casts swine before pearls?”

“Wherever any animal is forced into the service of man the sufferings which it has to bear on that account are the concern of every one of us. No one ought to permit, in so far as he can prevent it, pain or suffering for which he will not take the responsibility. No one ought to rest at ease in the thought that in so doing he would mix himself up in affairs which are not his business. Let no one shirk the burden of his responsibility. When there is so much maltreatment of animals, when the cries of thirsting creatures go up unnoticed from the railway trucks, when there is so much roughness in our slaughterhouses, when in our kitchens so many animals suffer horrible deaths from unskillful hands, when animals endure unheard-of agonies from heartless men, or are delivered to the dreadful play of children, then we are all guilty and must bear the blame.”
“It is good to maintain and cherish life; it is evil to destroy and to check life.”
“A man is really ethical only when he obeys the constraint laid on him to help all life which he is able to succor, and when he goes out of his way to avoid injuring anything living. He does not ask how far this or that life deserves sympathy as valuable in itself, nor how far it is capable of feeling. To him life as such is sacred. He shatters no ice crystal that sparkles in the sun, tears no leaf from its tree, breaks off no flower, and is careful not to crush any insect as he walks. If he works by lamplight on summer evening, he prefers to keep the window shut and to breathe stifling air rather than to see insect after insect fall on his table with singed and sinking wings.”

“The very fact that the animal, as a victim of research, has in his pain rendered such services to suffering men has itself created a new and unique relation of solidarity between him and ourselves. The result is that a fresh obligation is laid on each of us to do as much god as we possibly can to all, creatures in all sorts of circumstances. When I help an insect

“You only hunger for the sweet and gentle creatures which harm no one, which follow you, serve you and are devoured by you as the reward of their service.”
“Those whose minds are at peace and who are free from passions do not desire to live at the expense of others . . .”

“To a man whose mind is free, there is something even more intolerable in the suffering of animals than that in the sufferings of men. For with the latter it is at least admitted that suffering is evil and that the man who causes it is criminal. But thousands of animals are uselessly butchered every day without a shadow of remorse. If any man were to refer to it, he would be thought ridiculous — it cries vengeance upon all the human race. If God exists and tolerates it, it cries vengeance upon God. If there is no justice for the weak and lowly, for the poor creatures who are offered up as a sacrifice to humanity, then there is no such thing as justice.”

“Anyone who has ever heard the scream of an animal being killed could never again eat its flesh.”

“We cannot be spiritual beings and animals of prey at the same time”

“How can he be possessed of kindness who to increase his own flesh, eats the flesh of other creatures?”
“Let us not forget that we can all take life, but none of us can give it. There is no possession more precious than self-control. Watch therefore as you would watch treasure.”

“Life is short,

The vanities of the world are transient,

but they alone live who live for others,

the rest are more dead than alive.”

“We feel quite content to pollute our mouths, make a graveyard of our stomachs and rob thousands of animals of their dearest possession just because we are accustomed to and like the taste of flesh — Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of the fellow creatures is amusing itself.”

Back to top

“Vegetarianism, in its highest moral form, can do much to level the sagging equilibrium of our chaotic world. In an unbalanced world where man is the victim of the tragic conflict between the rational laws of nature and human liberty, moral vegetarianism and a rational and scientific mode of living and thinking can do much to restore the world to its normal equilibrium.”

“As soon as one knows the truth contained in vegetarianism and continues to eat meat he is no more innocent and ignorant of his mistake. He is guilty of crime.”

Back to top

I am the voice of the voiceless.

Through me the dumb shall speak

Til’ the deaf world’s ear shall be made to hear

The wrongs of the wordless weak.

The same force formed the sparrow

That fashioned man, the king.

The God of the whole gave a speak of soul

To furred and feathered thing;

And I am my brother’s keeper,

And I will fight his fight.

And speak the word for beast and bird

Till the world shall set things right

Back to Vegetarianism and Beyond

Permission
Date: Sun, 22 Sep 2002 17:47:37 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Dr. Murad Khan"
Subject: your quotes page
To: Jaya Tirtha Charan dasan

 Dear Jaya Tirtha Charan dasan

Thank for your email. It is a matter of honor and pleasure for me if you include "the quotations" page in your website. You are fully allowed to include this page. I expect that the link of PVS with the name of compiler should remain intact.

I visited your site on Hare Krishna ... I love Hare Krishna.

Best regards

Murad Khan