Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Albert Einstein, Vegetarian

It has been said that Albert Einstein was a vegetarian. Here are some of his quotations on vegetarianism:

It is my view that the vegetarian manner of living by its purely physical effect on the human temperament would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind.

Vegetarian food leaves a deep impression on our nature. If the whole world adopts vegetarianism, it can change the destiny of humankind.

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


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3 comments:

Jul said...

Nice quotes!

Anonymous said...

Feel free to delete this contribution, but I was emailing it to someone else when I opened your blog and thought you might like it.

Vegetarian food leaves a deep impression on our nature. If the whole world adopts vegetarianism, it can change the destiny of humankind. -- Albert Einstein

For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.
--Pythagoras (6th century BC)

A man of my spiritual intensity does not eat corpses... Animals are my friends...and I don't eat my friends. --George Bernard Shaw

My situation is a solemn one. Life is offered to me on condition of eating beefsteaks. But death is better than cannibalism. My will contains directions for my funeral, which will be followed not by mourning coaches, but by oxen, sheep, flocks of poultry, and a small traveling aquarium of live fish, all wearing white scarfs in honor of the man who perished rather than eat his fellow creatures. --George Bernard Shaw

People often say that humans have always eaten animals, as if this is a justification for continuing the practice. According to this logic, we should not try to prevent people from murdering other people, since this has also been done since the earliest of times. --Isaac Bashevis Singer

If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reasons. -- C. S. Lewis

One farmer says to me, "You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make the bones with;" and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying himself with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle. --Henry David Thoreau

I have no doubt that it is part of the destiny of the human race in its gradual improvement to leave off eating animals. -- Henry David Thoreau

Since visiting the abbatoirs of S. France I have stopped eating meat. -- Vincent Van Gogh (in a letter to his brother Theodore)



Nothing more strongly arouses our disgust than cannibalism, yet we make the same impression on Buddhists and vegetarians, for we feed on babies, though not our own. --Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields. --Leo Tolstoy

A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral. -- Leo Tolstoy

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

Flesh eating is unprovoked murder. -- Benjamin Franklin

I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men. -- Leonardo da Vinci

I feel very deeply about vegetarianism and the animal kingdom. It was my dog Boycott who led me to question to right of humans to eat other sentient beings. -- Cesar Chavez

The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated... 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

Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages. -- Thomas Edison

The eating of meat extinguishes the seed of great compassion. --Mahaparinirvana (Buddhist)

To become vegetarian is to step into the stream which leads to nirvana. -- Buddha

Some others I encountered (but not their quotes yet) include Sir Issac Newton, Srinivasa Ramanujan (considered the greatest mathematician of the past millenium), Nicola Tesla (the guy who figured out alternating current)

p.s. I counted 16 sticks/lines; how many was correct?

Anonymous said...

Thank you. My sentiments exactly.
an enlightened person