“When we eat vegetarian foods, we needn't worry about what kind of disease our food died from; this makes a joyful meal!”
— John Harvey Kellogg, M.D.

“The protein of animal muscle (steak, chicken, meat, fish fillets, etc.) is far more concentrated and acidic than the plant protein found in whole grains, legumes, and green vegetables. This concentrated, acidic protein load can leach calcium from the bones, contributing to osteoporosis.”
— Michael A. Klaper, M.D.

“Your choice of diet can influence your long term health prospects more than any other action you might take.”
— C. Everett Koop

“...by increasing plant-based food and lessening animal products such as dairy, eggs, meat, cheese and butter, you will benefit in the long run.”
— Natalie Ledesma, MS, RD

“Our food system takes abundant grain,which people can't afford, and shrinks it into meat, which better-off people will pay for.”
— Frances Moore Lappe

“I grew up in cattle country - that's why I became a vegetarian. Meat stinks, for the animals, the environment, and your health.”
— K. D. Lang

“In the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, there was a recent series of letters and commentaries saying that people should probably get their omega-3 fats from vegetables and not from fish, because the omega-3 fish oils do seem to have a variety of negative effects, one of which is that they promote the production of free radicals. Free radicals can damage tissues and lead to cancer.”
— Milton R. Mills, M.D.

“I don't eat chicken anymore. I won't eat it. I won't allow it in my house.”
Rodney Leonard
– USDA Poultry Inspector

“Based on my experience in Los Angeles, my advice to the public is not to eat meat.”
— Gregorio Natavidad – USDA Meat Inspector

“The standard four food groups are based on American agricultural lobbies. Why do we have a milk group? Because we have a National Dairy Council. Why do we have a meat group? Because we have an extremely powerful meat lobby.”
— Marion Nestle

“An important fact to remember is that all natural diets, including purely vegetarian diets without a hint of dairy products, contain amounts of calcium that are above the threshold for meeting your nutritional needs....In fact, calcium deficiency caused by an insufficient amount if calcium in the diet is not known to occur in humans.”
— John McDougall

“I don't understand why asking people to eat a well-balanced vegetarian diet is considered drastic, while it is medically conservative to cut people open and put them on cholesterol-lowering drugs for the rest of their lives.”
— Dean Ornish , MD

“The gods created certain kinds of beings to replenish our bodies, they are the trees and the plants and the seeds.”
— Plato

“Vegetarians always ask about getting enough protein. But I don't know any nutrition expert who can plan a diet of natural foods resulting in a protein deficiency, so long as you're not deficient in calories. You need only 5 or 6 percent of total calories in protein... and it is practically impossible to get below 9 percent in ordinary diets.”
— Nathan Pritikin

“It takes less water to produce a year's food for a pure vegetarian than to produce a month's food for a meat-eater.”
— John Robbins

“Awareness is bad for the meat business. Conscience is bad for the meat business. Sensitivity to life is bad for the meat business. DENIAL, however, the meat business finds indispensable.”
— John Robbins

“Meat, which contains cholesterol and saturated fat, was never intended for human beings, who are natural herbivores.”
— William C. Roberts, M.D.

“Compassion for animals is intimately connected with goodness of character; and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man.”
— Arthur Schopenhauer

“I am conscious that meat eating is not in accordance with the finer feelings, and I abstain from it whenever I can.”
— Albert Schweitzer, M.D.

“My hearse 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.”
— George Bernard Shaw

“The average age (longevity) of a meat eater is 63. I am on the verge of 85 and still work as hard as ever. I have lived quite long enough and am trying to die; but I simply cannot do it. A single beef-steak would finish me; but I cannot bring myself to swallow it. I am oppressed with a dread of living forever. That is the only disadvantage of vegetarianism.”
— George Bernard Shaw

“By all that is sacred in our hope for the human race, I conjure those who love happiness and truth to give a fair trial to the vegetable system!”
— Percy Bysshe Shelley

“There is no disease, bodily or mental, which adoption of a vegetable diet and pure water has not infallibly mitigated, wherever the experiment has been fairly tried.”
— Percy Bysshe Shelley

“To be a vegetarian is to disagree---to disagree with the course of things today. Starvation, world hunger, cruelty, waste, wars---we must make a statement against these things. Vegetarianism is my statement. And I think it's a strong one.”
— Isaac Bashevis Singer

“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

“I have no doubt that it is part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with each other.”
— Henry David Thoreau

“A human can 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.”
— Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

“Vegetarianism serves as the criterion by which we know that the pursuit of moral perfection on the part of humanity is genuine and sincere.”
— Leo Tolstoy

“A human can 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.”
— Leo Tolstoy

“If he be really and seriously seeking to live a good life, the first thing from which he will abstain will always be the use of animal food, because ...its use is simply immoral, as it involves the performance of an act which is contrary to the moral feeling - killing.”
— Leo Tolstoy

“If you step back and look at the data, the optimum amount of red meat you eat should be zero.”
— Walter Willett, M.D.