In Their Own Words

There’s a reason they’ve chosen to eat this way. Whether it’s for health, humanity, animal cruelty, or just a deeper sense of self, uncover a bit more about why our list of luminaries chose to eat plants over animals. Mouse/Roll over each name to read their personal words of wisdom.

Jane Goodall

“I stopped eating meat some 50 years ago when I looked at the pork chop on my plate and thought this represents fear, pain, death.”

Jane Goodall

ACTIVIST

Cesar Chavez

“Only when we have become non-violent towards all life will we have learned to live well ourselves. ”

Cesar Chavez

ACTIVIST

Albert Einstein

“It almost seems to me that man was not born to be a carnivore.”

Albert Einstein

SCIENTIST

Paul McCartney

“You can judge a man’s true character by the way he treats his fellow animals.”

Paul McCartney

ARTIST

Gandhi

“Violence begins with the fork.”

Gandhi

ACTIVIST

Billie Eilish

“I was raised vegetarian, and I chose to stop eating all animal products when I was 12. Once I learned about how animals are treated in our industrial food system, I didn’t want any part of it.”

Billie Eilish

ARTIST

“How came the bodies of animals to be contrived with so much art, and for what ends were their several parts?”
– Sir Isaac Newton

“I consider vegetarianism as a recommended starting point for giving up on established barbaric habits. Many peoples living almost exclusively vegetarian show greater strength and fitness.”
– Nikola Tesla

“There is no fundamental difference between man and animals in their ability to feel pleasure and pain, happiness and misery”
– Charles Darwin

“All rich countries should move to 100% plant-based beef to mitigate climate change.”
– Bill Gates

“If we pursue our habit of eating animals, and if our neighbor follows a similar path, will we not have need to go to war against our neighbor to secure greater pasturage, because ours will not be enough to sustain us, and our neighbor will have a similar need to wage war on us for the same reason?”
 – Socrates

“The Gods created certain kinds of beings to replenish our bodies; they are the trees and the plants and the seeds.”
– Plato

“I became familiar with how we treat animals in the meat and dairy industries. I was so horrified that I didn’t want to be a part of it anymore.”
– Yuval Noah Harrari

“We must change our diet. The planet can’t support billions of meat-eaters.”
– Sir David Attenborough

“My food is not that of man; I do not destroy the lamb and the kid, to glut my appetite; acorns and berries afford me sufficient nourishment.”
– Mary Shelley

“We consume the carcasses of creatures of like appetites, passions and organs as our own, and fill the slaughterhouses daily with screams of pain and fear.”
– Robert Lewis Stevenson

“I gave up eating meat at a very young age. The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men.”
– Leonardo da Vinci

“When a person freely and honestly seeks a moral path, the first thing he must turn from is meat. 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

“Animals are my friends, and I don’t eat my friends. I choose not to make a graveyard of my body with the rotting corpses of dead animals.”
– George Bernard Shaw

“Animals run no risk of going to hell, they are there already.”
– Victor Hugo

“If slaughterhouses had glass walls we’d all be vegetarians.”
– Paul McCartney

“We need an Animal Rights Day when all slaughterhouses shut down.”
– Prince

“I just can’t go on in my life knowing what’s going on in the animal world and not doing anything about it.”
– Billie Eilish

“May all that have life be delivered from suffering.”
– Buddha

“It is urgent to reduce consumption not only of fossil fuels but also of many superfluous things; and also, in certain areas of the world, it is convenient to consume less meat, this can also help save the environment.”
– Pope Francis

“The greatness of a community is most accurately measured by the compassionate actions of its members … a heart of grace and a soul generated by love.”
– Coretta Scott King

“It was not hard at all to not eat meat. [Becoming a vegetarian] was something I wanted to do.”
– Rosa Parks

“If we keep making food the way we do, we will also destroy the habitats of most wild plants and animals, driving countless species to extinction.”
– Greta Thunberg

“I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being.”
– Abraham Lincoln

“Every person that I have met who has gone vegan says it is the best decision they have ever made.”
– Lewis Hamilton

“I’ve found that a person does not need protein from meat to be a successful athlete. In fact, my best year of track competition was the first year I ate a vegan diet.”
– Carl Lewis

“I fell in love with the concept of fueling your body in the best way possible. Not only does it help me on the court, but I feel like I’m doing the right thing for me.”
– Venus Williams

Athletes