Notables said to have been vegetarian:
(but first my rant)

****NOTE this all predates the term vegan.****
Most of this commentary is understood to be dairiless too, as it is a continuation of ill conditions ethically; health wise for us and treatment wise for animals.

The latest indications we have suggest that Einstein was vegetarian only for the last year or so of his life, though he appears to have supported the idea for many years before practicing it himself.

"So I am living without fats, without meat, without fish, but am feeling quite well this way. It always seems to me that man was not born to be a carnivore."

This was from a letter written to Hans Muehsam, and dated March 30, 1954

On the other hand: If Hitler were a vegetarian, which he clearly was not, I?d say this if asked how it felt to have a serial killer in my ?club? (herbivores)?.. ?How does it feel to have every other serial killer in yours, carnivores?? pls see my other journal re the Hitler vegetarian fallacy.

Vegetarian Quotes:

"Atrocities are not less atrocities when they occur in laboratories and are called medical research."
-George Bernard Shaw

"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, mathematician

"The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men."
-Leonardo da Vinci, artist and scientist

"To a man whose mind is free there is something even more intolerable in the sufferings of animals than in the sufferings of man. For with the latter it is at least admitted that suffering is evil and that the man who causes it is a 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. And that is the unpardonable crime."
-Romain Rolland, author, Nobel Prize 1915

"If a group of beings from another planet were to land on Earth -- beings who considered themselves as superior to you as you feel yourself to be to other animals -- would you concede them the rights over you that you assume over other animals?"
-George Bernard Shaw, playwright, Nobel Prize 1925

"What is it that should trace the insuperable line? ...The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?"
-Jeremy Bentham, philosopher

"In their behavior toward creatures, all men are Nazis. Human beings see oppression vividly when they're the victims. Otherwise they victimize blindly and without a thought."
-Isaac Bashevis Singer, author, Nobel Prize 1978

"Our task must be to free ourselves . . . by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty."
and
"Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances of survival for life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet."
-Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel Prize 1921

"I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being."
-Abraham Lincoln, 16th U.S. President

"You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, essayist

"As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields."
and
"What I think about vivisection is that if people admit that they have the right to take or endanger the life of living beings for the benefit of many, there will be no limit to their cruelty."
-Leo Tolstoy author

"I cannot fish without falling a little in self-respect...always when I have done I feel it would have been better if I had not fished."
-Henry David Thoreau, author

"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."
and
"To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being."
-Mahatma Gandhi, statesman and philosopher

"I am not interested to know whether vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn't...The pain which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity toward it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further."
-Mark Twain, author

"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, inventor

"While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth?"

-George Bernard Shaw

Looking at the world's history we find that all great scholars, philosophers, scientists, artists, poets, writers & religious leaders of the world like Pythagoras, Newton, Albert Einstein, Tolstoy were purely vegetarian. The vegetarian diet enlightened their minds & blessed them with the noble qualities of tolerence, compassion, love & non-violence.

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

Leonardo da Vinci used to pay for caged birds & set them free.

Roman poet Seneca, a disciple of Pythagoras found his mind more healthy, alert & capable after adopting vegetarianism.

In one of his poems, George Bernard Shaw compared meat-eaters with walking graves.
?We are living graves of murderd beasts slaughtered to satisfy our appetites?.