“Horses have hooves to carry them over frost and snow, and hair to protect them from wind and cold. They eat grass and drink water, and fling up their tails and gallop. Such is the real nature of horses. Ceremonial halls and big dwellings are of no use to them. One day Polo [ a famous horse-trainer] appeared, saying, "I am good at managing horses." So he burned their hair and clipped them, and pared their hooves and branded them. He put halters around their necks and shackles around their legs and numbered them according to their stables. The result was that two or three in every ten died. Then he kept them hungry and thirsty, trotting them and galloping them, and taught them to run in formations, with the misery of the tasselled bridle in front and the fear of the knotted whip behind, until more than half of them died.”
        — Chuang Tzu
[Chuang Tzu or Changtze or Chuang Chou (circa 260 b.c.e.) was among the founders of Taoism, succeeding Lao Tsu as its most influential proponent. Like the verses of the Tao Te Ching attributed to Lao Tsu, some of the texts attributed to Chuang Tzu may have been written by his students.]

“Horses live on dry land, eat grass and drink water. When pleased, they rub necks together. When angry, they turn round and kick up their heels at each other. Thus far only do their natural dispositions carry them. But bridled and bitted, with a plate of metal on their foreheads, they learn to cast vicious looks, to turn the head to bite, to resist, to get the bit out of the mouth or the bridle into it. And their natures become depraved.”
        — Chuang Tzu


“For in the days of perfect nature, man lived together with birds and beasts, and there was no distinction of their kind. Who could know of the distinctions between gentlemen and common people? Being all equally without knowledge, their virtue could not go astray. Being all equally without desires, they were in a state of natural integrity. In this state of natural integrity, the people did not lose their nature.”
        — Chuang Tzu

“Above all, abstain from meat and flesh of animals. Such is not a natural food for man . . . No one can love his fellow-creatures and shed their blood without stern necessity, much less eat them.”
        —Pythagoras, Sage Discourse Upon Diet: 11: lines 8 - 46
[Pythagoras (d. circa 497 b.c.e.) was a Greek philosopher, mathematician (yes, the one who discovered the theorem you were forced to memorize in high school), and athlete. Ovid’s description of his teachings on vegetarianism is archived on this website.]


“Nor had they any god Ares [war god], nor Kydoimos [mad violence], nor king Zeus, nor Kronos, nor Poseidon, but queen Kypris [goddess of love]. Her they worshipped with hallowed offerings, with painted figures, and perfumes of skillfully made odour, and sacrifices of unmixed myrrh and fragrant frankincense, casting on the ground libations from tawny bees. And her altar was not moistened with pure blood of bulls, but it was the greatest defilement among men, to deprive animals of life and to eat their goodly bodies.”
        —Empedocles, On Purifications
[Empedocles (circa 494-434 b.c.e.) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher. Here he is describing a “Golden Age” before violence, which some believe to be mythical but others believe to be a more or less accurate description of life prior to the invasion of the Proto-Indo-Europeans.]

“ Neither could a plant grow out of the earth, nor any animal nor anything else come into being unless things were composed in such a way as to be the same. But all these things arise from the same thing; they are differentiated and take different forms at different times, and return again to the same thing.”
        —Diogenes
[Diogenes (circa 412?-323 b.c.e.) recognized kinship with all beings, including animals.]

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

“If true, the Pythagorean principles as to abstaining from flesh, foster innocence; if ill-founded they at least teach us frugality, and what loss have you in losing your cruelty? It merely deprives you of the food of lions and vultures.”
        —Seneca
[Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 b.c.e. - 65 c.e.) was a Roman philosopher and politician.]

“Let us ask what is best -- not what is customary. Let us love temperance -- let us be just -- let us refrain from bloodshed.”
        —Seneca

“Sport should be joyful and between playmates who are merry on both sides.”
        —Plutarch, condemning hunting
[ Plutarch (circa 46-120) was a Greek biographer and philosopher. Plutarch’s entire essay against eating meat is archived on this website.]

“Sycophants and tyrants are produced from those who feed on flesh.”
        —Porphyry
[Porphyry (circa 232-304)was a Greek neoplatonic philosopher.]

“[People] find -- both in themselves and outside themselves -- many means that are very helpful in seeking their own advantage, e.g., eyes for seeing, teeth for chewing, plants and animals for food, the sun for light, the sea for supporting fish . . . Hence, they consider all natural things as means to their own advantage. And knowing that they had found these means, not provided them for themselves, they had reason to believe that there was someone else who had prepared those means for their use. For after they considered things as means, they could not believe that the things had made themselves; but from the means they were accustomed to prepare for themselves, they had to infer that there was a ruler, or a number of rulers of nature, endowed with human freedom, who had taken care of all things for them, and made all things for their use.

“And since they had never heard anything about the temperament of these rulers, they had to judge it from their own. Hence, they maintained that the Gods direct all things for the use of men in order to bind men to them and be held by men in the highest honor. So it has happened that each of them has thought up from his own temperament different ways of worshiping God, so that God might love them above all the rest, and direct the whole of Nature according to the needs of their blind desire and insatiable greed. Thus this prejudice was changed into superstition, and struck deep roots in their minds.”
        — Baruch Spinoza, Ethics
[Baruch or Benedict Spinoza (1632-1677) was a Dutch philosopher and theologian whose naturalistic and democratic views were very radical for his time.]