Leo Tolstoy on why YOU should be a vegetarian.
“I only wish to say that for a good life a certain order of good actions is indispensable; that if a man’s aspirations toward right living be serious they will inevitably follow one definite sequence; and that in this sequence the first virtue a man will strive after will be self-control, self-restraint. And in seeking for self-control a man will inevitably follow one definite sequence, and it this sequence the first thing will be self-control of food. And 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, to say nothing of the excitation of the passions caused by such food, its use is simply immoral, as it involves the performance of an act which is contrary to moral feeling — killing.
“But why, if the wrongfulness of animal food was known to humanity so long ago, have people not yet come to acknowledge this law?” will be asked by those who are accustomed to be led by public opinion rather by reason. The answer to this question is that the moral progress of humanity — which is the foundation of every other kind of progress — is always slow; but that the sign of true, not casual, progress is its uninterruptedness and its continual acceleration.
And the progress of vegetarianism is of this kind.”
- Leo Tolstoy
