Never have I been more happy...

I've been looking up vegan quotes for an essay I have to do to enter a high school program. It is the IB program and I really hope I get into it. Otherwise high school will be devastating. This week has been boring. I was sick most of the time. I have a sore throat, and now I think I'm getting an ear infection as well. I think I should have Green Tea every morning in addition to my oatmeal. I don't really like orange juice. My mom won't buy an organic kind (it is only twice the price). I really don't want to drink Tropicana or that other junk we have. I live near a Tropicana plant and it is an eye sore as well as stinky. I also think corporations in general are stupid and I would prefer to buy from a company that cares to care, not because it looks good and sells a product. One last thing I think there a three types of people in this world, murderers, vegetarians and vegans. You wouldn't eat your dog/cat so why would you eat a pig/cow. I've been a vegetarian for a year and I can tell you I have no desire to eat meat anymore than I have a desire to eat you. I'm also very strong. I beat all of my friends at arm wrestling (well except for one but her arm is 3 times the size of mine and I'm not even joking.)

Well anyways, these quotes make me very happy to be a vegan. I want to share some of my favorites with you:

Howard Lyman If you visit the killing floor of a slaughterhouse, it will brand your soul for life.

Leo Tolstoy 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.

Ruth Harrison, author of Animal Machines In fact, if one person is unkind to an animal it is considered to be cruelty, but where a lot of people are unkind to animals, especially in the name of commerce, the cruelty is condoned and, once large sums of money are at stake, will be defended to the last by otherwise intelligent people.

Neal D. Barnard, M.D., President, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. Washington, D.C. The beef industry has contributed to more American deaths than all the wars of this century, all natural disasters, and all automobile accidents combined. If beef is your idea of 'real food for real people,' you'd better live real close to a real good hospital.

Franz Kafka, while admiring fish in an aquarium Now I can look at you in peace; I don't eat you any more.

Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) What is it that should trace the insuperable line? ...The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?

Charles Mayo (founder of the Mayo linic) I abhor vivisection. It should at least be curbed. Better, it should be abolished. I know of no achievement through vivisection, no scientific discovery, that could not have been obtained without such barbarism and cruelty. The whole thing is evil.

George Bernard Shaw, writer, Nobel laureate (1856-1950) When a man wants to murder a tiger, he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him, he calls it ferocity.

Albert Einstein It is my view that the vegetarian manner of living, by its purely physical effect on the human temperament, would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind.

Gail Shepherd "And the kicker: "Our demand for meat, dairy, and processed carbohydrates drives us to consume way more calories than are good for us; and those calories are in foods that cause, not prevent, disease. The evidence is very clear that plants promote health." "We need to jump on this bandwagon and hang on for our lives if our kids are going to live in a world we'd even faintly recognize — if, for that matter, they live to see it at all."

Casey Affleck “Chickens, cows, and pigs in factory farms spend their whole lives in filthy, cramped conditions—only to die a prolonged and painful death. Their bodies are then turned into food products proven to contribute to heart disease and cancer. To eat that is to eat poison.”

Robert Cohen "Death, pain, and torture, by any other name, cannot sanitize the great injustice we do to animals."

Paul Harvey
Ever occur to you why some of us can be this much concerned with animals' suffering? Because government is not. Why not? Animals don't vote."

Isaac Bashevis Singer "People often say that humans have always eaten animals, as if this is a justification for continuing the practice. According to this logic, we should not try to prevent people from murdering other people, since this has also been done since the earliest of times." As long as people will shed the blood of innocent creatures there can be no peace, no liberty, no harmony between people. Slaughter and justice cannot dwell together.

I woke up one day and decided

that things are crazy! It all started last week. I announced to my parents that I no longer eat diary or meat or anything else that came from something that has a face. Of course they got all crabby with the usual, why do you have to be different from everyone else, yada yada yada. My dad threw and unexpected twist in though. He said, "Did you just wake up today and decide 'I'm going to be a vegan'?" I assured him I didn't do exactly that but he still is a bit skeptical. As for the being different thing, how could I possibly be the same! I can't believe it took him this long to realize I do not follow main stream society. I'm not saying I look for ways to be a freak, but I follow my instincts which may or may not follow everyone else. I went to the library yesterday and I pick out 3 books on homeschooling. As well as seven others on topics such as, Physics (yeah I'm in pg 1 and I haven't understood one word it's great!), Geometry (haven't tried those yet), Space-time (I'm waiting for the brain cramp from the Physics book to go away), and random junk on bacteria, diseases and other micro-organisms. I read this one book about how we are all going to die from resistant bacteria. Resistant bacteria are bacteria that don't go away when you try and kill them with antibiotics. There was a whole chapter about how meat is causing this (yet another reason not to eat animals). This is how it is happening the meat producer people ( I would call them farmers but they aren't) are giving animals small amounts of antibiotics (about 2 ozs. per ton of feed). They are trying to prevent disease and the reason they want to prevent diseases is when animals are sick they lose appetite, and therefor get thinner. Also on a daily basis animals fight off bacteria in their stomachs. By giving them antibiotics animals aren't "wasting" energy doing that. This makes them fatter faster. This impacts you because when you eat the animal you also eat these antibiotics. Because it is such a small dose, this can cause all the bacteria in your body (good or bad) to develop resistance to this antibiotic. If harmful bacteria come in your body they can develop this resistance too, by stealing it from the other bacteria. Congress has been "taking measures to try and stop this". This is yet another example of how greedy people are going to kill our species.