Quotes from Jonathan Safran Foer

Mark Twain said that quitting smoking is among the easiest things one can do; he did it all the time. I would add vegetarianism to the list of easy things.

The alternative—sanity—became insane. Because they were young. Because one is young only once in a life lived only once. Because recklessness is the only fist to throw at nothingness. How much aliveness can one bear?

Un giorno farai per me cose che hai in odio. E' questo che vuol dire essere una famiglia.

E allora quanta sofferenza è accettabile? È questa la base di tutto, ed è questo che ognuno di noi deve chiedersi. Quanta sofferenza sei disposto a tollerare per il tuo cibo?

Entre dos seres existe siempre una distancia singular, infranqueable, un santuario impenetrable. Unas veces adquiere forma de soledad. Otras, de amor

the entirety of human society and moral progress represents an explicit transcendence of what's "natural.

decision will help prevent deforestation, curb global warming, reduce pollution, save oil reserves, lessen the burden on rural America, decrease human rights abuses, improve public health, and help eliminate the most systematic animal abuse in world history.

When the three of us, the three men named Alex, gathered in Father's house that night to converse the journey, Grandfather said, I do not want to do it. I am retarded, and I did not become a retarded person in order to have to perform shit such as this. I am done with it.

Slaughterhouse workers have the highest injury rate of any job —27 percent annually —and receive low pay to kill as many as 2,050 cattle a shift.)

Hitler was a vegetarian.

Can the familiarity of the animals we have come to know as companions be a guide to us as we think about the animals we eat? Just how distant are fish (or cows, pigs, or chickens) from us in the scheme of life? Is it a chasm or a tree that defines the distance? Are nearness and distance even relevant? If we were to one day encounter a form of life more powerful and intelligent than our own, and it regarded us as we regard fish, what would be our argument against being eaten?

La gabbia standard per ovaiole concede a ogni gallina una superficie di 4,32 decimetri quadrati, grande come questo rettangolo. Quasi tutte quelle non allevate in gabbia hanno a disposizione all'incirca la stessa superficie

Yes, but the day has been decades.

It might sound fantastic, but when we bother to look, it's hard to deny that our day-to-day choices shape the world.

What Jacob really thought: his father was an ignorant, narcissistic, self-righteous pig, too anal-retentive and pussy-whipped to grasp the extreme reaches of his hypocrisy, emotional impotence, and mental infancy. "So we're in agreement, then?" "No." "So we're agreed?" "No." "I'm glad you agree with me." But there were arguments for forgiving him, too. There were. Good ones. Beautiful intentions. Wounds.

One of the greatest opportunities to live our values —or betray them —lies in the food we put on our plates.

If nothing matters, there's nothing to save.

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote passionately about the time when "one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular." Sometimes we simply have to make a decision because "one's conscience tells one that it is right.

The point of eating these special foods with those special people at those special times was that we were being deliberate, separating those meals out from the others. Adding another layer of deliberateness has been enriching. I'm all for compromising tradition for a good cause, but perhaps in these situations, tradition wasn't compromised so much as fulfilled.

Cat lovers display an intensity lacking — thank goodness — in most human relationships.

It was not until very much in the posterior that I understanded that each of us was laughing for a different reason, for our own reason, and that not on of those reasons had a thing to do with the potato.

Sam enjoyed knowledge. The accumulation and distribution of facts gave him a feeling of control, of utility, of the opposite of the powerlessness that comes with having a smallish, underdeveloped body that doesn't dependably respond to the mental commands of a largish, overstimulated brain.

Almost always, when I told someone I was writing a book about "eating animals," they assumed, even without knowing anything about my views, that it was a case for vegetarianism. It's a telling assumption, one that implies not only that a thorough inquiry into animal agriculture would lead one away from eating meat, but that most people already know that to be the case. (What assumptions did you make upon seeing the title of this book?)

can't plead ignorance, only indifference. Those alive today are the generations that came to know better. We have the burden and the opportunity of living in the moment when the critique of factory farming broke into the popular consciousness. We are the ones of whom it will be fairly asked, What did you do when you learned the truth about eating animals?