Sharon Gannon Quotes

Have you seen how fish are able to swim in a school so precisely relating to their fish-fellows and never clumsily bump into one another? That's because they have a highly developed sense of feeling in their bodies, which enables them to feel not only the movement of the water against their skin but the presence of other beings who are close. They certainly are not cold-blooded in the sense that they are dull, insensitive, and have no feelings.

To be an environmentalist is to care about the environment and care about life on planet Earth.

Some people may argue that if the animals are treated humanely prior to being slaughtered, this justifies their confinement and slaughter. Is it ethical to rob beings of their freedom but give them a comfortable prison and provide them with food until they become fat enough to be slaughtered? Any way you look at it, farms are places where animals are kept in preparation to be slaughtered and ultimately eaten as food.

Farms, whether small or large, are places where slaves are kept. The animals are fattened up to be eaten, or exploited for their ability to make honey or milk, or for their fur, wool or body parts; they are kept as breeders to produce more animals who can in turn be exploited and ultimately sold, slaughtered, and eaten.

We are the only animals who steal and drink the milk from other species.

We create the world we live in. If we want to change what we don't like in the world, we must start by changing what we don't like about ourselves.

Everything we do should contribute to happiness.

To meet the huge consumer demand for fish, the industry can no longer rely on hunting wild fish. Now we are doing to fish what was done to wild cows, sheep, goats, chickens, and ducks thousands of years ago: we are confining them in holding pens.

Yoga practices shift our identity away from the ego-personality and its struggles so that we can begin to reconnect with the essential nature of our being, which is bliss.

If you want people to listen to you, then be willing to listen to them.

Don't wait for a better world. Start now to create a world of harmony and peace. It is up to you, and it always has been. You may even find the solution at the end of your fork.

The way we treat animals is the root cause of all the human suffering in the world, from poverty, starvation, disease, and war to lack of clean air and water, not to mention all the varied forms of human emotional and spiritual suffering.

Some well-to-do parents may say, "I have a right to have as many children as I want because I can take care of them." That may be so, but can the Earth take care of them?

To live and breathe with an exclusive focus on one's small self, disconnected from the whole, is the definition of egotism.

You cannot change the past but you can start now and lay the foundation for the future.

When we have a choice it is always best to choose kindness. Veganism is simply the kinder choice.

It has been an obsession of human beings to create a hierarchy that places the human species on top and lumps all the "other animals" together beneath us. The resulting "speciesism" allows us to look upon animals as less deserving of all manner of rights and considerations than humans. To support this lower status, humans have argued that animals act instinctually; don't have souls; don't feel physical pain like we do; and lack self-consciousness, cognitive intelligence, emotional feelings, morality, and ethics.

By choosing to be kind instead of cruel, we can break the karmic chain of reacting to violence with more violence, contributing to a more peaceful future for everyone.

Lions and other carnivorous animals do a lot of things besides eat meat. They live outdoors, not in houses; they don't wear clothes or drive around in cars; they usually sleep for many hours after eating a meal. Why cite just one of the many things that they do and argue that we should imitate them? This doesn't make much sense.

Try your best not to get distracted from your goal. Let everything you do be your way of getting closer to your enlightenment; never take a vacation from spiritual practice.

What we do to others will come back to us. You can't expect to be happy by causing unhappiness to others.

Be clear in your mind what you want the outcome of your communication to achieve. If your aim is more than just to vent your anger towards a meat eater and you sincerely want that person to be a kinder more compassionate being, then you must start by seeing them as a kind and compassionate person. If you are unable to see them as kind and compassionate, then how dare you demand them to see themselves that way.

In the United States, the average is two children per family, while in Africa it is five children per family. On the surface, the statistic seems to indicate that Africans are having way too many kids and are taxing the Earth's resources, while American kids are born into families who are able to take care of them. However, the average American child consumes roughly the same resources as fifteen African children. So when an American family says they only have two children, they are actually consuming the resources of an African family of thirty children!

The present moment is where eternity exists.

The raising of animals for food and all that it entails is the single most destructive force impacting our planet's fragile ecosystems. Our planet simply cannot sustain the greed of billions of human beings who are eating other animals.

In fact, numerous scientific laboratory tests and field observations have led to the conclusion that animals are conscious, intelligent, emotional beings. They are not machines and truly feel physical pain when it is inflicted upon them. They are capable of experiencing a wide range of emotions, including loneliness, embarrassment, sadness, longing, depression, anxiety, panic, and fear, as well as joy, relief, surprise, happiness, contentment, and peace.

Lions and other carnivorous animals do eat meat, but that doesn't mean we should. They would die if they didn't eat meat. Human beings, in contrast, choose to eat meat; it isn't a physiological necessity.

Inspiration pushes me out of my tight intellectual comfort zone and into humility, the wonderous state of not knowing. From this place of zero, limitless possibilities seem to arise.

Fishing is taking a huge toll on the planet's ecosystem.

In fact, we would know ourselves that we are not meant to be meat eaters, and we would not have allowed ourselves to become conditioned to meat eating in the first place, if the effects of meat eating were felt right away. But since heart disease, cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis, etc. usually take many years to develop, we are able to separate them from their cause (or contributing factors) and go on happily eating an animal-based diet.

Human overconsumption is a greater problem than human population growth, and meat eating is a big part of that problem.

Vegan food is not only good for you, the animals, and the planet, but cooking vegan can be simple, easy, and fun.

Because we lack sharp claws, aren't very fast on our feet, and aren't exactly endowed with lightning reflexes, it would be very difficult if not impossible for us to run down an animal, catch it with our bare hands, and tear through its fur and skin in order to eat it. Biologically, we are designed to be frugivorous herbivores eating mainly fruits, seeds, roots, and leaves.

The yogi in love needs only to whisper the beloved name, and all desire is fulfilled. To hear Shyamdas speak of The Lover’s Life is to be transported into the eternal magical realm of love, where infinite possibilities become possible.

Through the deeply theraputic practice of asana, we begin to purify our karmas, thereby healing our past relationships with others and reestablishing a steady and joyful connection with the Earth, which means all beings.

What we do as an individual affects the whole world.

Being a joyful vegan is the best way I know to contribute to the happiness of others, ultimately ensuring our own happiness.

Human population growth is a problem in that most humans consume more than they need. The Earth's resources are now strained to sustain the needs and wants of the human population, which continues to escalate.

In fact, drinking milk and eating dairy products can rob your body of calcium and contribute to osteoporosis. If you eat dark green leafy vegetables like kale, collards, and mustard greens, you can get enough calcium from a vegan diet.

Farm animals, like dairy cows - who by nature are vegans - are routinely force-fed fish to increase their weight and milk production.

There are atoms of air in your lungs that were once in the lungs of everyone who has ever lived. In essence, we are breathing (inspiring) one another.

Eating vegetables, fruits and grains rarely causes total destruction of the plant or tree on which the food grew; after harvesting, seeds remain to be replanted the next season. But this certainly does not happen when an animal is slaughtered - death is final; that animal will not reproduce again!

We have become so addicted to our greed-driven habits that we have lost our moral compass and don't know what is right and wrong.

If we want to consider the sanctity of life in deciding what to eat, the choice is clear. Eating a plant based diet causes less harm, to ourselves, to the other animals, to the planet.

Today's fishing industry supplies land farms with fish as well. Over fifty percent of the fish caught is fed to livestock on factory farms and "regular" farms. It is an ingredient in the enriched "feed meal" fed to livestock.

Yoga teaches us that we can have whatever we may want in life if we are willing to provide it for others first.

Each of us, through the actions we take, plant the seeds which will eventually but inevitably grow and create the reality we will find ourselves living in.

When I see a person wearing a fur coat, I see not only the coat but the animals who were cruelly abused, killed and skinned to make that coat, and also I see the person wearing that coat being reborn as a poor fox crazily circulating in a tiny cage waiting to be skinned. And I see the poor dairy cow who has been raped and exploited, and in the same picture, I see the new future dairy cow taking her place, in the form of that person putting milk in her coffee, today.