QuotationsCharles Fillmore
Quotations Archive From all-creatures.org

This Quotations Archive contains words from famous and some not so famous people who have expressed a sense of love, compassion, and respect for all of God's creation: for people, for animals, and for the environment. They speak of our teaching methods and philosophy. They speak of a lifestyle of non-violence. They seek to eliminate cruelty and suffering. They seek to wake us up. They seek to give us hope.

Weeds by Mary T. Hoffman

Charles Fillmore
Co-founder of Unity Society of Practical Christianity, on Diet, Health, and Vegetarianism
(1854-1948)

…”If we are eating aggregations of life ideas hid within the material forms, we should use discrimination in choosing those forms. Our food should be full of life in its purity and vigor. There should be no idea of death and decay connected with it in any degree. The vegetable should be fresh and the fruit radiant in its sunny perfection.”
- from “As to Meat Eating” – 1903

…”I was shown that the food that entered the organism had to pass through a process of regeneration every day before it was in condition to be built into the new body of Christ.”
- from “As to Meat Eating” – 1903

…”We eat the flesh of the animal for the life it contains, yet the fact is that life has disappeared in its highest degree---there is left only a lot of corpse cells in various stages of corruption and decay. These are really a burden to the organism…Yet ignorant man loads his system with these elements of discord and decay and expects to get life out of them.”
- from “As to Meat Eating” – 1903

…”The master on the spiritual plane is not a slave driver…He must love every creature…His love must flow forth in protecting streams when any creature is in danger of violence or destruction. He must recognize all life as God’s life…Thus he cannot in any way sanction the killing of animals for food, nor can he give passive assent by eating the flesh of those slain by the hands of ignorant man.”
- from “Flesh-Eating Metaphysically Considered” – 1910

…”He who eats the flesh of animals is, by and through that process, taking into his consciousness all the passions, desires, and emotions of animals. Do not deceive yourself…that it makes no difference what you eat. There is no absence of life, substance, or intelligence anywhere.”
- from “Flesh-Eating Metaphysically Considered” – 1910

…”In eating the flesh of animals, we are feeding and stimulating the animal mentality that pervades our bodies. Instead of transforming the flesh consciousness into Spirit, we are adding to its power to bind us to the plane of sensation.”
- from “Flesh-Eating Metaphysically Considered” – 1910

…”It was the custom of Jesus to use familiar things for his illustrations, and as the people he worked among were fishermen, it was but natural that fish should figure prominently as illustrations in this teaching. Instead of trying to change the customs of the people, he laid down certain universal principles which would lead the people themselves to change their customs. He knew that mere outward conformity to righteousness did not fulfill the divine Law which requires man to choose for himself the principles of Truth and work them out in his own life. One of these principles is Love Universal.”
- from “Vegetarianism” – 1915

…”On one occasion, Jesus said to his disciples, ‘I have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.’ When he was in Palestine, the race was not ready for the great revolution that was to accompany the ushering in of the new race and the earth…He did not try to explain to them the detail of ‘the restitution of all things’…Now the understanding that life and love are to be demonstrated is becoming general…Therefore, in the light of the Truth that God is love, and that Jesus came to make his love manifest in the world, we cannot believe it is his will for men to eat meat, or to do anything else that would cause suffering to the innocent and helpless.”
- from “Vegetarianism” – 1915

…”Spirit has shown me repeatedly that I could not refine my body and make it a harmonious instrument for the soul, so long as I continued to fill it with the cells of dead animals.”
- from “The Vegetarian” – 1920

…”Undoubtedly the next great step forward in the reformation and refinement of humanity will be the elimination of flesh food. We do not anticipate a world-wide prohibition but a gradual adaptation of the best foods by progressive people.”
- from “The Vegetarian” – 1920

…”We need never look for universal peace on this earth until men stop killing animals for food. The lust for blood has permeated the race thought and the destruction of life will continue to repeat its psychology, the world round, until men willingly observe the law in all phases of life, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ ”
- from “The Vegetarian” – 1920

…”Physiologists tell us that beefsteak is a stimulant, and that people get intoxicated with meat eating. Some persons become intoxicated with coffee and tea; others with cocoa. All these things have an intoxicating effect, and the system, if you cultivate it in that direction, will keep calling more for such stimulants.”
- from “Eating and Drinking” – 1931

…”The invisible psychic agony of millions of cruelly slaughtered animals saturates our earth’s atmosphere and the whole race suffers in sympathy. We make intimate mental contact with these psychic terrors of our little sisters and brothers of the animal world when we devour their fear-shattered bodies. Out vague fear of impending danger, our troubled sleep, our dread of the future, and numerous other unidentified mental complexes may and often are the echo fears of the brutes whose flesh we have entombed in our stomach.”
- from “Eating and Drinking” – 1931

…”If you find that you are a victim of the desire for stimulant in any of its forms, say to the appetite: ‘I no longer desire those things; I am no longer hypnotized or mesmerized by sense appetite…My stimulant is Spirit, and I desire the stimulants of Spirit only. I live in the life, the quickening energy, and the power of the Spirit.’
- from “Eating and Drinking” – 1931

…”We know that the drinking of intoxicants and the using of tobacco in any form are dissipations of force. The natural energies of man are set aside when he looks to stimulants of any kind as the source of life.”
- from “Eating and Drinking” – 1931

Go on to quotations by: Carol Tucker Foreman
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