Howard Williams (humanitarian)

Howard Williams (6 January 1837 – 21 September 1931) was an English humanitarian and vegetarian, and author of the book The Ethics of Diet, an anthology of vegetarian thought.

Howard Williams in 1898

Quotes

• It has been well said … that there are steps on the way to the summit of Dietetic Reform, and, if only one step be taken, yet that single step will be not without importance and without influence in the world. The step, which leaves for ever behind it the barbarism of slaughtering our fellow-beings, the Mammals and Birds, is, it is superfluous to add, the most important and most influential of all.
  • The Ethics of Diet, Preface from the 1st edition, 1883.

Quotes about

• Long before this, when reading that excellent book, The Ethics of Diet, I had wished to visit a slaughter-house, in order to see with my own eyes the reality of the question raised when vegetarianism is discussed. … The precise reason why abstinence from animal food will be the first act of fasting and of a moral life is admirably explained in the book, The Ethics of Diet; and not by one man only, but by all mankind in the persons of its best representatives during all the conscious life of humanity.
  • Leo Tolstoy, The First Step (1892), translated by Aylmer Maude, chapters IX–X.