Cannibalism Quotes

“I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti”
― Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs

“But if you're gonna dine with them cannibals
Sooner or later, darling, you're gonna get eaten . . .”
― Nick Cave

“A kiss is the beginning of cannibalism.”
― Georges Bataille

“I wonder if I could eat a child if I had the chance.'
'I doubt if I could cook one,' said Constance.”
― Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle

“I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“Experience declares that man is the only animal which devours his own kind; for I can apply no milder term to the governments of Europe, and to the general prey of the rich on the poor.”
― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson

“I don't care how much you eat, Ender, self-cannibalism won't get you out of this school.”
― Orson Scott Card

“A census taker tried to quantify me once. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a big Amarone. Go back to school, little Starling.”
― Thomas Harris

“I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.”
― Jonathan Swift

“Imperialism creates the illusion of wealth as far as the masses are concerned. It usually serves to hide the fact that the ruling classes are gobbling up the natural resources of the home territory in an improvident manner and are otherwise utilizing the national wealth largely for their own purposes. Eventually the general public is called upon to pay for all of this, frequently after the military machine can no longer maintain external aggression.”
― Jack D. Forbes, Columbus and Other Cannibals: The Wétiko Disease of Exploitation, Imperialism, and Terrorism

“Shower while there were two dead bodies in the bathtub, and he was sane. He drilled holes in the heads of living people to make them his unresisting companions, and he was sane. He ate a bicep which he fried in a skillet, tenderised and sprinkled with sauce, and he was sane. For hours he lay with corpses, hugging them, cherishing them, and he was sane. He kept eleven assorted heads and skulls, and two complete skeletons, for eventual use in a home-made temple, and he was sane.”
― Brian Masters, The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer

“But if you eat this chap who's God,' said Llewelyn stoutly, 'how can it be horrible? If it's alright to eat God why is it horrible to eat Jim Whittle?'

'Because,' said Dymphna reasonably, ' if you eat God there's always plenty left. You can't eat God up because God just goes on and on and on and God can't ever be finished...”
― Anthony Burgess, The Wanting Seed

“Go to the meat market of a Saturday night and see the crowds of live bipeds staring up at the long rows of dead quadrupeds. Does not that sight take a tooth out of the cannibal's jaw? Cannibals? who is not a cannibal? I tell you it will be more tolerable for the Fejee that salted down a lean missionary in his cellar against a coming famine; it will be more tolerable for that provident Fejee, I say, in the day of judgement, than for thee, civilized and enlightened gourmand, who naliest geese to the ground and feistiest on their bloated livers in thy paté-de-foie-gras.”
― Herman Melville

“Normally I would have been the first to go in search of cannibal monks, particularly as I had heard of a similar tradition at a nunnery in the Philippines. It's the sort of quest I can't resist.”
― Tahir Shah, House of the Tiger King : The Quest for a Lost City

“A collective insanity seemed to have seized the nation and turned them into something worse than beasts. The princess de Lamballe, Marie Antoinette's intimate friend, was literally torn to pieces; her head, breasts, and pudenda were paraded on pikes before the windows of the Temple, where the royal family was imprisoned, while a man boasted drunkenly at a cafe that he had eaten the princess' heart, which he probably had.”
― J. Christopher Herold, The Age of Napoleon

“Nay, so great was our famine that a Salvage we slew and buried, the poorer sort took him up again and eat him; and so did divers one another, boyled and stewed with roots and herbs. And one amongst the rest did kill his wife, powdered her, and had eaten part of her, before it was knowne, for which hee was executed, as hee well deserved. Now whether shee was better roasted, boyled, or carbonado'd I know not, but of such a dish as powdered wife I never heard of.”
― John Smith, Pocahontas: My Own Story

“Thistle flashes a wicked smile. "Oh, you haven't heard that one? The government struck a bargain with a cannibal, and they use him to dispose of bodies after executions."
"Who told you that story" I ask, trying to sound casual.
"The supermax prisoners use it to scare each other up in Huntsville. Better watch your step or a man from the government will come and eat you." She shrugs. "It doesn't make much sense, but conspiracy theories never do."
"Right. It's probably bullshit."
Thistle laughs. "Probably?"
"Definitely bullshit," I clarify. Then I take another bite out of Nigel Boyd's thigh.”
― Jack Heath, Hangman

“Graham had a lot of trouble with taste. Often his thoughts were not tasty.”
― Thomas Harris, Red Dragon

“T'ao Tsung-yi, a writer during the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368), wrote that "children's meat was the best food of all in taste" followed by women and then men.”
― Bill Schutt, Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History

“What's the point in having children if you're not feeling hungry?”
― my mother (real quote)

“May my feet land
on the safe ends
of Your robes,
for human land
drinks human blood
and feasts on its remains.”
― Mitta Xinindlu

“May my hands
be held by Your hands,
for human hands
were loving me yesterday
but are murdering me today.”
― Mitta Xinindlu

“May my eyes be filled with sanity,
for this generation
is piercing me with its inhumanity.”
― Mitta Xinindlu

“Today I'm the butcher, tomorrow I might be the cattle.”
― Augustina Bazterrica

“Let them eat me, I'll give them horrible indigestion.”
― Augustina Bazterrica

“Uncorked materialism is new cannibalism.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Dervis Vadisi: 100 Promissory Sonnets

“the people who inhabit the Caucasus “have intercourse with the women in the open and . . . eat the bodies of their kinsmen”; also that it is a place of tough sophists who stand on one leg and hold logs over their heads.”
― Jerry Toner, Homer's Turk: How Classics Shaped Ideas of the East

“All love leads to cannibalism. I know that now. Sooner or later, our hearts will devour, if not the object of our affections, our very selves.”
― Tiffany McDaniel, The Summer that Melted Everything

“who is more barbaric? The alleged cannibalistic savages, who at least waited until their victims were dead before they cooked and ate them? Or the European slave traders who thrived on live meat, that is, the exploitation of these human 'animals'?”
― Samantha Hurn, Humans and Other Animals: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Human-Animal Interactions

“[W]ho is more barbaric? The alleged cannibalistic savages, who at least waited until their victims were dead before they cooked and ate them? Or the European slave traders who thrived on live meat, that is, the exploitation of these human 'animals'?”
― Samantha Hurn, Humans and Other Animals: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Human-Animal Interactions