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Daily Inspiration Quote by Linda McCartney

"If slaughterhouses had glass walls the whole world would be vegetarian"

About this Quote

A glass wall is a deceptively simple threat: not to the meat industry’s power, but to its preferred aesthetic. Linda McCartney’s line turns on the idea that modern consumption depends on visual distance. We don’t just outsource killing; we outsource the sight of it, the sounds, the smell, the bodily fact. “Glass walls” suggests transparency without escape: you can look away, but you can’t pretend you didn’t know. The sentence dares the reader to consider whether their appetite would survive contact with reality.

The intent isn’t polite persuasion. It’s a moral lever aimed at the hinge point of contemporary eating: cognitive dissonance. McCartney frames vegetarianism not as niche lifestyle branding but as the default human response once denial is removed. That’s the subtext: meat-eating persists less because people are cruel than because systems are built to keep cruelty invisible, sanitized, and professionally managed. Her phrasing assumes empathy is latent; it just needs an unobstructed view.

Context matters. McCartney, a photographer, thinks in images, and that’s the quote’s real engine. It’s not a data point about emissions or health; it’s an argument about witnessing. In an era when agribusiness scaled slaughter into an industrial process, “glass walls” reads like a demand for documentary truth: if you can package meat like a clean product, you should also be willing to show its making. The cultural punch lands because it targets a modern taboo: not killing, but seeing.

Quote Details

TopicEthics & Morality
SourceHelp us find the source
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
McCartney, Linda. (2026, January 15). If slaughterhouses had glass walls the whole world would be vegetarian. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/if-slaughterhouses-had-glass-walls-the-whole-158887/

Chicago Style
McCartney, Linda. "If slaughterhouses had glass walls the whole world would be vegetarian." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/if-slaughterhouses-had-glass-walls-the-whole-158887/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"If slaughterhouses had glass walls the whole world would be vegetarian." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/if-slaughterhouses-had-glass-walls-the-whole-158887/. Accessed 5 Feb. 2026.

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If slaughterhouses had glass walls - Linda McCartney
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About the Author

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Linda McCartney (September 24, 1941 - April 17, 1998) was a Photographer from USA.

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