In those early days, I often wondered how some of my personal idols—Albert Einstein, for instance—could have been meat eaters. I found no explanation, although recently, to my great pleasure, a Web search yielded hints that Einstein’s sympathies were, in fact, toward vegetarianism, and not for health reasons but our of compassion towards living beings. But I didn’t know that fact back then, and in any case many other heroes of mine were certainly carnivores who knew exactly what they were doing. Such facts saddened me and confused me.

Douglas Hofstadter, I Am a Strange Loop, New York, 2007, p. 13