I found a very interesting page online providing good evidence that Leonardo Da Vinci was a vegan. He was a well known vegetarian, but seeing as the term hadn’t been differentiated from veganism until the 20th century, the exact form of vegetarianism isn’t usually noted.
Leonardo Da Vinci lived for 67 years and his genius is testament to the effectiveness of his lifelong diet. He’s also a monument to the falsity of the b12 deficiency myth. He obviously never supplemented, and got that supposedly non-existent vegan vitamin b12 from somewhere.
Before getting into the quotes relevant to veganism as opposed to non-vegan-vegetarianism, I want to start off with his observations on eating meat, which are especially poignant.
[Note: all quotes in this article are from the link above].
“Truly man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds them. We live by the death of others. We are burial places! I have since an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men will look upon the murder of animals as they look upon the murder of man.”
Now turning to the subject of Leonardo Da Vinci’s specific veganism, here’s a quote he made regarding eating eggs:
“Oh, how many chicks will never come to birth!”
And here, on consuming milk and its products:
“The milk will be taken from the tiny children.”
Leonardo Da Vinci was a vegan who abstained from honey too:
“Living as they do in communities, whole populations are destroyed so that we can have their honey. Thus will many great nations be destroyed…and multitudes deprived of their food and stores; and they will be most cruelly submerged, swept under, drowned by invading armies, out of their minds. Oh, Justice of God! Why dost Thou not awake and protect Thy misused creatures?
In fact, though I haven’t found a quote on it, there is apparently indication from his notebooks that he was fruitarian, which really means that he went all the way in minimising the harm caused by his diet.
Because of the effort which it takes me to change what I eat, I personally draw a line between dairy products (which I don’t consume) and honey (which I do consume, sparingly). I freely admit that this is an arbitrary line. I hate causing harm to even plants, but I must accept it for the moment.
In future I’d like to become more aligned with nonviolence in my diet and come closer to the example set by Leonardo Da Vinci. He’s an inspiring and fascinating man. A lot of people have suggested he was an indigo, in fact 
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