Agnes Smedley Quotes

Yesterday in this country we had people die of hunger and malnutrition. In some parts of this country, the infant mortality rate rivals that of sub-Saharan Africa. We have a public education system that ranks below that of almost any other Western nation.

If investments in banks fall, it is a tragedy, and people say, 'What are we going to do?' but if people die of hunger, have nothing to eat or suffer from poor health, that's nothing.

You can't expect kids who don't have enough to eat to do well.

We are living in the 21st century, and children are dying of hunger, so how do we fight it?

A matter that seems to be very clear in terms of the alternative view, is what do you expect to happen in Africa with regard to immune systems, where people are poor, subject to repeat infections and all of that. Surely you would expect their immune systems to collapse.

I guess I so desperately want to see us put this planet right. It's so horrifying to me that a fifth of us are starving every night, and that forty thousand children die every single day.

I really connect with those moments of doing missionary work down there and just seeing the people that are dying from disease and hunger and malnutrition.

Hitler is living on the empty stomach of Germany …. Better political insight has a hard time winning as long as there is little prospect of filling the stomach.

Africa is a nation that suffers from incredible disease.

This year, between 20 and 30 million persons will die of hunger in Russia …. Perhaps it is well that it should be so, for certain nations must be decimated.

The English proletariat lives under such wretched conditions that a few extra privations will not cause it much discomfort.

It is in another world. In the midst of so much wealth there seems to nothing but chimneys and flaring furnaces with wretched cottages around them. Add to this a thick and black atmosphere and you have but a first impression of the life a third of my subjects are forced to live.

In low-income countries, the main problems you have is infectious diseases.

India unfortunately has the unenviable reputation of being the home to the largest number of undernourished children, women and men in the world.

Every 10 seconds we lose a child to hunger. This is more than HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined.

There is no actual starvation or deaths from starvation but there is widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition.

It is but a short step from hunger to starvation, from disease to death.

I have seen children dying of hunger. Over against a dying child La Nausee cannot act as a counterweight.

Low socioeconomic status carries with it an enormously increased risk of a broad range of diseases, and this gradient cannot be fully explained by factors such as health-care access.

Tuberculosis, starvation, fatigue, and there are many who have no desire to live.

My aunts lived on liquor and seldom felt like eating much. I don't know what's wrong about a kid stealing when he's hungry.

How can you frighten a man whose hunger is not only in his own cramped stomach but in the wretched bellies of his children? You can't scare him--he has known a fear beyond every other.

Everyone I have ever known very well has been concerned that I would eventually starve. Probably I shall. It isn't important enough to me to be an obsession.

There are children in Africa, starving to death, and you don't hear them whinging.

Those who minister to poverty and disease are accomplices in the two worst of all the crimes.