Charles Bukowski Quotes

Make us your slaves, but feed us.

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.

It has been well said that a hungry man is more interested in four sandwiches than four freedoms.

It is the lash of hunger which compels the poor man to submit. In order to live he must sell - 'voluntarily' sell - himself every day and hour to the 'beast of property.'

In the last camp they all ate grass, until the authorities forbade them to pull it up. They were accustomed to having the fruits of their little communal gardens stolen by the guards, after they had done all the work; but at the last camp everything was stolen.

I left home because I was hungry.

It is a hard matter, my fellow citizens, to argue with the belly, since it has no ears.

I have a real dog-like mentality, in that it's like, 'Where is my next meal coming from? Am I ever gonna eat again? Will I ever write another song again? Will anyone show up for tour?' I think it comes from being really poor as a kid.

When people are hungry, when a mother or father is facing a child that they can't feed, you can't ask that family to lay down their arms.

Love and business and family and religion and art and patriotism are nothing but shadows of words when a man's starving!

Hunger is insolent, and will be fed.

No family should have to depend on the labor of its children to put food on the table and no person should be forced to work in captivity.

Hunger and fear are the only realities in dog life: an empty stomach makes a fierce dog.

Hunger and homelessness aren't things we always want to talk about.

They went into stores to get food to stay alive. Looting isn't the right word. I call it survival.

The hungry man does not hear.

A starving man thinks first of satisfying his hunger before anything else. He will sell his liberty and all for the sake of getting a morsel of food.

The hungry and homeless don't care about liberty any more than they care for cultural heritage.

Hunger is the teacher of many.

The citizens were so destitute that all the tropical fish in the city’s aquarium were devoured and even respectable women were driven to prostitution.

The entire tenant system operated by coercion and dependence. Landowners did not want their tenants to improve, because then they would have less control over them. A hungry worker was the best worker, or so many southern cotton growers believed. No one—neither tenants nor their landlords—had any problem making children and women work in the fields.

No hungry man who is also sober can be persuaded to use his last dollar for anything but food.

It is difficult for me to imagine what "personal liberty" the unemployed can have who go hungry and cannot find utilization of their labor.

Hunger never saw bad bread.

... a starving man doesn't ask what the meal is.