Emily Dickinson Quotes

Full stomachs don't believe empty ones.

Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death.

I'll never, ever be full. I'll always be hungry. Obviously, I'm not talking about food. Growing up, I had nothing for such a long time. Someone told me a long time ago, and I've never forgotten it, 'Once you've ever been hungry, really, really hungry, then you'll never, ever be full.'

When you go somewhere like Kenya and you see how the children don't have pencils and pens, and all of these things are considered luxuries, and what a privilege they see education as and how hungry they are to learn, I wanted to give my brother and sister long lectures. That definitely stayed with me.

The hungry and the full sing not one song.

I have a 10 year old at home, and she is always saying, 'That's not fair.' When she says that, I say, "Honey, you're cute; that's not fair. Your family is pretty well off; that's not fair. You were born in America; that's not fair. Honey, you had better pray to God that things don't start getting fair for you.

I felt very uncomfortable when I became wealthy. One of my ways of dealing with it was to give it forward right away.

I'd be the biggest hypocrite if I said I really worked very hard for my career, because it was given to me on a silver platter. I can't take any credit.

I know the world is mean, that there is so much suffering on the planet that none of us can imagine. I often think of those who have nothing, who have to suffer every day, so a winner, a game, set, match will never give me immense joy, only satisfaction.

When I grew up, I had everything you could ask for, and I kind of didn't appreciate it. Because it was a given for me. Everybody that grew up in my neighborhood was going to have an opportunity to go to college. I took that for granted. I always regret that.

A lot of people who are born here don't appreciate the freedoms we have, the opportunities we have, because they've never had it any other way.

There is nothing remotely dignified about sorting through rotting trash to find something to feed your child, or asking someone for money because you have none (anyone who has contrived to give people money before they had to ask will never forget the look of gratitude in their eyes).

You think we got it bad in Omaha, or in any city in the United States, and then you go to a different country and you see how bad they got it. You give those people a balloon and they'll cherish it like you gave them a chunk of gold.

What is poverty, if not violence. Like, the number of people who die every year from starvation and from hunger and poverty is in the tens of millions.

For those who are not hungry, it is easy to palaver about the degradation of charity.

We are loaded down with too many good things, more than we could ever need, while others are desperate for a small loaf. The good things we cling to are more than money; we hoard our resources, our gifts, our time, our families, out friends....how ludicrous it is to hold on to the abundance God has given us and merely repeat the words 'thank you'.

People have suggested that perhaps we are too affluent to be telling this story, which is amazing to me because then I wonder what story I am allowed to tell. Having been working with the homeless for the past years, I noticed lots of things about them, but one thing I really noticed was that they were probably too busy just getting though the day to make a film about themselves.

What I did not know yet about hunger, but would find out over the next twenty-one years, was that brilliant theorists of economics do not find it worthwhile to spend time discussing issues of poverty and hunger. They believe that these will be resolved when general economic prosperity increases. These economists spend all their talents detailing the process of development and prosperity, but rarely reflect on the origin and development of poverty and hunger. A a result, poverty continues.

It is uncomfortable to ask condemned people about their sentences just as it is awkward to ask wealthy people why they need so much money, why they use their wealth so poorly, and why they don't just get rid of it when they recognize that it is the cause of their unhappiness.

Poor in abundance, famish'd at a feast.

We have the opportunity now to look at the two billion people in the world who suffer from the most abject poverty, hunger, disease, and devastation. Add to that another two billion people who are just plain poor. If you look into the world of those caught in economic oppression, illiteracy, disease, and sexism, then you'll understand more clearly what we have to do.

The trouble with you and me my friend, is the trouble with this nation, too many blessings, too little Appreciation.

Some people are born on third base.

No spoon has yet destroyed a mouth, but the knife of war cuts portions that are hard to swallow. Perhaps the big mouths of the privileged are able to cope with them, but they dull the teeth of the little people and ruin their stomachs.

I know that there are a billion girls out there that would kill to be in my position, and I never forget that.