Henry David Thoreau Quotes

I believe that one of the saddest things in the world today is that some people don't have enough food to nourish themselves. It's the 21st century and that's really not acceptable, so if I could do something that would change that I would be really happy.

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.

When people can't feed their children, nothing else positive happens. You don't have to look farther than the United States to see that.

When I was a kid, my mother used to feed me mashed-potato sandwiches, brussel sprout sandwiches; my brain cells were starving from lack of food. I'll eat anything. I'll eat dirt.

Where is there beauty when you see deprivation and starvation?

I said to my friends that if I was going to starve, I might as well starve where the food is good.

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.

If people should ever start to do only what is necessary millions would die of hunger.

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.

I defy you to agitate any fellow with a full stomach.

The people are starving. They need food; they need medicine; they need education. They do not need a skyscraper to house the ruling party and a 24-hour TV station.

It is not a pleasure to be here. It's an embarrassment that we come so late, and that there are so few of us here.... It's an embarrassment that so much of the media are missing. They are more concerned with someone who drinks too much, when we are trying to deal with the issue of millions of people who are not eating at all.

People who are starving can hardly become a peaceful people.

There are thousands of houses in England at this moment where wives, mothers and children are dying of hunger. When the first paroxysm of your grief is past ... come with me, and we will never rest until the Corn Law is repealed.

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 worst food comes to the poor, which their poverty makes them buy and their necessity makes them eat. Their stomachs are the waste-basket of the State. It is their lot to swallow all the adulterations on the market.

Hunger could not exist but through violation of economic laws and fundamental principles of social justice.

It is futile to expect a hungry and squalid population to be anything but violent and gross.

If Victual should prove scarce, as we have not Goods or Money for any Value to send out for Corns [food grains like wheat]; so only a part of the People could be maintained: The better part would have Bread, but the more necessary part, the Laboring Men would be forced to leave the Country, or to starve in it.

Empty stomachs have no ears.

Whole families used to starve in their cabins without their plight being discovered until the stench of their decaying corpses attracted notice.

The imperialists have also imposed on us an unjust economic order, and thereby divided our people into two groups: oppressors and oppressed. Hundreds of millions of Muslims are hungry and deprived of all form of health care and education.

This year alone, total world cereal production was estimated to be 2,114 million tons, while total cereal demand was projected at around 1007 million tones, less than half of the cereal production. Ideally, no one should starve or die of hunger in the world we live. Strangely and sadly enough, they do. This is not fair. This is not right.

If a man dies of hunger, all the people of the district are responsible for his death

Hunger is a bad adviser.