Top 100 Poverty Hunger Quotes
#1. Hundreds of millions of human beings on our planet increasingly suffer from unemployment, poverty, hunger, and the destruction of their families.
Hans Kung
#2. What is the true story of Fantine? It is the story of society's purchase of a slave. A slave purchased from poverty, hunger, cold, loneliness, defencelessness, destitution. A squalid bargain: a human soul for a hunk of bread. Poverty offers and society accepts.
Victor Hugo
#3. We all wish to live. We all seek a world in which men are freed of the burdens of ignorance, poverty, hunger and disease. And we shall all be hard-pressed to escape the deadly rain of nuclear fall-out should catastrophe overtake us.
Haile Selassie
#4. The themes that make one laugh always stem from poverty, hunger, misery, old age, sickness, and death. These are the themes that make Italians laugh, anyway.
Mario Monicelli
#5. Radical servanthood challenges us, while attempting persistently to overcome poverty, hunger, illness, and any other form of human misery, to reveal the gentle presence of our compassionate God in the midst of our broken world.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
#6. We cannot confront the massive challenges of poverty, hunger, disease and environmental destruction unless we address issues of population and reproductive health
Thoraya Obaid
#7. If everyone who wants to see an end to poverty, hunger and suffering speaks out, then the noise will be deafening.
Desmond Tutu
#8. This must be a world of democracy and respect for human rights, a world freed from the horrors of poverty, hunger, deprivation and ignorance, relieved of the threat and the scourge of civil wars and external aggression and unburdened of the great tragedy of millions forced to become refugees.
Nelson Mandela
#9. One-third of the world, it has been said, may be free- -but one-third is the victim of cruel repression
and the other one- third is rocked by the pangs of poverty, hunger and envy. More energy is released by the awakening of these new nations than by the fission of the atom itself.
John F. Kennedy
#10. The forgotten world is made up primarily of the developing nations, where most of the people, comprising more than fifty percent of the total world population, live in poverty, with hunger as a constant companion and fear of famine a continual menace.
Norman Borlaug
#11. I didn't want to hear the usual answers about what's wrong because I believe these are symptoms: global warming, genocide, hunger, poverty, war, environmental crisis. If we can identify the root cause, we can change our ways.
Tom Shadyac
#12. And above all, you should not think of writing as a way of earning your living. If you do, your work will smell of your poverty. It will be colored by your weakness and be as thin as your hunger. There are other trades which you can take up: make boots, not books.
Marquis De Sade
#13. The fight against poverty and hunger must be fought constantly and on many fronts, especially in its causes.
Pope Francis
#14. Make us worthy, Lord, to serve those people throughout the world who live and die in poverty and hunger. Give them through our hands, this day, their daily bread, and by our understanding love,give them peace and joy.
Mother Teresa
#15. We cannot fight against the poverty and hunger in the world; when our stomachs are full of delicious food; the fighters must feel the poverty not imagine it.
M.F. Moonzajer
#16. A society is judged by the way it cares for its most vulnerable citizens. As an American, I am ashamed that we have turned out backs on millions of our children. I want to do my part to rectify this terrible situation.
Marlo Thomas
#17. I do get scared about the physical danger from drug dealers. But it's not in the same league as the danger I feel eating an $80 lunch with my privileged friends to discuss hunger and poverty. That's when my soul feels imperiled.
Jonathan Kozol
#18. It is only luxury and avarice that make poverty grievous to us; for it is a very small matter that does our business, and when we have provided against cold, hunger, and thirst, all the rest is but vanity and excess.
Seneca The Younger
#19. We were born beggars, we will live like beggars and we will die like beggars.
M.F. Moonzajer
#20. The best way to perpetuate poverty is by spending on arms and military, and the best way to fight terrorism is by fighting the basic needs of humanity, because hunger and poverty perpetuate crime.
Oscar Arias
#21. Nowhere in the world, in no act of genocide, in no war, are so many people killed per minute, per hour and per day as those who are killed by hunger and poverty on our planet.
Fidel Castro
#22. No matter what they say in the conferences and symposiums about poverty and hunger in the world. At the end, they are the first one forgetting us.
M.F. Moonzajer
#23. A man will seek to express his relation to the stars; but when a man's consciousness has been riveted upon obtaining a loaf of bread, that loaf of bread is as important as the stars.
Richard Wright
#24. Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.
Mother Teresa
#25. Every time I look at my wallet; I don't care how much money is there, I just want to know, does it make for this time food?
M.F. Moonzajer
#26. It is but a short step from hunger to starvation, from disease to death.
Ban Ki-moon
#27. There is hunger for ordinary bread, and there is hunger for love, for kindness, for thoughtfulness, and this is the great poverty that makes people suffer so much.
Mother Teresa
#28. Honesty is not a virtue, it is a luxury. Most, who struggle to put bread on the table, face this question every day. And hunger wins this game almost every time, beta (son).
Prashant Chopra
#29. As long as superstition and ignorance prevail, humanity will fall short of eradicating war, poverty, and hunger.
Jacque Fresco
#30. How can you not know?" Silvestri said again. "Has twelve years of living the way you've been living not shown you how badly people live? The poverty, the hunger, the ignorance, the fear?" "Yes, but times have changed ... " "Yes, times have changed, but people haven't.
Jose Saramago
#32. The real cause of hunger is the powerlessness of the poor to gain access to the resources they need to feed themselves.
Frances Moore Lappe
#33. More people are killed by stray bullets every day in America than have been killed by Ebola here. More are dying because of poverty and hunger.
Robert Reich
#34. Everyday 25,000 people die from poverty and hunger. And we have forgotten that they are also human.
M.F. Moonzajer
#35. Suppose that my "poverty" be a secret hunger for spiritual riches: suppose that by pretending to empty myself, pretending to be silent, I am really trying to cajole God into enriching me with some experience--what then? Then everything becomes a distraction.
Thomas Merton
#36. The fight against hunger and poverty is also predicated on the creation of a world order that accords priority to social and economic development.
Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva
#37. Half of the world population is dying from poverty and hunger and still you think you are not rich enough.
M.F. Moonzajer
#38. Governments neither help us to get out of poverty and hunger, nor let us die. It is time that we must pick one.
M.F. Moonzajer
#39. We cannot end hunger unless we end poverty.
Mark Winne
#40. Young ladies ... who fall in love, never consider whether there is sufficient "to make the pot boil" - probably because young ladies in love lose their appetites, and, not feeling inclined to eat at that time, they imagine that love will always supply the want of food.
Frederick Marryat
#41. Empowering small farmers to increase productivity, improve crop quality and access reliable markets is critical to addressing global hunger and poverty.
Sylvia Mathews Burwell
#42. There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.
Mahatma Gandhi
#43. We need to realize that poverty doesn't only consist of being hungry for bread, but rather it is a tremendous hunger for human dignity. We need to love and to be someone for someone else
Mother Teresa
#44. And of course, we know that opportunity lies outside the reach of some of our people. We don't need flowery words about inequality to tell us that, and we don't need a party that has led while poverty and hunger rose to record levels to give us lectures about suffering.
Artur Davis
#45. This is the first generation in all of recorded history that can do something about the scourge of poverty. We have the means to do it. We can banish hunger from the face of the earth.
Hubert H. Humphrey
#46. I have seen firsthand that agricultural science has enormous potential to increase the yields of small farmers and lift them out of hunger and poverty.
Bill Gates
#47. I've said that, that I've felt like as Christians and particularly even as Republicans, we needed to address issues that touched the broader perspective, and that included disease, hunger, poverty, homelessness, the environment.
Mike Huckabee
#48. When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.
Helder Camara
#49. Dare we care at all about current fashions if that means reducing our ability to help hungry neighbors? How many more luxuries should we buy for ourselves and our children when others are dying for lack of bread?
Ronald J. Sider
#50. While the Taliban connives with foreign terrorists, the Afghan people suffer from poverty, drought and hunger
Jack Straw
#51. For where'er the sun does shine,
And where'er the rain does fall,
Babe can never hunger there,
Nor poverty the mind appall.
William Blake
#52. We have written too many books about love and so few about hunger and poverty; that is why we need to wake up and leave stupidity behind.
M.F. Moonzajer
#53. The operators were bound together by what they were running from - poverty in all its forms, despair, hunger, decimated families - as well as what they hoped to gain. Their imaginations were filled with American treasures:
Adriana Trigiani
#54. Begging is much more difficult than it looks. Contrary to popular belief, it's a high art form that takes years of dedicated practice to master.
Sol Luckman
#55. The time for careers and passions was gone. Hunger pangs displaced ambition.
Panashe Chigumadzi
#56. If with so little we have done so much in Brazil, imagine what could have been done on a global scale, if the fight against hunger and poverty were a real priority for the international community.
Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva
#58. So why is a third of our world battling obesity and spending huge sums to burn off excess calories, while the other two-thirds yearn to get more of them?
Wess Stafford
#59. People often wonder why God allows hunger, poverty and war in our world. Perhaps God wonders why we allow it.
from: Quotes about God ISBN 978-1-936462-20-9
The Prophet Of Life
#60. Hunger, disease and poverty can lead to global instability and leave a vacuum for extremism to fill. So instead of just managing poverty, we must offer nations and people a pathway out of poverty. And as president I've made development a pillar of our foreign policy, alongside diplomacy and defense.
Barack Obama
#61. Physical hunger and physical poverty is something I could only imagine. I've been poor when I was in China ... As kids we never had to starve, but just didn't have enough meat, enough rice.
Joan Chen
#63. It is fatal to look hungry. It makes people want to kick you.
George Orwell
#64. We should not so much esteem our poverty as a misfortune, were it not that the world treats it so much as a crime
Christian Nestell Bovee
#65. We must fight inequality and poverty if we want to re-establish peace and security. Seven million Mexicans live in extreme poverty, which is why I have launched a crusade against hunger. We also have to improve our educational system and stimulate economic growth.
Enrique Pena Nieto
#66. War, poverty, corruption, hunger, misery, human suffering will not change in a monetary system. That is, there will be very little significant change. It's going to take the redesign of our culture and values.
Jacque Fresco
#67. The dialectics of hunger, the dialectics of poverty. How people move from resignation and from callousness to cynicism and being beaten-down, and anger and self-destruction ... and finally to anger and violence which can become very creative in the process.
Anonymous
#68. Alone, human beings can feel hunger. Alone, we can feel cold. Alone, we can feel pain. To feel poor, however, is something we do only in comparison to others.
Eric Greitens
#69. An important lever for sustained action in tackling poverty and reducing hunger is money.
Gro Harlem Brundtland
#70. Remember: the universe neither judges, nor interprets, nor second guesses your will. If it did, there would be no poverty, no hunger, no suffering.
Stephen Richards
#72. There's enough on this planet for everyone's needs but not for everyone's greed.
Mahatma Gandhi
#73. You cannot tackle hunger, disease, and poverty unless you can also provide people with a healthy ecosystem in which their economies can grow.
Gro Harlem Brundtland
#74. The fact is that there is enough food in the world for everyone. But tragically, much of the world's food and land resources are tied up in producing beef and other livestock-food for the well off-while millions of children and adults suffer from malnutrition and starvation.
Walden Bello
#75. In the midst of migrants in search of a better life there are people in need of protection: refugees and asylum-seekers, women and children victims of trafficking ... Many move simply to avoid dying of hunger. When leaving is not an option but a necessity, this is more than poverty.
Antonio Guterres
#76. Death is buried there into death
Hunger strikes on its own last breath
No spine to shiver, no heart talks
At life's craving poverty mocks
From the poem 'Exhumation
Munia Khan
#77. What an ironic tragedy that an affluent, "Christian" minority in the world continues to hoard its wealth while hundreds of millions of people hover on the edge of starvation!
Ronald J. Sider
#78. It is a sinful abomination for one part of the world's Christians to grow richer year by year while our brothers and sisters ache and suffer for lack of minimal health care, minimal education, and even - in some cases - enough food to escape starvation.
Ronald J. Sider
#79. I was born to a black childhood of confusion and poverty. The memory of that beginning influences my work today, It is impossible now to photograph a hungry child without remembering the hunger of my old childhood.
Gordon Parks
#80. Poverty has a way of taking the edge off principles. Hunger can blunt them altogether.
Paula Brackston
#81. Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos. Its purpose should be the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist.
George C. Marshall
#82. You have increasing poverty and increasing wealth. Fine food is one way to dispense with a lot of money ... It's understanding that our daily choices about food connect us to a worldwide economic system. And that economic system - not scarcity - creates worldwide hunger for millions of people.
Frances Moore Lappe
#83. I've done a lot of practical anthropology, living in villages with people and realizing how difficult it is to get out of poverty. When in poverty, people use their skill to avoid hunger. They can't use it for progress.
Hans Rosling
#84. Sometimes people can hunger for more than bread.
It is possible that our children, our husband, our wife, do not hunger for bread, do not need clothes, do not lack a house. But are we equally sure that none of them feels alone, abandoned, neglected, needing some affection? That, too, is poverty
Mother Teresa
#85. This problem will knock on the doors of all of us, whether through uncontrolled and unmanageable migration flows, by means of diseases and epidemics, as a result of the conflicts generated by poverty and hunger, or as a result of events which are today unforeseeable.
Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla
#86. I have repeatedly stressed that we have the knowledge
to reduce hunger and poverty.
Gro Harlem Brundtland
#87. By defining the problem as "hunger," the emergency food system is helping to direct our attention away from the more fundamental problem of poverty, and the even more basic problem of inequality.
Janet Poppendieck
#88. When it was cooler, Trazada made a simple meal of sausage, cheese, and bread. She had schooled herself to wait dinner until hunger urged her to eat; it gave seasoning to poor food that no spice could furnish.
("The Generalissimo's Butterfly")
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
#89. Those who are driven by poverty, those who're free from material worries hunger exhausting labor a joyless existence ask the same question, the question of meaning.
Kathy Acker
#90. In this world there is one thing that is
more dangerous and scary than a tiger ...
and that is poverty and hunger.
Raj Kapoor
#91. The economic egalitarianism of the liberal ideology implies ... the reduction of Westerners to hunger and poverty.
James Burnham
#92. As the wealthiest nation on Earth, I believe the United States has a moral obligation to lead the fight against hunger and malnutrition, and to partner with others.
Barack Obama
#93. I grew up in the east side of Detroit in an area where there was very little, except for a lot of scarcity, poverty and hunger. I never woke up saying, 'I'm an orphan again today, isn't this terrible? Poor me.'
Wayne Dyer
#94. If I were a supervillain, I would end capitalism, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia ... but I guess that's a little too obvious and not villain-y enough. Because that's actually being a superhero. I would break down poverty with my machete; I would end world hunger.
Kathleen Hanna
#95. Poverty is obsolete and hunger is abolished
W.S. Gilbert
#96. My experience working in the Grameen Bank has given me faith; an unshakable faith in the creativity of human beings. It leads me to believe that humans are not born to suffer the misery of hunger and poverty. They suffer now as they did in the past because we turn our heads away from this issue.
Muhammad Yunus
#97. 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.
Tom Morello
#98. All men's instincts, all their impulses in life, are efforts to increase their freedom. Wealth and poverty, health and disease, culture and ignorance, labor and leisure, repletion and hunger, virtue and vice, are all terms for greater or less degree of freedom.
Leo Tolstoy
#99. Poverty's simplicity has an inexpensive beauty rooted in it, which the rich can never afford to buy
Munia Khan
#100. I have come to believe that one thing people cannot bear is a sense of injustice. Poverty, cold, even hunger are more bearable than injustice.
Millicent Fenwick
