Quotes about food (1658 quotes, page 2)

“I am confident that Japan will recover and rebuild because of the strength and spirit of the Japanese people. Over the last few days, they’ve opened up their homes to one another. They’ve shared scarce resources of food and water. They’ve organized shelters, provided free medical care, and looked out for their most vulnerable citizens. One man put it simply: “It’s a Japanese thing. When hard times hit, we have to help each other.””

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2011, Address on the natural and nuclear energy disasters in Japan (March 2011)

People , Home , Confidence , Water

“That a deep-rooted feeling of discontent pervades the masses, none can deny; that there is a just cause for it, must be admitted. The old cry, “These agitators are stirring up a feeling of dissatisfaction among working men and they should be suppressed,” will not avail now. Every thinking person knows that the agitator did not throw two millions of men out of employment. The man that reads such paragraphs as this will not lay the blame of it at the door of the agitator:
“Mrs. Sarah Jane Geary, an Englishwoman, residing in this city, committed suicide a few days since. Her husband is a miner, and, owing to the frequent suspensions of business in the mines during the past winter, his meager earnings were insufficient to support the family. The fact preyed on Mrs. Geary’s mind, and she resolved to end her life, that her children might receive her share of the food, otherwise they would go hungry.””

Terence V. Powderly (1849–1924) American mayor

"The Army of the Discontented," http://ebooks.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=nora;cc=nora;g=moagrp;xc=1;q1=The%20Army%20of%20the%20Discontented;rgn=full%20text;cite1=Powderly;cite1restrict=author;view=image;seq=0381;idno=nora0140-4;node=nora0140-4%3A8 North American Review, vol. 140, whole no. 341 (April 1885), p. 371.

Life , Men , Children , Family

“We have taller buildings but shorter tempers; wider freeways but narrower viewpoints; we spend more but have less; we buy more but enjoy it less; we have bigger houses and smaller families; more conveniences, yet less time; we have more degrees but less sense; more knowledge but less judgment; more experts, yet more problems; we have more gadgets but less satisfaction; more medicine, yet less wellness; we take more vitamins but see fewer results. We drink too much; smoke too much; spend too recklessly; laugh too little; drive too fast; get too angry; stay up too late; get up too tired; read too seldom; watch TV too much and pray too seldom.
We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values; we fly in faster planes to arrive there quicker, to do less and return sooner; we sign more contracts only to realize fewer profits; we talk too much; love too seldom and lie too often. We've learned how to make a living, but not a life; we've added years to life, not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor. We've conquered outer space, but not inner space; we've done larger things, but not better things; we've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul; we've split the atom, but not our prejudice; we write more, but learn less; plan more, but accomplish less; we make faster planes, but longer lines; we learned to rush, but not to wait; we have more weapons, but less peace; higher incomes, but lower morals; more parties, but less fun; more food, but less appeasement; more acquaintances, but fewer friends; more effort, but less success. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but have less communication; drive smaller cars that have bigger problems; build larger factories that produce less. We've become long on quantity, but short on quality.
These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion; tall men, but short character; steep in profits, but shallow relationships. These are the times of world peace, but domestic warfare; more leisure and less fun; higher postage, but slower mail; more kinds of food, but less nutrition. These are the days of two incomes, but more divorces; these quick trips, disposable diapers, cartridge living, throw-away morality, one-night stands, overweight bodies and pills that do everything from cheer, to prevent, quiet or kill. It is a time when there is much in the show window and nothing in the stock room.”

Bob Moorehead

"The Paradox of Our Age"; these statements were used in World Wide Web hoaxes which attributed them to various authors including George Carlin, a teen who had witnessed the Columbine High School massacre, the Dalai Lama and Anonymous; they are quoted in "The Paradox of Our Time" at Snopes.com http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/paradox.asp
Words Aptly Spoken (1995)

Love , Life , Men , Lie

“It is the mark of a mean, vulgar and ignoble spirit to dwell on the thought of food before meal times or worse to dwell on it afterwards, to discuss it and wallow in the remembered pleasures of every mouthful. Those whose minds dwell before dinner on the spit, and after on the dishes, are fit only to be scullions.”

Francis de Sales book Introduction to the Devout Life

Pt. 3, ch. 39
Introduction to the Devout Life (1609)

Pleasure , Time

“I would never preach vegetarianism. It’s such a personal choice. It’s got to suit you, and be right for you: emotionally, spiritually and physically. If it’s working for you, that’s really great. … I definitely think there are some benefits. I know a lot of people that have had cancer, for example, and they’ll make a point of telling me, ‘The first thing my doctor told me to do was stop eating meat during this process.’ I think it’s interesting a doctor would suggest a vegetarian diet when you’re already sick. … I stick to a mixture of real raw, whole-food items every day. I make sure I’m eating greens every day, and nuts, and food that’s not processed. I do that every day.”

Shania Twain (1965) Canadian country pop singer-songwriter

“Shania Twain vegetarian but not about to preachify,” interview with Doug Elfman in Las Vegas Review-Journal (19 January 2014) http://www.reviewjournal.com/columns-blogs/doug-elfman/shania-twain-vegetarian-not-about-preachify.

People , Thinking , Personality

“I saw, all of a sudden, an odd-looking bird making its way through the water to the opposite bank, followed by a great commotion. I found it was a domestic fowl which had managed to escape impending doom in the galley by jumping overboard and was now trying frantically to swim across. It had almost gained the bank when the clutches of its relentless pursuers closed on it, and it was brought back in triumph, gripped by the neck. I told the cook I would not have any meat for dinner. I really must give up animal food. We manage to swallow flesh only because we do not think of the cruel and sinful thing we do. There are many crimes which are the creation of man himself, the wrongfulness of which is put down to their divergence from habit, custom, or tradition. But cruelty is not of these. It is a fundamental sin, and admits of no argument or nice distinctions. If only we do not allow our heart to grow callous, its protest against cruelty is always clearly heard; and yet we go on perpetrating cruelties easily, merrily, all of us ⎯ in fact, any one who does not join in is dubbed a crank. … if, after our pity is aroused, we persist in throttling our feelings simply in order to join others in their preying upon life, we insult all that is good in us. I have decided to try a vegetarian diet.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Glimpses of Bengal http://www.spiritualbee.com/tagore-book-of-letters/ (1921)

Life , Way , Feeling , Bird

“Though the Negroes are fed, clothed, and housed, and though the Irish peasant is starved, naked, and roofless, the bare name of freemen—the lordship over his own person, the power to choose and will—are blessings beyond food, raiment, or shelter; possessing which, the want of every comfort of life is yet more tolerable than their fullest enjoyment without them.”

Fanny Kemble (1809–1893) English actress and writer

Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-1839, ch. 1 (1863).

Life , Housing , Personality , Clothes

“Philadelphia was the first city to foresee the advantages of a Federal constitution and oatmeal as a breakfast food.”

Christopher Morley Travels in Philadelphia

Travels in Philadelphia (1920)

“I verily aver that the right or otherwise of the process of the evolution of the Electoral Bill into the Electoral Act 2001 is trite. However, it is noted that President Olusẹgun Ọbasanjọ has pronounced that no law is perfect and that those opposed to the Electoral Act should go to court. It is equally notable that Senate President, Anyim Pius Anyim has indicated that any law can be revisited any time in the future. These are food for sober reflection and positive action. Consequently, a few remarks thereon are mandatory and urgent.”

Chuba Okadigbo (1941–2003) Nigerian politician

Address to the controversial bill signed by President Olusẹgun Ọbasanjọ (2001), USAfrica Online http://www.usafricaonline.com/okadigbo.biafra2001.html

Law , Time , Future , Perfection

“Riches, honors and pleasure are the sweets which destroy the mind’s appetite for heavenly food; poverty, disgrace and pain are the bitters which restore it.”

George Horne (1730–1792) English churchman, writer and university administrator

Source: The Works of the Right Reverend George Horne, 1809, p. 310

Pain , Pleasure

“They offer me neither food nor drink — intellectual nor spiritual consolation… [Conservatism] leads nowhere; it satisfies no ideal; it conforms to no intellectual standard, it is not safe, or calculated to preserve from the spoilers that degree of civilisation which we have already attained.”

John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) British economist

On the Conservative Party; Skidelsky (1992:231) quoting Collected Writings Volume IX page 296-297

Drink

“And now, ladies and gentlemen, that we've enjoyed some good times this evening, and enjoyed some laughter together, I feel it is my obligation to remind you of some of the negative, depressing, dangerous, life-threatening things that life is really all about; things you have not been thinking about tonight, but which will be waiting for you as soon as you leave the theater or as soon as you turn off your television sets. Anal rape, quicksand, body lice, evil spirits, gridlock, acid rain, continental drift, labor violence, flash floods, rabies, torture, bad luck, calcium deficiency, falling rocks, cattle stampedes, bank failure, evil neighbors, killer bees, organ rejection, lynching, toxic waste, unstable dynamite, religious fanatics, prickly heat, price fixing, moral decay, hotel fires, loss of face, stink bombs, bubonic plague, neo-Nazis, friction, cereal weevils, failure of will, chain reaction, soil erosion, mail fraud, dry rot, voodoo curse, broken glass, snake bite, parasites, white slavery, public ridicule, faithless friends, random violence, breach of contract, family scandals, charlatans, transverse myelitis, structural defects, race riots, sunspots, rogue elephants, wax buildup, killer frost, jealous coworkers, root canals, metal fatigue, corporal punishment, sneak attacks, peer pressure, vigilantes, birth defects, false advertising, ungrateful children, financial ruin, mildew, loss of privileges, bad drugs, ill-fitting shoes, widespread chaos, Lou Gehrig's disease, stray bullets, runaway trains, chemical spills, locusts, airline food, shipwrecks, prowlers, bathtub accidents, faulty merchandise, terrorism, discrimination, wrongful cremation, carbon deposits, beef tapeworm, taxation without representation, escaped maniacs, sunburn, abandonment, threatening letters, entropy, nine-mile fever, poor workmanship, absentee landlords, solitary confinement, depletion of the ozone layer, unworthiness, intestinal bleeding, defrocked priests, loss of equilibrium, disgruntled employees, global warming, card sharks, poisoned meat, nuclear accidents, broken promises, contamination of the water supply, obscene phone calls, nuclear winter, wayward girls, mutual assured destruction, rampaging moose, the greenhouse effect, cluster headaches, social isolation, Dutch elm disease, the contraction of the universe, paper cuts, eternal damnation, the wrath of God, and PARANOIAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Playing With Your Head (1986)

Life , God , Bad luck , Children

“My wife's cooking's gotten a lot better since she learned the smoke alarm wasn't a timer. I had to tell her, "Honey, the food's done before that particular buzzer goes off!"”

Ron White (1956) American comedian

They Call Me Tater Salad

Learning , Cooking

“The story of Adam and Eve represents the fruit as producing a psychological transformation. So the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is an abstraction across trees, and it's trying to say: 'Here's something that's common across trees, it's a fruit that's common across trees.' The fruit that's common across trees is something that you might call food, fair enough. But here's something that's even more cool: food that's stable across the entire domain of food, isn't food – it's information. We use the same bloody circuits in our brain to forage for information, that animals use to forage for information. Why is that? Because we figured out knowing where the food is, is more important than having the food… That's why we're information foragers.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Biblical Series IV: Adam and Eve: Self-Consciousness, Evil, and Death https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ifi5KkXig3s

Knowledge , Tree , Evil , Animals

“God’s heart has a special place for the poor, so much so that he himself “became poor” (2 Cor 8:9). The entire history of our redemption is marked by the presence of the poor. Salvation came to us from the “yes” uttered by a lowly maiden from a small town on the fringes of a great empire. The Saviour was born in a manger, in the midst of animals, like children of poor families; he was presented at the Temple along with two turtledoves, the offering made by those who could not afford a lamb (cf. Lk 2:24; Lev 5:7); he was raised in a home of ordinary workers and worked with his own hands to earn his bread. When he began to preach the Kingdom, crowds of the dispossessed followed him, illustrating his words: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor” (Lk 4:18). He assured those burdened by sorrow and crushed by poverty that God has a special place for them in his heart: “Blessed are you poor, yours is the kingdom of God” (Lk 6:20); he made himself one of them: “I was hungry and you gave me food to eat”, and he taught them that mercy towards all of these is the key to heaven”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

cf. Mt 25:5ff.
Section 197
2010s, 2013, Evangelii Gaudium · The Joy of the Gospel

God , Children , Family , Home

“I opened my eyes
While you were kissing me once more than once,
And you looked as sincere as a dog.
Just as sincere as a dog does,
When it's the food on your lips with which it's in love.”

Fiona Apple (1977) singer-songwriter, musician

Parting Gift
Song lyrics, Extraordinary Machine (2005)

Love , Dogs , Kiss , Sincerity

“I have never believed that the securing of material resources ought to form the central interest of human life—but have instead maintained that personality is an independent flowering of the intellect and emotions wholly apart from the struggle for existence. Formerly I accepted the archaic dictum that only a few can be relieved of the engulfing waste of the material struggle in its bitterest form—a dictum which is, of course, true in an agricultural age having scanty resources. Therefore I adopted an aristocratic attitude; regretfully arguing that life, in any degree of fulness, is only for the fortunate few whose ancestors' prowess has given them economic security and leisure. But I did not take the bourgeois position of praising struggle for its own sake. While recognising certain worthy qualities brought out by it, I was too much impressed by its stultifying attributes to regard it as other than a necessary evil. In my opinion, only the leisured aristocrat really had a chance at adequate life—nor did I despise him because he was not forced to struggle. Instead, I was sorry that so few could share his good fortune. Too much human energy was wasted in the mere scramble for food and shelter. The condition was tolerable only because inevitable in yesterday's world of scanty resources. Millions of men must go to waste in order that a few might really live. Still—if those few were not upheld, no high culture would ever be built up. I never had any use for the American pioneer's worship of work and self-reliance for their own sakes. These things are necessary in their place, but not ends in themselves—and any attempt to make them ends in themselves is essentially uncivilised. Thus I have no fundamental meeting-ground with the rugged Yankee individualist. I represent rather the mood of the agrarian feudalism which preceded the pioneering and capitalistic phases. My ideal of life is nothing material or quantitative, but simply the security and leisure necessary for the maximum flowering of the human spirit.... Well—so much for the past. Now we live in an age of easy abundance which makes possible the fulfilment of all moderate human wants through a relatively slight amount of labour. What shall be the result? Shall we still make resources prohibitively hard to get when there is really a plethora of them? Shall we allow antique notions of allocation—"property," etc.—to interfere with the rational distribution of this abundant stock of resources among all those who require them? Shall we value hardship and anxiety and uncertainty so fatuously as to impose these evils artificially on people who do not need to bear them, through the perpetuation of a set of now irrelevant and inapplicable rules of allocation? What reasonable objection is there to an intelligent centralised control of resources whose primary object shall be the elimination of want in every quarter—a thing possible without removing comfortable living from any one now enjoying it? To call the allocation of resources something "uncontrollable" by man—and in an age when virtually all natural forces are harnessed and utilised—is simply infantile. It is simply that those who now have the lion's share don't want any fresh or rational allocation. It is needless to say that no sober thinker envisages a workless equalitarian paradise. Much work remains, and human capacities differ. High-grade service must still receive greater rewards than low-grade service. But amidst the present abundance of goods and minimisation of possible work, there must be a fair and all-inclusive allocation of the chances to perform work and secure rewards. When society can't give a man work, it must keep him comfortable without it; but it must give him work if it can, and must compel him to perform it when it is needed. This does not involve interference with personal life and habits (contrary to what some reactionaries say), nor is the absence of insecurity anything to deplore.... But of course the real need of change comes not from the mere fact of abundant resources, but from the growth of conditions making it impossible for millions to have any chance of getting any resources under the present outworn set of artificial rules. This development is no myth. Machines had displaced 900,000 men in the U. S. before the crash of '29, and no conceivable regime of "prosperity" (where by a few people will have abundant and flexible resources and successfully exchange them among one another) will ever make it possible to avoid the permanent presence of millions of unemployed, so long as old-fashioned laissez-faire capitalism is adhered to.... And so I have readjusted my ideas. … I have gone almost reluctantly—step by step, as pressed by facts too insistent to deny—and am still quite as remote from Belknap's naive Marxism as I am from the equally naive Republican orthodoxy I have left behind. I am as set as ever against any cultural upheaval—and believe that nothing of the kind is necessary in order to achieve a new and feasible economic equilibrium. The best of culture has always been non-economic.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Hitherto it has grown out of the secure, non-struggling life of the aristocrat. In future it may be expected to grow out of the secure and not-so-struggling life of whatever citizens are personally able to develop it. There need be no attempt to drag culture down to the level of crude minds. That, indeed, would be something to fight tooth and nail! With economic opportunities artificially regulated, we may well let other interests follow a natural course. Inherent differences in people and in tastes will create different social-cultural classes as in the past—although the relation of these classes to the holding of material resources will be less fixed than in the capitalistic age now closing. All this, of course, is directly contrary to Belknap's rampant Stalinism—but I'm telling you I'm no bolshevik! I am for the preservation of all values worth preserving—and for the maintenance of complete cultural continuity with the Western-European mainstream. Don't fancy that the dethronement of certain purely economic concepts means an abrupt break in that stream. Rather does it mean a return to art impulses typically aristocratic (that is, disinterested, leisurely, non-ulterior) rather than bourgeois.
Letter to Clark Ashton Smith (28 October 1934), in Selected Letters V, 1934-1937 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, pp. 60-64
Non-Fiction, Letters

Life , Men , People , Age

“Jesus appeared to the disciples after the resurrection in various forms. He appeared to Mary Magdalene so that they might take him for a gardener. Very ingeniously these manifestation of Jesus is to our minds difficult to penetrate. (He appears) as a gardener. The gardener plants seedlings in prepared soil. The soil must exert a physical and chemical influence so that the seed of the plant can grow. Yet this is not sufficient. The warmth and light of the sun must be added, together with rain, in order that growth may result. The seed of supernatural life, of sanctifying grace, cleanses from sin, so preparing the soul of man, and man must seek to preserve this life by his good works. He still needs the supernatural food, the body of the Lord, which received continually, develops and brings to completion of the life. So natural and supernatural must unite to the realization of the holiness to the people. Man must contribute his minimum work of toil, and God gives the growth. Truly, the seed, the talent, the grace of God is there, and man has simply to work, take the seeds to bring them to the bankers. So that we "may have life, and abundantly."”

Gregor Mendel (1822–1884) Silesian scientist and Augustinian friar

Mendel makes several allusions to biblical verses, including John 20:15, Matthew 25:26 and John 10:10.
Sermon on Easter
Original: Jesus erschien den Jüngern nach der Auferstehung in verschiedener Gestalt. Der Maria Magdalena erschien er so, daß sie ihn für einen Gärtner halten mochte. Sehr sinnreich sind diese Erscheinungen Jesu und unser Verstand vermag sie schwer zu durchdringen. (Er erscheint) als Gärtner. Dieser pflanzt den Samen in den zubereiteten Boden. Das Erdreich muss physikalisch-chemisch Einwirkung ausüben, damit der Same aufgeht. Doch reicht das nicht hin, es muß noch Sonnenwärme und Licht hinzukommen nebst Regen, damit das Gedeihen zustandekommt. Das übernatürliche Leben in seinem Keim, der heiligmachenden Gnade wird in die von der Sünde gereinigte, also vorbereitete Seele des Menschen hineingesenkt und es muß der Mensch durch seine guten Werke dieses Leben zu erhalten suchen. Es muss noch die übernatürliche Nahrung dazukommen, der Leib des Herrn, der das Leben weiter erhält, entwickelt und zur Vollendung bringt. So muss Natur und Übernatur sich vereinigen, um das Zustandekommen der Heiligkeit des Menschen. Der Mensch muß sein Scherflein Arbeit hinzugeben, und Gott gibt das Gedeihen. Es ist wahr, den Samen, das Talent, die Gnade gibt der liebe Gott, und der Mensch hat bloß die Arbeit, den Samen aufzunehmen, das Geld zu Wechslern zu tragen. Damit wir »das Leben haben und im Überflusse haben.

Life , God , People , Soul

“That it must have been hunger alone, which first drove man to slay the animals and feed upon their flesh and blood; and that this compulsion was no mere consequence of his removal into colder climes … is proved by the patent fact that great nations with ample supplies of grain suffer nothing in strength or endurance even in colder regions through an almost exclusively vegetable diet, as is shewn by the eminent length of life of Russian peasants; while the Japanese, who know no other food than vegetables, are further renowned for their warlike valour and keenness of intellect. We may therefore call it quite an abnormality when hunger bred the thirst for blood … that thirst which history teaches us can never more be slaked, and fills its victims with a raging madness, not with courage. One can only account for it all by the human beast of prey having made itself monarch of the peaceful world, just as the ravening wild beast usurped dominion of the woods … And little as the savage animals have prospered, we see the sovereign human beast of prey decaying too. Owing to a nutriment against his nature, he falls sick with maladies that claim but him, attains no more his natural span of life or gentle death, but, plagued by pains and cares of body and soul unknown to any other species, he shuffles through an empty life to its ever fearful cutting short.”

Richard Wagner (1813–1883) German composer, conductor

Part III
Religion and Art (1880)

Life , Death , Hunger , Pain

“Then she generated the light, and the sight of her room, flooded with radiance and studded with electric buttons, revived her. There were buttons and switches everywhere — buttons to call for food for music, for clothing. There was the hot-bath button, by pressure of which a basin of (imitation) marble rose out of the floor, filled to the brim with a warm deodorized liquid. There was the cold-bath button. There was the button that produced literature. and there were of course the buttons by which she communicated with her friends. The room, though it contained nothing, was in touch with all that she cared for in the world.”

E.M. Forster book The Machine Stops

Source: The Machine Stops (1909), Ch. 1

World , Music , Communication , Literature

“The individual itself as a struggle between parts (for food, space, etc.): its evolution tied to the victory or predominance of individual parts, to an atrophy, a "becoming an organ" of other parts. … The aristocracy in the body, the majority of the rulers (struggle between cells and tissues). … Slavery and division of labor: the higher type possible only through the subjugation of the lower, so that it becomes a function.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book The Will to Power

Sec. 660 : The Body as a Political Structure
The Will to Power (1888)

Victory , Parting

“I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.”

Jonathan Swift book A Modest Proposal

A Modest Proposal (1729)

“If the Conservative Party were your refrigerator, all your food would go bad. If it were your car or bicycle, you would be stranded by the side of the road. If it were your accountant, you would be bankrupt. If it were your lawyer, you would be in prison. If any consumer good, service or profession so consistently and predictably disappointed or failed in its ostensible main purpose, people would turn their backs on it. It would be overtaken, replaced and driven out of business by a better competitor.”

Peter Hitchens (1951) author, journalist

From 'The Cameron Delusion' (2010)

People , Disappointment , Cars , Business

“We see the most striking example of humility in the lamb which will submit to any animal; and when they are given for food to imprisoned lions they are as gentle to them as to their own mother, so that very often it has been seen that the lions forbear to kill them.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XX Humorous Writings

Animals

“Some there are who are nothing else than a passage for food and augmentors of excrement and fillers of privies, because through them no other things in the world, nor any good effects are produced, since nothing but full privies results from them.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.

World

“The woman offers the man fruit. Maybe that's how our female ancestors enticed males to join them in caring for offspring. 'I'll offer you food, and in response we're going to make a team. That's the deal.' And that's the human deal. That's why we're more or less monogamous and why we more or less pair-bond, and why something approximating marriage is a human universal. You can find exceptions, but who cares? Look at the vast pattern. The price we pay for having very large brains is that we're very dependent, and it takes a long time for us to get programmed, and because of that we need relatively stable family bonding, and that's basically what we've evolved. You don't get that without making males self conscious. Why not impregnate and run. It's not 'why do men abandon their children?' that's the mystery. It's 'why do any men ever stick with them?”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Just look at the animal kingdom. The simple and easiest thing is always the most likely thing to occur. It's the exception - the long term commitment - that needs explanation."
Concepts

Men , Marriage , Children , Family

“Whether you’re a vegan or not, there are endless reasons why we should all be delighted that the movement has grown so fast in the last few years. … Through adapting their diets to make sure they get all the vitamins they need, to pressuring big corporations and governments for more ethical products, vegans are giving food the focus it deserves. They are also doing their bit to reduce food miles and emissions … They’re teaching us a thing or two as well. My vegan and vegetarian friends have cooked me some fantastic meals, many of which I now make regularly. It’s saving me money, encouraging me to eat more vegetables, and reducing my meat intake. While I have no plans to give up meat, I recognise that it shouldn’t be the focus of my diet. I am now vegetarian every other day – not consciously, but because lots of my favourite meals are meat-free. I have also learnt lots of new techniques as I work around the limits of reducing dairy and meat products. I make cakes without eggs, burgers without beef, and pastry without butter. I … refuse to buy any animal product that doesn’t have a guarantee of quality such as Freedom Food, free range or organic status.”

Jamie Oliver (1975) British chef and media personality

"World Vegan Month is good for everyone" https://www.jamieoliver.com/news-and-features/features/world-vegan-month-is-good-for-everyone/, JamieOliver.com (November 3, 2014).

Money , Freedom , Animals , Cooking

“We're not talking light-hearted foolishness here — when we go for stupid we go for BIG STUPID — like people who shoot at you on the freeway, or the Rambos and Rambo-ettes who blow people away in shopping malls and fast-food restaurants with automatic weapons.”

Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer

Source: The Real Frank Zappa Book (1989), p. 239.

People , Stupidity , Light , Heart

“Little effort was made to explain Saddam's culpability, his misuse of Iraqi resources, or the fact that we were not embargoing medicine or food. I was exasperated that our TV was showing what amounted to Iraqi propaganda… I must have been crazy; I should have answered the question by reframing it and pointing out the inherent flaws in the premise behind it. Saddam Hussein could have prevented any child from suffering simply by meeting his obligations. Instead, I said the following: 'I think this is a very hard choice, but the price, we think, the price is worth it.' As soon as I had spoken, I wished for the power to freeze time and take back those words. My reply had been a terrible mistake, hasty, clumsy, and wrong. Nothing matters more than the lives of innocent people. I had fallen into a trap and said something that I simply did not mean. That is no one's fault but my own.”

Madeleine K. Albright (1937–2022) Former U.S. Secretary of State

Comment on Stahl interview in Madam Secretary (2003), pp. 274-275
2000s

People , Question , Thinking , Effort

“O mortals, from your fellows' blood abstain,
Nor taint your bodies with a food profane:
While corn, and pulse by Nature are bestow'd,
And planted orchards bend their willing load;
While labour'd gardens wholesom herbs produce,
And teeming vines afford their gen'rous juice;
Nor tardier fruits of cruder kind are lost,
But tam'd with fire, or mellow'd by the frost;
While kine to pails distended udders bring,
And bees their hony redolent of Spring;
While Earth not only can your needs supply,
But, lavish of her store, provides for luxury;
A guiltless feast administers with ease,
And without blood is prodigal to please.”
Parcite, mortales, dapibus temerare nefandis corpora! sunt fruges, sunt deducentia ramos pondere poma suo tumidaeque in vitibus uvae, sunt herbae dulces, sunt quae mitescere flamma mollirique queant; nec vobis lacteus umor eripitur, nec mella thymi redolentia florem: prodiga divitias alimentaque mitia tellus suggerit atque epulas sine caede et sanguine praebet.

Ovid Metamorphoses

Book XV, 75–82 (from Wikisource); on vegetarianism, as the following quote
Metamorphoses (Transformations)

Spring , Nature , Bee

“In my memoir, I wanted to introduce American women to Iranian women and our lives. I'm not from the highest echelons of society, nor the lowest. I'm a women who is a lawyer, who is a professor at a university, who won the Nobel Peace Prize. At the same time, I cook. And even when I'm about to go to prison, one of the first things I do is to make enough food and put it in the fridge for my family.”

Shirin Ebadi (1947) Iranian lawyer, human rights activist, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

From 2006 interview with Ebadi by New America Media editor Brian Shott (translator, Banafsheh Keynoush) about her newly released book, Iran Awakening: A Memoir of Revolution and Hope.
New America Media, 2006. http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=8ad8e36442c10ef7fc33f0c8e70c08d8 (retrieved Oct. 15, 2008)

Women , Family , Peace , Universe

“The directors of Synthank were eating an enormous luncheon to celebrate the launching of their new product. Some of them wore the plastic face-masks popular at the time. All were elegantly slender, despite the rich food and drink they were putting away. Their wives were elegantly slender, despite the food and drink they too were putting away. An earlier and less sophisticated generation would have regarded them as beautiful people, apart from their eyes.”

Brian W. Aldiss book Super-Toys Last All Summer Long

Super-Toys Last All Summer Long (1969)

People , Beauty , Drink , Time

“The economic transmission of power without wires is of all-surpassing importance to man. By its means he will gain complete mastery of the air, the sea and the desert. It will enable him to dispense with the necessity of mining, pumping, transporting and burning fuel, and so do away with innumerable causes of sinful waste. By its means, he will obtain at any place and in any desired amount, the energy of remote waterfalls — to drive his machinery, to construct his canals, tunnels and highways, to manufacture the materials of his want, his clothing and food, to heat and light his home — year in, year out, ever and ever, by day and by night. It will make the living glorious sun his obedient, toiling slave. It will bring peace and harmony on earth.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

A Means for Furthering Peace (1905)

Peace , Home , Light , Sun

“Do not unjustly eat fish the water has given up,

And do not desire as food the flesh of slaughtered animals,

Or the white milk of mothers who intended its pure draught
for their young, not noble ladies.
And do not grieve the unsuspecting birds by taking eggs;
for injustice is the worst of crimes.
And spare the honey which the bees get industriously
from the flowers of fragrant plants;
For they did not store it that it might belong to others,
Nor did they gather it for bounty and gifts.
I washed my hands of all this; and wish that I
Perceived my way before my hair went gray!”

Al-Maʿarri (973–1057) Medieval Arab philosopher

As quoted in "The Meditations of Al-Maʿarri", Studies in Islamic Poetry (1921) by R. A. Nicholson, Verse 197, pp. 134–135

Way , Flowers , Bird , Fish

“From of old, amid the rage of robbery and blood-lust, it came to wise men's consciousness that the human race was suffering from a malady which necessarily kept it in progressive deterioration. Many a hint from observation of the natural man, as also dim half-legendary memories, had made them guess the primal nature of this man, and that his present state is therefore a degeneration. A mystery enwrapped Pythagoras, the preacher of vegetarianism; no philosopher since him has pondered on the essence of the world, without recurring to his teaching. Silent fellowships were founded, remote from turmoil of the world, to carry out this doctrine as a sanctification from sin and misery. Among the poorest and most distant from the world appeared the Saviour, no more to teach redemption's path by precept, but example; his own flesh and blood he gave as last and highest expiation for all the sin of outpoured blood and slaughtered flesh, and offered his disciples wine and bread for each day's meal:—"Taste such alone, in memory of me." … Perhaps the one impossibility, of getting all professors to continually observe this ordinance of the Redeemer's, and abstain entirely from animal food, may be taken for the essential cause of the early decay of the Christian religion as Christian Church. But to admit that impossibility, is as much as to confess the uncontrollable downfall of the human race itself.”

Richard Wagner (1813–1883) German composer, conductor

Part II
Religion and Art (1880)

Men , World , Religion , Nature

“Twenty years ago I thought: "What's the difference between eating a bloody steak and killing my dog, slitting him open and roasting him?" I've always loved animals but it was around the late 80s that I realised I had to go vegetarian. A lot of things converged in my life then – musically, emotionally – but mainly it was my love of animals and spending so much time touring that made me decide I had to change my diet. In the Runaways we used to eat a ton of junk food. So something had to give.”

Joan Jett (1958) American rock musician, former member of The Runaways

“What's in your basket, Joan Jett?”, in theguardian.com (18 July 2010) https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/jul/18/joan-jett-vegetarian-diet.

Love , Life , Dogs , Music

“[O]f articles of food, those which are unsuitable and hurtful to man when administered, every one is either bitter… or saltish or acid, or something else intense and strong, and therefore we are disordered by them… But all those things of which a man eats and drinks are devoid of any such intense and well-marked quality… which man is accustomed to use for food, with the exception of condiments and confectionaries, which are made to gratify the palate and for luxury. And from those things, when received into the body abundantly, there is no disorder nor dissolution of the powers belonging to the body; but strength, growth, and nourishment… for no other reason than because they are well mixed, have no thing in them of an immoderate character, nor anything strong, but the whole forms… [of] simple and not strong substance.”

Hippocrates (-460–-370 BC) ancient Greek physician

p, 125
Ancient Medicine

Drink , Strong , Hurt

“Those who receive this privilege therefore, have a duty to repay the sacrifice which others have made. They are like the man who has been given all the food available in a starving village in order that he might have strength to bring supplies back from a distant place. If he takes this food and does not bring help to his brothers, he is a traitor. Similarly, if any of the young men and women who are given an education by the people of this republic adopt attitudes of superiority, or fail to use their knowledge to help the development of this country, then they are betraying our union.”

Julius Nyerere (1922–1999) Tanzanian politician and writer, first Prime Minister and President of Tanzania

On higher education, 1960s. UDSM Alumni Newletter, volume 7. No. 2, November 2007, ISSN 0856 - 8805

Women , Men , People , Education

“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers — joined in the serious business of keeping our food, shelter, clothing and loved ones from combining with oxygen.”

Kurt Vonnegut book God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

"Eliot Rosewater" to a group of volunteer firemen.
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965)

Love , Business , Clothes , Happiness

“MALCOLM X: Freedom, justice and equality are our principal ambitions. And to faithfully serve and follow the Honorable Elijah Muhammad is the guiding goal of every Muslim. Mr. Muhammad teaches us the knowledge of our own selves, and of our own people. He cleans us up--morally, mentally and spiritually--and he reforms us of the vices that have blinded us here in the Western society. He stops black men from getting drunk, stops their dope addiction if they had it, stops nicotine, gambling, stealing, lying, cheating, fornication, adultery, prostitution, juvenile delinquency. I think of this whenever somebody talks about someone investigating us. Why investigate the Honorable Elijah Muhammad? They should subsidize him. He's cleaning up the mess that white men have made. He's saving the Government millions of dollars, taking black men off of welfare, showing them how to do something for themselves. And Mr. Muhammad teaches us love for our own kind. The white man has taught the black people in this country to hate themselves as inferior, to hate each other, to be divided against each other. Messenger Muhammad restores our love for our own kind, which enables us to work together in unity and harmony. He shows us how to pool our financial resources and our talents, then to work together toward a common objective. Among other things, we have small businesses in most major cities in this country, and we want to create many more. We are taught by Mr. Muhammad that it is very important to improve the black man's economy, and his thrift. But to do this, we must have land of our own. The brainwashed black man can never learn to stand on his own two feet until he is on his own. We must learn to become our own producers, manufacturers and traders; we must have industry of our own, to employ our own. The white man resists this because he wants to keep the black man under his thumb and jurisdiction in white society. He wants to keep the black man always dependent and begging--for jobs, food, clothes, shelter, education. The white man doesn't want to lose somebody to be supreme over. He wants to keep the black man where he can be watched and retarded.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

Mr. Muhammad teaches that as soon as we separate from the white man, we will learn that we can do without the white man just as he can do without us. The white man knows that once black men get off to themselves and learn they can do for themselves, the black man's full potential will explode and he will surpass the white man.
Playboy interview, regarding the ambition of the Black Muslims
Attributed

Love , Men , Hate , People

“And every business can take action. All the business leaders who are here and our global economy companies have a responsibility to make sure that their supply chains, stretching into the far corners of the globe, are free of forced labor. […] Every faith community can take action as well, by educating their congregations, by joining in coalitions that are bound by a love of God and a concern for the oppressed. And like that Good Samaritan on the road to Jericho, we can’t just pass by, indifferent. We’ve got to be moved by compassion. We’ve got to bind up the wounds. Let’s come together around a simple truth -- that we are our brother’s keepers and we are our sister’s keepers. And finally, every citizen can take action: by learning more; by going to the website that we helped create -- SlaveryFootprint. org; by speaking up and insisting that the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the products we buy are made free of forced labor; by standing up against the degradation and abuse of women.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2012, Remarks at Clinton Global Initiative (September 2012)

Love , Women , God , Truth

“Just as the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say “thou shalt not” to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills. How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points? This is a case of exclusion. Can we continue to stand by when food is thrown away while people are starving? This is a case of inequality. Today everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless. As a consequence, masses of people find themselves excluded and marginalized: without work, without possibilities, without any means of escape.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

Section 53
2010s, 2013, Evangelii Gaudium · The Joy of the Gospel

Life , People , Law , Personality

“I hope you guys are up for a fight. I hope you guys are game because I haven’t been putting up with 19 months of airplanes and hotel food and missing my babies and my wife — I didn’t put up for that stuff just to come in second.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

To supporters at a fund-raising party at Jon Bon Jovi's mansion in Duryea, Pennsylvania, (5 September 2008)
"Obama: 'I Don't Believe in Coming in Second'" by Jeff Zeleny (6 September 2008) http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/06/obama-i-dont-believe-in-coming-in-second/
2008

Hope , Guy , Game , Fight

“When I spoke about Bond with Fleming, he said that when the character was conceived, Bond was a very simple, straightforward, blunt instrument of the police force, a functionary who would carry out his job rather doggedly. But he also had a lot of idiosyncrasies that were considered snobbish -- such as a taste for special wines, et cetera. But if you take Bond in the situations that he is constantly involved with, you see that it is a very hard, high, unusual league that he plays in. Therefore he is quite right in having all his senses satisfied -- be it sex, wine, food or clothes -- because the job, and he with it, may terminate at any minute. But the virtues that Amis mentions -- loyalty, honesty -- are there, too.”

Sean Connery (1930) Scottish actor and producer

PLAYBOY interview November 1965.

Sex , Sense , Wine , Loyalty

“No attempt of any kind must be made at rescuing members of ships sunk, and this includes picking up persons in the water and putting them in lifeboats, righting capsized lifeboats, and handing over food and water. Rescue runs counter to the most primitive demands of warfare for the destruction of enemy ships and crews. Be hard, remember that the enemy has no regard for women and children when he bombs German cities.”

Karl Dönitz (1891–1980) President of Germany; admiral in command of German submarine forces during World War II

Orders issued on September 17, 1942, after an American Airplane bombed a U-boat carrying survivors. Quoted in "The Trial of the Germans" - Page 406 - by Eugene Davidson - History - 1997.

Women , Children , Water , Personality

“For love she wist was weak without those arts,
And slow; for jealousy is Cupid's food;
For the swift steed runs not so fast alone,
As when some strain, some strive him to outgone.”

Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) Italian poet

Alfin s'invecchia amore
Senza quest' arti, e divien pigro e lento,
Quasi destrier che men veloce corra,
Se non ha chilo segua, o chi 'l precorra.
Canto V, stanza 70 (tr. Fairfax)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)

Love , Jealousy , Art

“They are splendidly built [Italian Hospitals], the best food and drink are at hand, the attendants are very diligent, the physicians are learned, the beds and coverings are very clean, and the bedsteads are painted. As soon as a sick man is brought in, all his clothes are taken off in the presence of a notary and are faithfully kept for him. He is then laid in a handsomely painted bed with clean sheets. Two physicians are fetched at once. Attendants come with food and drink, served in immaculate glass vessels; these are not touched with as much as a finger but are brought on a tray.”

Martin Luther book Table Talk

3930
Table Talk (1569)

Drink , Learning , Painting , Clothes

“Soma, the predominating deity of the Moon, is the source of food grains and therefore the source of strength even for the celestial beings, the demigods. He is the vital force for all vegetation. Unfortunately, modern so-called scientists, who do not fully understand the Moon, describe the Moon as being full of deserts. Since the Moon is the source for our vegetation, how can the Moon be a desert? The moonshine is the vital force for all vegetation, and therefore we cannot possibly accept that the Moon is a desert.”

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896–1977) Indian guru

Srimad Bhagavatam, Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, 1999. Canto 8, Chapter 5, verse 34, purport. Vedabase http://www.vedabase.com/en/sb/8/5/34
Quotes from Books: Loving God, Quotes from Books: Regression of Science

Understanding

“If I could repeat my childhood, I would repeat it exactly as it was, with the poverty, the cold, little food, with the flies and pigs, all that.”

José Saramago (1922–2010) Portuguese writer and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature

Interview with Edney Silvestre, 2007.

Childhood

“Targeting young people, like the tobacco industry had to keep replacing their customers who were dying with new customers. Meat industry knows they have to target young people. That’s why we have these foods in schools and marketing messages at a younger and younger age for kids to get hooked on all the wrong kinds of foods.”

Michele Simon (1965) public health lawyer

What the Health (2017)

People , Age , School

“As the eye naturally seeks the light and vision, and our body naturally desires food and drink, so our mind is possessed with a becoming and natural desire to become acquainted with the truth of God and the causes of things.”

Origen (185–254) Christian scholar in Alexandria

On First Principles, Bk. 2, ch. 11; vol. 1, p. 148
On First Principles

God , Truth , Drink , Nature

“Smashing up McDonald's or Starbuck's is pointless. Not that I give a damn about McDonald's or Starbuck's. I don't care whether anyone smashes them up or not. But that is not a revolutionary activity. Even if every fast-food chain in the world were wiped out the techno-industrial system would suffer only minimal harm as a result, since it could easily survive without fast-food chains. When you attack McDonald's or Starbuck's, you are not hitting where it hurts.”

Theodore Kaczynski (1942) American domestic terrorist, mathematician and anarchist

"Technology Is The Target", point 2
Hit Where It Hurts (2002)

World , Suffering , Hurt

“We went through a hard time, and we had to turn to music as a means to putting food on the table. And we've been doing it ever since. No regrets either.”

Selena (1971–1995) Mexican-American singer, songwriter, actress, and fashion designer

Selena Quintanilla-Perez Interview at Rosedale Park https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9Z65HwP1i8

Music , Time

“I love food! I wake up in the morning and one of the first things on my mind is food, what are we going to eat for lunch? … In Italy… I like the sense of family that you have, the long summertime lunches with uncles who give you advice, the limoncello at the end of meals… Family means to help each other through difficult times, give each other a hand, as in a community. … I admire vegans… I like to eat fish once in while, but I don’t eat meat anymore because animal farms are one of the main causes of the destruction of the planet.”

Willem Dafoe (1955) American actor

"Food Talks: Willem Dafoe, His Italian Family, Broccoli, Carciofi & Panzanella" http://www.foodiamo.com/italian-food-news/food-talks-willem-dafoe/, interview with Foodiamo (January 2018).

Love , Family , Communication , Sense

“At the core, eating other creatures doesn't appeal to me. … Finally after seeing Forks Over Knives, I decided it was time to cut out all dairy and eggs as well. Being a decade long vegetarian at the time, the transition was much easier. … I also hope to use my platform to educate and transform people's perceptions on plant based diets, what plant based athletes look like, and can achieve, and to just encourage everyone, no matter what your lifestyle is, to be more mindful of the choices we have when it comes to diet and the impact those choices have on ourselves, our culture, and the environment. … I just encourage everyone, especially parents and kids, to really get educated on the corporate food system currently in place. It's causing an epidemic of sick people. Take the power back, and put the nourishment of your body, mind, and soul back into your own hands. Every little step you make to eliminate animal products in your meals is a one step closer to the big leap we all could benefit from taking.”

Austin Aries (1978) professional wrestler

" Austin Aries, vegan wrestler http://www.greatveganathletes.com/austin-aries-vegan-wrestler" by Cris Iles-Wright. Interview for greatveganathletes.com, 2014.

People , Education , Hope , Soul

“And victory the beautiful woman (shahid) whose world-adornment of waving tresses was embellished by Allah will aid you with a mighty aid, bestowed on us the good fortune that had been hidden behind a veil, and made it a reality. The absurd (batil) Hindus, knowing their position perilous, dispersed like carded wool before the wind, and like moths scattered abroad. Many fell dead on the field of battle; others, desisting from fighting, fled to the desert exile and became the food of crows and kites. Mounds were made of the bodies of the slain, pillars of their heads.”

Babur (1483–1530) 1st Mughal Emperor

Babur-Nama, translated into English by A.S. Beveridge, New Delhi reprint, 1979, pp. 572-73

World , Beauty , Reality , Victory

“To be depressed or neurotic is passive. It happened to us; we are its victim, and we have no control over it. This use of nouns and adjectives makes it logical for us to believe that we can do nothing for ourselves…but you are capable of choosing something better. If it is a choice, it follows that you are responsible for making it. With verbs, you are not a victim of mental illness; you are either the beneficiary of your own good choices or the victim of your own bad choices. You are not ill in the usual sense of having the flu or food poisoning. A choice theory world is a tough responsible world; you cannot use grammar to escape responsibility for what you are doing.”

William Glasser (1925–2013) American psychiatrist

Source: Choice Theory (1997), p. 75

World , Sense

“The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd druther not.”

Mark Twain book Following the Equator

Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar, Ch. XLIX
Following the Equator (1897)

Health , Way , Drink , Funny

“In many, many fields. I expected people in the social sciences-economics, psychology, philosophy, linguistics, politics, sociology, religion and numerous other areas to pick up on it. It's been somewhat of a mystery to me why even to this day, so few social scientists have discovered how useful it could be. Instead, Fuzzy Logic was first embraced by engineers and used in industrial process controls and in "smart" consumer products such as hand-held camcorders that cancel out jittering and microwaves that cook your food perfectly at the touch of a single button. I didn't expect it to play out this way back in 1965.”

Lotfi A. Zadeh (1921–2017) Electrical engineer and computer scientist

Response to the question: "How did you think Fuzzy Logic would be used at first?"
1990s, Interview with Lotfi Zadeh, Creator of Fuzzy Logic (1994)

People , Religion , Way , Science

“With the right of the scientist to investigate most aspects of the material universe, most persons will agree; but there are some who have questioned the applicability of scientific methods to an investigation of human sexual behavior…. It is as though the dietician and biochemist were denied the right to analyze foods and the processes of nutrition, because the cooking and proper serving of food may be rated a fine art, and because the eating of certain foods has been considered a matter for religious regulation.”

Alfred Kinsey (1894–1956) American scientist (1894–1956)

page 8
Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953)

Art , Behavior , Question , Universe

“He found his best satisfaction not in pleasure but in toil. He could live with little food, little sleep - and very little dalliance. The one thing he could not dispense with was work, and work in prodigious quantities.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Tighe Hopkins in The Women Napoleon Loved
About

Pleasure , Sleep

“I hate the way they portray us in the media. You see a black family, it says, 'They're looting.' You see a white family, it says, 'They're looking for food.”

Kanye West (1977) American rapper, singer and songwriter

Live NBC’s “A Concert for Hurricane Relief“ on September. 2, 2005

Hate , Family , Way

“When I was a child the atmosphere in the house was one of puritan piety and austerity. There were family prayers at eight o'clock every morning. Although there were eight servants, food was always of Spartan simplicity, and even what there was, if it was at all nice, was considered too good for children. For instance, if there was apple tart and rice pudding, I was only allowed the rice pudding. Cold baths all the year round were insisted upon, and I had to practice the piano from seven-thirty to eight every morning although the fires were not yet lit. My grandmother never allowed herself to sit in an armchair until the evening. Alcohol and tobacco were viewed with disfavor although stern convention compelled them to serve a little wine to guests. Only virtue was prized, virtue at the expense of intellect, health, happiness, and every mundane good.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1950s, Portraits from Memory and Other Essays (1956), p. 9

Children , Health , Alcohol , Family

“Liberty, says Rousseau, is a succulent food, but difficult to digest. Our feeble fellow citizens will have to strengthen their mind much before they will be ready to assimilate such wholesome nourishment.”

Simón Bolívar (1783–1830) Venezuelan military and political leader, South American libertador

As quoted in The World’s Great Speeches, Lewis Copeland and Lawrence Lamm, edit., Dover Publications Inc. (1958) p. 388
The Angostura Address (1819)

“There are two fundamentally different ways for the strong to bend down to the weak, for the rich to help the poor, for the more perfect life to help the “less perfect.” This action can be motivated by a powerful feeling of security, strength, and inner salvation, of the invincible fullness of one’s own life and existence. All this unites into the clear awareness that one is rich enough to share one’s being and possessions. Love, sacrifice, help, the descent to the small and the weak, here spring from a spontaneous overflow of force, accompanied by bliss and deep inner calm. Compared to this natural readiness for love and sacrifice, all specific “egoism,” the concern for oneself and one’s interest, and even the instinct of “self-preservation” are signs of a blocked and weakened life. Life is essentially expansion, development, growth in plenitude, and not “self-preservation,” as a false doctrine has it. Development, expansion, and growth are not epiphenomena of mere preservative forces and cannot be reduced to the preservation of the “better adapted.” … There is a form of sacrifice which is a free renunciation of one’s own vital abundance, a beautiful and natural overflow of one’s forces. Every living being has a natural instinct of sympathy for other living beings, which increases with their proximity and similarity to himself. Thus we sacrifice ourselves for beings with whom we feel united and solidary, in contrast to everything “dead.” This sacrificial impulse is by no means a later acquisition of life, derived from originally egoistic urges. It is an original component of life and precedes all those particular “aims” and “goals” which calculation, intelligence, and reflection impose upon it later. We have an urge to sacrifice before we ever know why, for what, and for whom! Jesus’ view of nature and life, which sometimes shines through his speeches and parables in fragments and hidden allusions, shows quite clearly that he understood this fact. When he tells us not to worry about eating and drinking, it is not because he is indifferent to life and its preservation, but because he sees also a vital weakness in all “worrying” about the next day, in all concentration on one’s own physical well-being. … all voluntary concentration on one’s own bodily wellbeing, all worry and anxiety, hampers rather than furthers the creative force which instinctively and beneficently governs all life. … This kind of indifference to the external means of life (food, clothing, etc.) is not a sign of indifference to life and its value, but rather of a profound and secret confidence in life’s own vigor and of an inner security from the mechanical accidents which may befall it. A gay, light, bold, knightly indifference to external circumstances, drawn from the depth of life itself—that is the feeling which inspires these words! Egoism and fear of death are signs of a declining, sick, and broken life. …
This attitude is completely different from that of recent modern realism in art and literature, the exposure of social misery, the description of little people, the wallowing in the morbid—a typical ressentiment phenomenon. Those people saw something bug-like in everything that lives, whereas Francis sees the holiness of “life” even in a bug.”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Source: Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912), L. Coser, trans. (1961), pp. 88-92

Love , Life , Death , People

“When no food is given to the ear,
Then let a little be given to the stomach.”

Thiruvalluvar book Tirukkuṛaḷ

Verse XLII.2
Tirukkural

“And so we can preserve great traditions -- music, food, dance, language, art -- but if there’s a tradition anywhere in Africa, or here in the United States, or anywhere in the world that involves treating people differently because you’re scared of them, or because you're ignorant about them, or because you want to feel superior to them, it's a bad tradition. And you have to challenge it. And you can't accept excuses for it. […] But the truth of the matter is, is that if you’re treating people differently just because of who they love and who they are, then there’s a connection between that mindset and the mindset that led to racism, and the mindset that leads to ethnic conflict. It means that you’re not able to see somebody else as a human being. And so you can’t, on the one hand, complain when somebody else does that to you, and then you’re doing it to somebody else. You can’t do it. There’s got to be some consistency to how you think about these issues. And that’s going to be up to young people -- because old people get stuck in their ways. […] And that doesn’t mean that everything suddenly is perfect. It just means that, young people, you can lead the way and set a good example. But it requires some courage, because the old thinking, people will push back at you. And if you don’t have the convictions and the courage to be able to stand up for what you think is right, then cruelty will perpetuate itself.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Young African Leaders Initiative Presidential Summit Town Hall speech (August 2015)

Love , People , Truth , World

“Where men are forbidden to honor a king they honor millionaires, athletes, or film-stars instead — even famous prostitutes or gangsters. For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served — deny it food and it will gobble poison.”

Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist

Equality (1943)
Context: We Britons should rejoice that we have contrived to reach much legal democracy (we still need more of the economic) without losing our ceremonial Monarchy. For there, right in the midst of our lives, is that which satisfies the craving for inequality, and acts as a permanent reminder that medicine is not food. Hence a man's reaction to Monarchy is a kind of test. Monarchy can easily be "debunked", but watch the faces, mark well the accents of the debunkers. These are the men whose taproot in Eden has been cut — whom no rumor of the polyphony, the dance, can reach – men to whom pebbles laid in a row are more beautiful than an arch. Yet even if they desire mere equality they cannot reach it. Where men are forbidden to honor a king they honor millionaires, athletes, or film-stars instead — even famous prostitutes or gangsters. For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served — deny it food and it will gobble poison.

Men , Star , Nature

“It is the saddest sight in the world. Sadder than destitution, sadder than the beggar is the man who eats alone in public. Nothing more contradicts the laws of man or beast, for animals always do each other the honour of sharing or disputing each other’s food. He who eats alone is dead”

Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) French sociologist and philosopher

New York (p. 15)
1980s, America (1986)
Context: Yet there is a certain solitude like no other - that of the man preparing his meal in public on a wall, or on the hood of his car, or along a fence, alone. You see that all the time here. It is the saddest sight in the world. Sadder than destitution, sadder than the beggar is the man who eats alone in public. Nothing more contradicts the laws of man or beast, for animals always do each other the honour of sharing or disputing each other’s food. He who eats alone is dead (but not he who drinks alone. Why is this?).

World , Law , Animals , Dead

“Does a Philosopher apply to people to come and hear him? does he not rather, of his own nature, attract those that will be benefited by him—like the sun that warms, and the food that sustains them?”

Epictetus (50–138) philosopher from Ancient Greece

120
Golden Sayings of Epictetus

People , Nature , Sun

“I believe that every person should be equal under the law. Every child deserves the dignity that comes with education, and health care and food on the table and a roof over their heads. I believe citizens should be free to speak their mind without fear to organize, and to criticize their government, and to protest peacefully, and that the rule of law should not include arbitrary detentions of people who exercise those rights. I believe that every person should have the freedom to practice their faith peacefully and publicly. And, yes, I believe voters should be able to choose their governments in free and democratic elections. Not everybody agrees with me on this.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2016, Remarks to the People of Cuba (March 2016)
Context: I believe that every person should be equal under the law. Every child deserves the dignity that comes with education, and health care and food on the table and a roof over their heads. I believe citizens should be free to speak their mind without fear to organize, and to criticize their government, and to protest peacefully, and that the rule of law should not include arbitrary detentions of people who exercise those rights. I believe that every person should have the freedom to practice their faith peacefully and publicly. And, yes, I believe voters should be able to choose their governments in free and democratic elections. Not everybody agrees with me on this. Not everybody agrees with the American people on this. But I believe those human rights are universal. I believe they are the rights of the American people, the Cuban people, and people around the world.

People , Health , Education , Fear

“Luxurious food and drinks, in no way protect you from harm. Wealth beyond what is natural, is no more use than an overflowing container. Real value is not generated by theaters, and baths, perfumes or ointments, but by philosophy.”

Epicurus (-341–-269 BC) ancient Greek philosopher

From the esplanade wall at Oenoanda, now in Turkey, as recorded by Diogenes of Oenoanda

Way , Drink , Nature , Wealth

“Give them food what you have for yourself, and clothe them by which you clothe yourself, and do not beat them, and do not revile them.”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Sunan Abu-Daud Book 11, Hadith 2139 http://www.searchtruth.com/book_display.php?book=11&translator=3&start=44&number=2138#
Sunni Hadith
Context: Narrated Mu'awiyah al-Qushayri: I went to the Apostle of Allah (peace_be_upon_him) and asked him: What do you say (command) about our wives? He replied: Give them food what you have for yourself, and clothe them by which you clothe yourself, and do not beat them, and do not revile them.

Clothes

“There is simply no room left for 'freedom from the tyranny of government' since city dwellers depend on it for food, power, water, transportation, protection, and welfare.”

William S. Burroughs book Cities of the Red Night

Cities of the Red Night (1981)
Context: There is simply no room left for 'freedom from the tyranny of government' since city dwellers depend on it for food, power, water, transportation, protection, and welfare. Your right to live where you want, with companions of your choosing, under laws to which you agree, died in the eighteenth century with Captain Mission. Only a miracle or a disaster could restore it.

Freedom , Water , Dependency

“This food of love draws the soul above distinction or difference, beyond resemblance to divine unity. This is what happens to the transfigured spirit.”

Johannes Tauler (1300–1361) German theologian

When the divine heat of love has drawn out all the moisture, heaviness, unfitness, then this holy food plunges such a one into the life of God. As Our Lord himself said to St Augustine, "I am the food of the strong: believe and feast on me. You will not change me into yourself; rather you will be changed into me".
Sermons, From Our Daily Bread

Love , Soul , Drawing

“Food sets up your mood.”

Ralph Smart

Mood

“My main reason for being a vegetarian is that I’m an animal lover — definitely NOT because I love vegetables. … I thought it was awful, all those animals getting packed up in there waiting to be killed. I couldn’t believe that’s how I’d been getting my meat! … I had this crazy dream about raining hamburgers. You know that book Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs? It was like that, with giant food falling out of the sky. And I still remember the dream so clearly.”

Zendaya (1996) American actress, singer, model, and dancer

"Zendaya Reveals Why She Became a Vegetarian: It's 'Definitely Not Because I Love Vegetables'" https://people.com/food/zendaya-vegetarian-diet/, People (9 December 2016).

Chance , Waiting , Dreams , Animals

“For nearly five hundred years, these rules and theories of an Arab Shaikh and the interpretations of generations of lazy and good-for-nothing priests have decided the civil and criminal law of Turkey. They have decided the form of the Constitution, the details of the lives of each Turk, his food, his hours of rising and sleeping the shape of his clothes, the routine of the midwife who produced his children, what he learned in his schools, his customs, his thoughts-even his most intimate habits. Islam – this theology of an immoral Arab – is a dead thing. Possibly it might have suited tribes in the desert. It is no good for modern, progressive state. God’s revelation! There is no God! These are only the chains by which the priests and bad rulers bound the people down. A ruler who needs religion is a weakling. No weaklings should rule.”

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881–1938) Turkish army officer, revolutionary, and the first President of Turkey

As quoted in Grey Wolf: Mustafa Kemal – An intimate study of a dictator (1932) by Harold Courtenay Armstrong, pp. 199-200
Disputed

School , Sleep , God , Clothes

“Many human beings say that they enjoy the winter, but what they really enjoy is feeling proof against it. For them there is no winter food problem. They have fires and warm clothes. The winter cannot hurt them and therefore increases their sense of cleverness and security. For birds and animals, as for poor men, winter is another matter. Rabbits, like most wild animals, suffer hardship.”

Richard Adams book Watership Down

Watership Down (1972)

Hurt , Clothes , Suffering , Animals

“The tremendous growth of the Soviet Union was in itself a remarkable sign of prosperity. It was not due, as in America, to immigration from outside. It showed that in spite of the privations and hardships of the people there was, as a general rule, no actual starvation. A severe system of rationing managed to supply the absolutely necessary articles of food to the population. Competent observers tell us that this rapid growth of population is largely due to a feeling of economic security among the people.”

Jawaharlal Nehru book Glimpses of World History

Glimpses of World History (1949)

Feeling , People

“For Russia, therefore, this building of heavy industries at a tremendous pace meant a very great sacrifice. All this construction, all this machinery that came from outside, had to be paid for, and paid for in gold and cash. How was this to be done? The people of the Soviet Union tightened their belts and starved and deprived themselves of even necessary articles so that payment could be made abroad. They sent their food-stuffs abroad, and with the price obtained for them paid for the machinery. They sent everything they could find a market for: wheat, rye, barley, corn, vegetables, fruits, eggs, butter, meat, fowls, honey, fish, caviare, sugar, oils, confectionery, etc. Sending these food articles outside meant that they themselves did without them. The Russian people had no butter, or very little of it, because it went abroad to pay for machinery. And so with many other goods…”

Jawaharlal Nehru book Glimpses of World History

Glimpses of World History (1949)

Fish , People

“It covers your shame, keeps you from shivering.
Grass and water are the food it asks.
Who taught you, priest-man,
to feed this breathing thing to your thing of stone?”

Lalleshwari (1320–1392) Indian writer, mystic and saint

The Poems of Lal Ded, poem 59, p. 15
Poetry

Water , Grass

“You should not first, give thanks for a pot of gold, but instead, because you’re healthy and others are not. Then give thanks for the food you eat because others are hungry. And then give thanks for the shelter you live within because others must sleep in the squalor of the alleys. And once you have given thanks for these necessities, seek out those without them and your soul will be at peace, and the pot of gold remains within your reach.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1980

Sleep , Peace , Soul

“Coral reefs are farmers. They provide food, income and food security for hundreds of millions of people around the world. Coral reefs are security guards. The structures that they build protect our shorelines from storm surge and waves, and the biological systems that they house filter the water and make it safer for us to work and play. Coral reefs are chemists. The molecules that we're discovering on coral reefs are increasingly important in the search for new antibiotics and new cancer drugs. And coral reefs are artists. The structures that they build are some of the most beautiful things on planet Earth. And this beauty is the foundation of the tourism industry in many countries with few or little other natural resources.”

Kristen Marhaver American marine biologist

Source: How we're growing baby corals to rebuild reefs https://www.ted.com/talks/kristen_marhaver_how_we_re_growing_baby_corals_to_rebuild_reefs (October 2015)

Housing , Search , Country , Beauty

“I am content in here. I have friends. The food is good. All is well. Know that if I hang myself, a la Epstein, it will be no fault of mine.”

John McAfee (1945) American computer programmer and businessman

Source: on Twitter https://twitter.com/officialmcafee/status/1316801215083225096, 16 October 2020

“Every prayer is a need or a lack of something. That's why the rich man doesn't ask for food, but for good health throughout the year.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Health

“The only best way to prove that a statue can't provide for you is to ask it for food.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Way

“Sometimes when there was no food to eat at home, I would take my daughter to my neighbor’s house under the pretext of watching television and stylishly feed my daughter and myself. That’s why I can relate to people because when you are down, you are down. But one cannot just stay down.”

Bisola Aiyeola (1986) Nigerian Actress

Source: https://www.ivory-ng.com/n15000-ended-university-education-bisola-aiyeola/ Bisola sharing her down moments in an interview with NAIJ.com

Home , Housing , Daughters , People

“The mind is incessantly looking not only for food for thought; it is looking for food for its identity, its sense of self. This is how the ego comes into existence and continuously re-creates itself.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: Stillness Speaks (2003), Chapter 3 The Egoic Self

Sense

“The stipulation that a community must first be as self-supporting as possible in regard to food will do away with large scale cultivation of any one article, such as sugar, by a population who, living in a small area, must therefore depend upon obtaining much of their food from abroad.”

Vera Stanley Alder (1898–1984) British artist

Source: Humanity Comes of Age, A study of Individual and World Fulfillment (1950), Chapter VII The Council for Economics

Dependency , Communication , Support

“However many things we may have done, we are yet to a certain degree fresh for that which we are going to begin. Who, on the contrary, would not be stupified if he were to listen to the same teacher of any art, whatever it might be, through the whole day? But by change a person will be recruited, as is the case with respect to food, by varieties of which the stomach is re-invigorated and is fed with several sorts less unsatisfactorily than with one.”

Quintilian (35–96) ancient Roman rhetor

Quamlibet multa egerimus, quodam tamen modo recentes sumus ad id quod incipimus. quis non obtundi potest, si per totum diem cuiuscunque artis unum magistrum ferat? mutatione recreabitur sicut in cibis, quorum diversitate reficitur stomachus et pluribus minore fastidio alitur.
H. E. Butler's translation:
However manifold our activities, in a certain sense we come fresh to each new subject. Who can maintain his attention, if he has to listen for a whole day to one teacher harping on the same subject, be it what it may? Change of studies is like change of foods: the stomach is refreshed by their variety and derives greater nourishment from variety of viands.
Book I, Chapter XII, 5
De Institutione Oratoria (c. 95 AD)

Personality , Teachers , Change , Art

“Food is good for the nerves and the spirit. Courage comes from the belly – all else is desperation.”

Charles Bukowski book Post Office

Source: Post Office

Courage

“Food, love, career, and mothers, the four major guilt groups.”

Cathy Guisewite (1950) Cartoonist

Love

“I was a man who thrived on solitude; without it I was like another man without food or water. Each day without solitude weakened me. I took no pride in my solitude; but I was dependent on it.”

Charles Bukowski book Factotum

Source: Factotum (1975), Ch. 17
Context: I got into bed, opened the bottle, worked the pillow into a hard knot behind my back, took a deep breath, and sat in the dark looking out of the window. It was the first time I had been alone for five days. I was a man who thrived on solitude; without it I was like another man without food or water. Each day without solitude weakened me. I took no pride in my solitude; but I was dependent on it. The darkness of the room was like sunlight to me. I took a drink of wine.

Solitude , Water , Dependency