Quotes about food
page 5

“[IRENE ROSENBAUM:] …“you Americans do not rear children, you incite them; you give them food and shelter and applause”…”

Randall Jarrell book Pictures from an Institution

Source: Pictures from an Institution (1954) [novel], Chapter 4, p. 180

Children

“Athenodorus used to stroke his beard slowly and rhythmically as he talked, and told me once that it was this that made it grow so luxuriantly. He said that invisible seeds of fire streamed off from his fingers, which were food for the hairs. This was a typical Stoic joke at the expense of Epicurean speculative philosophy.”

Robert Graves book I, Claudius

Source: I, Claudius (1934), Ch. 5.

“Good food, good sex, good digestion, good sleep: to these basic animal pleasures, man has added nothing but the good cigarette.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

Pleasure, Sex, Sleep, Animals

“After looking carefully into the matter, and after some years' experience in its non-use, I can state without hesitancy that, contrary to the prevailing opinion, the flesh of animals is not necessary as an article of food. … We shall find numerous articles of food, as we study the matter, that, so far as body nourishing, building, and sustaining qualities are concerned, contain twice, and in some cases over twice, as much as any flesh food that can be mentioned.”

Ralph Waldo Trine (1866–1958) American author

Source: Every Living Creature (1899), pp. 25-26

Study, Animals

“I hesitate to talk about Czech food. […] The people are very sweet, wonderfully cultured, very friendly, but my God how they eat that food I do not know. It is surely the most disgusting cuisine in the world.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

John Banville: Using words to paint pictures of "magical" Prague (2006)

God, People, World

“The pose of innocence is as mandatory as the ability to eat banquet food and endure the scourging of the press.”

Lewis H. Lapham (1935) American journalist

Source: Money And Class In America (1989), Chapter 5, Social Hygiene, p. 115

“The people resemble a wild beast, which, naturally fierce and accustomed to live in the woods, has been brought up, as it were, in a prison and in servitude, and having by accident got its liberty, not being accustomed to search for its food, and not knowing where to conceal itself, easily becomes the prey of the first who seeks to incarcerate it again.”

Niccolo Machiavelli book Discourses on Livy

Book 1, Ch. 16
Discourses on Livy (1517)

People, Search, Nature

“Being an athlete, you have to consider whether your meals have enough of everything you need. As a vegetarian, you are forced to be creative, which I find makes me more adventurous with my cooking. Following a strict diet based on performance can be tedious, but because I enjoy the variety of my diet, it makes it easier to follow. … If any cyclists are thinking of becoming vegetarian, then I would suggest giving it a go. There’s definitely no harm in trying it! Be prepared to be experimental and open to new foods – you can’t just take out meat from your existing meals, you need to learn new ways of eating.”

Lizzie Deignan (1988) English track and road racing cyclist

"The Fuelling of a Champion: Lizzie Deignan" https://www.cycleplan.co.uk/blog/the-fuelling-of-a-champion-nutrition-of-pro-cyclist-lizzie-deignan, interview with The Cycleplan Blog (9 March 2018).

Way, Thinking, Learning, Cooking

“I'm doing my best to not be too rude about it, but oh my God that Czech food…”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

John Banville: Using words to paint pictures of "magical" Prague (2006)

God

“Food should come from the place of its origin, and stay there. It shouldn’t spend its time crisscrossing the globe for the sake of profit. We went down that path once, and it brought us to ruin.”

Paolo Bacigalupi book The Windup Girl

Source: The Windup Girl (2009), p. 93

Time

“With respect to animal diet, let it be considered, that taking away the lives of animals, in order to convert them into food, does great violence to the principles of benevolence and compassion. This appears from the frequent hard-heartedness and cruelty found amongst those persons whose occupations engage them in destroying animal life, as well as from the uneasiness which others feel in beholding the butchery of animals.”

David Hartley (philosopher) book Observations on Man

Observations on Man (1749; 6th edition, 1834), Part II, Chapter III, Section II.

Life, Feeling, Appearance, Animals

“Man's excellence lies in his readiness to let others live and lay down his own life. As he progresses, his food also changes for the better. He has the capacity to grow still further. There have been many more discoveries after Darwin's. The book which you have been reading seems to be an old one. Whether it is old or new, the "Principle of the greatest good of the greatest number," or "survival of the fittest" is false.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

In his Letter to Premabehn Kantak, in Collected Works, , Delhi. Ministry of Information (1969-94)., 50:309-10
1930s

Life, Books, Change, Reading

“I wake up early, does some meditation, take my children to school, and then go to the studio to begin my day's work. The food for his soul is typically India, but with lots of salad on the side.”

Anish Kapoor (1954) British contemporary artist of Indian birth

Anish Kapoor: An unknown Indian

Children, School, Soul

“Any day, any minute we bless God for our being or for anything, for food, for sunlight, we do and are what we were meant for, made for — things that give and mean to give God glory.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) English poet

The Principle or Foundation

God

“My auntie Nora right, all her food is mashed. She's got teeth but she don't need 'em [Karl on how his auntie blends her food and never uses her teeth]”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

Podcast Series 3 Episode 3
On Life

“I've been vegan for two years and vegetarian for 20 years. I used to be a dancer, and so health and vitality have always been important to me. I wouldn't say it took any one big event, vegetarianism just always made sense to me. [What farmed animals] endure is just terrible. It's horrible … Vegan food is soul food in its truest form. Soul food means to feed the soul. And, to me, your soul is your intent. If your intent is pure, you are pure.”

Erykah Badu (1971) American neo-soul singer

"Erykah Badu" http://vegnews.com/articles/page.do?catId=7&pageId=30, interview with VegNews (6 October 2008).

Health, Soul, Sense, Animals

“About three or four years ago, I wanted to try something different in my life, something that could also affect my health … I decided not to eat meat anymore … and the truth is that I’ve never missed meat. I realized that there were so many delicious vegan food options that it was very easy for me to make that change. Everyone can simply give it a try. … You are going to feel great, and the truth is that the food is delicious.”

Gaby Moreno (1981) singer

“Conoce las razones que llevaron a Gaby Moreno a elegir ser vegana,” video interview with PETA Latino (2 March 2017) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mht2XV8dgQ.

Life, Health, Truth, Feeling

“I had by this time heard a number of his public speeches and was beginning to understand the pattern of their appeal. The first secret lay in his choice of words. Every generation develops its own vocabulary of catchwords and phrases, and these date thoughts and utterances. My own father talked like a contemporary of Bismarck, the people of my own age bore the stamp of Wilhelm II, but Hitler had caught the casual camaraderie of the trenches, and without stooping to slang, except for special effects, managed to talk like a member of his audience. In describing the difficulties of the housewife without enough money to buy the buy the food her family needed in the Viktualien Market he would produce just the phrases she would have used herself to describe her difficulties, if she had been able to formulate them. Where other national orators gave the painful impression of talking down to their audience, he had his priceless gift of expressing exactly their own thoughts.”

Ernst Hanfstaengl (1887–1975) German businessman

Quoted in "Hitler: The Missing Years" - Page 67 - by Ernst Hanfstaengl, John Toland - 1994

Money, Pain, People, Secret

“For many years, the country has believed these pesticides are vital to keeping away starvation, to advance the green revolution. The main concern was food production and disease control - not public health safety. Some of us believe this must change, but it... will take some time.”

Maneka Gandhi (1956) Indian politician and activist

Commenting on a pesticide-poisoning incident, "Where Toxic Pesticides Seep Into Everyday Life" http://articles.philly.com/1990-09-23/news/25879516_1_hazardous-pesticides-pesticide-action-network-indian-village, The Philadelphia Inquirer (23 September 1990) 1981-1990

Health, Disease, Change, Time

“I cannot give a stronger proof of the perils which I think surrounds us, than to say that I shall feel it my duty to stop the wheels of Government if I can, in a way which can only be justified by an extraordinary crisis…I do not mean to threaten outbreaks—that the starving masses will come and pull down your mansions; but I say that you are drifting on to confusion without rudder or compass. It is my firm belief that within six months we shall have populous districts in the north in a state of social dissolution. You may talk of repressing the people by the military, but what military force would be equal to such an emergency? …I do not believe that the people will break out unless they are absolutely deprived of food; if you are not prepared with a remedy, they will be justified in taking food for themselves and their families…Is it not important for Members for manufacturing districts on both sides to consider what they are about? We are going down to our several residences to face this miserable state of things, and selfishness, and a mere instinctive love of life ought to make us cautious. Others may visit the continent, or take shelter in rural districts, but the peril will ere long reach them even there. Will you, then, do what we require, or will you compel us to do it ourselves? This is the question you must answer.”

Richard Cobden (1804–1865) English manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1842/jul/08/distress-of-the-country in the House of Commons (8 July 1842) against the Corn Laws. 1840s

Love, Life, People, Family

“A high-nutrient diet will reduce your desire for high-calorie, low-nutrient foods. Within weeks, your taste buds will change, and you'll lose interest in the unhealthy foods you once thought you could never live without. You'll feel more satisfied eating fewer calories than you were eating before. The result is lasting health and permanent weight loss.”

Joel Fuhrman (1953) Family Physician and author

Introduction
The End of Dieting (2014)

Health, Feeling, Change, Loss

“There was a certain tribe in the neighbourhood of Kol which had' occasioned much trouble' 'Three bastions were raised as high as heaven with their beads, and their carcases became the food of beasts of prey. That tract was freed from idols and idol-worship and the foundations of infidelity were destroyed.”

Muhammad of Ghor (1160–1206) Ghurid Sultan

Aligarh (Uttar Pradesh) . Hasan Nizami: Taju’l-Ma’sir, in Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. pp. 224.

“You know what's so great about junk food? Fat people who eat too much die young from cholesterol poisoning! It's a problem that solves itself!”

Ben Croshaw (1983) English video game journalist

My Tribute to the U.S.
Fully Ramblomatic, Essays

People, Problem

“There are those who strive to stamp with disrepute
The luscious food, because it feeds the brute;
In tropes of high-strain'd wit, while gaudy prigs
Compare thy nursling man to pamper'd pigs;
With sovereign scorn I treat the vulgar jest,
Nor fear to share thy bounties with the beast.”

Joel Barlow (1754–1812) American diplomat

Canto 1: st. 10, lines 1–6
The Hasty-Pudding (1793)

Fear

“In Somalia, we know exactly what they had to gain because they told us. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Colin Powell, described this as the best public relations operation of the Pentagon that he could imagine. His picture, which I think is plausible, is that there was a problem about raising the Pentagon budget, and they needed something that would be, look like a kind of a cakewalk, which would give a lot of prestige to the Pentagon. Somalia looked easy. Let's look back at the background. For years, the United States had supported a really brutal dictator, who had just devastated the country, and was finally kicked out. After he's kicked out, it was 1990, the country sank into total chaos and disaster, with starvation and warfare and all kind of horrible misery. The United States refused to, certainly to pay reparations, but even to look. By the middle of 1992, it was beginning to ease. The fighting was dying down, food supplies were beginning to get in, the Red Cross was getting in, roughly 80% of their supplies they said. There was a harvest on the way. It looked like it was finally sort of settling down. At that point, all of a sudden, George Bush announced that he had been watching these heartbreaking pictures on television, on Thanksgiving, and we had to do something, we had to send in humanitarian aid. The Marines landed, in a landing which was so comical, that even the media couldn't keep a straight face. Take a look at the reports of the landing of the Marines, it must've been the first week of December 1992. They had planned a night, there was nothing that was going on, but they planned a night landing, so you could show off all the fancy new night vision equipment and so on. Of course they had called the television stations, because what's the point of a PR operation for the Pentagon if there's no one to look for it. So the television stations were all there, with their bright lights and that sort of thing, and as the Marines were coming ashore they were blinded by the television light. So they had to send people out to get the cameramen to turn off the lights, so they could land with their fancy new equipment. As I say, even the media could not keep a straight face on this one, and they reported it pretty accurately. Also reported the PR aspect. Well the idea was, you could get some nice shots of Marine colonels handing out peanut butter sandwiches to starving refugees, and that'd all look great. And so it looked for a couple of weeks, until things started to get unpleasant. As things started to get unpleasant, the United States responded with what's called the Powell Doctrine. The United States has an unusual military doctrine, it's one of the reasons why the U. S. is generally disqualified from peace keeping operations that involve civilians, again, this has to do with sovereignty. U. S. military doctrine is that U. S. soldiers are not permitted to come under any threat. That's not true for other countries. So countries like, say, Canada, the Fiji Islands, Pakistan, Norway, their soldiers are coming under threat all the time. The peace keepers in southern Lebanon for example, are being attacked by Israeli soldiers all the time, and have suffered plenty of casualties, and they don't like it. But U. S. soldiers are not permitted to come under any threat, so when Somali teenagers started shaking fists at them, and more, they came back with massive fire power, and that led to a massacre. According to the U. S., I don't know the actual numbers, but according to U. S. government, about 7 to 10 thousand Somali civilians were killed before this was over. There's a close analysis of all of this by Alex de Waal, who's one of the world's leading specialists on African famine and relief, altogether academic specialist. His estimate is that the number of people saved by the intervention and the number killed by the intervention was approximately in the same ballpark. That's Somalia. That's what's given as a stellar example of the humanitarian intervention.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Responding to the question, "what did the United States have to gain by intervening in Somalia?", regarding Operation Provide Relief/Operation Restore Hope/Battle of Mogadishu.
Quotes 1990s, 1995-1999, Sovereignty and World Order, 1999

People, World, Peace, Way

“The heavy casualties, the constant retreat, the shortage of food and munitions, the difficulty of receiving reinforcements… all this had a very bad effect on morale. Many longed to get across the Volga, to escape the hell of Stalingrad.”

Vasily Chuikov (1900–1982) Soviet military commander

Quoted in "Ivan's War: Life and Death in the Red Army" - Page 174 - by Catherine Merridale - History - 2007

Hell

“It’s relevant that people whose polling places are schools are more likely to vote for sales taxes that will fund education. Or that judges become more likely to deny parole the longer they go without a break. Or that people serve themselves more food when using a large plate. Such effects, even when they’re small, can make a practical difference, especially when they influence votes and justice and health. But their existence doesn’t undermine the idea of a rational and deliberative self. To think otherwise would be like concluding that because salt adds flavor to food, nothing else does.”

Paul Bloom (1963) Canadian/American psychologist

“The War on Reason,” The Atlantic, March 2014, pp. 64–70

People, Health, Education, School

“Hard was their lodging, homely was their food;
For all their luxury was doing good.”

Samuel Garth (1661–1719) British writer

Claremont, line 148, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "And learn the luxury of doing good", Oliver Goldsmith, The Traveller, line 22; George Crabbe, Tales of the Hall, book iii; "If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men’s cottages princes’ palaces", William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act i. Sc. 2.

Home

“Fifty years ago, when the WWF was founded there were about three billion people on earth. Now there are almost seven billion. Over twice as many - and every one of them needing space. Space for their homes, space to grow their food (or to get others to grow it for them), space to build schools and roads and airfields. A little of that space might be taken from land occupied by other people but most of it could only come from the land which, for millions of years, animals and plants have to themselves.”

David Attenborough (1926) British broadcaster and naturalist

How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth? (BBC Horizon, 2009)

People, School, Home, Animals

“Until the age of twelve, then, I only lived on bread, milk-food, vegetables, and fruit. My health was not less robust on this account, nor my growth less rapid, and it was to this diet, perhaps, that I was indebted for that purity of feature, that exquisite sensibility of feeling, and that serene gentleness of humor and character which I had preserved up to that period.”

Alphonse de Lamartine (1790–1869) French writer, poet, and politician

Book IV, Note VIII, p. 61
Les confidences (1849)

Health, Age, Feeling

“There’s this about a farm: when the market’s good there’s money, and when it’s bad there’s food.”

Theodore Sturgeon book More Than Human

Source: More Than Human (1953), Chapter 1, p. 34

Money

“A lot of people don't have much food on their table
But they got a lot of forks and knives
And they gotta cut something”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Bob Dylan (1962), Talking New York

People

“I’m vegan now. I’ve been vegan for a month. Wanting to eat cleaner. Also I was trying to play lighter this year, be easier on my joints and on my feet. Getting older and you don’t want to let that age sneak up on you where you just get in the habit of eating whatever you want to eat because I know I’m gonna burn it off when it’s time to play. So just creating better habits. I feel much better. I thought it was all hype. I thought people just said it just because it was a healthier food but I can feel it. I can definitely feel it.”

Damian Lillard (1990) American professional basketball player

"Trail Blazers' Damian Lillard ‘feels much better' after going on vegan diet" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLZ-qndfGWA, video interview with OregonLive Sports (September 25, 2017).

People, Age, Feeling, Time

“One finds many companions for food and drink, but in a serious business a man's companions are few.”

Theognis of Megara (-570–-485 BC) Greek lyric poet active in approximately the sixth century BC

Source: Elegies, Line 115.

Drink, Business

“Large number of tribes, Dalits and Backward Castes have a historical food culture of beef. The anti-beef agenda has been in the Brahmanical fold. It began with the South Indian Brahmins and then spread to the North and became part of the Gandhian movement. My question is, how can the state impose a certain food culture on people? The state has nothing to do with food. They can give certain food to people depending on the market, but cannot impose that you can or cannot eat certain food items. If beef eating is bad for Brahmins or Baniyas or certain upper castes, then the state is imposing that on the rest of the society. So the state is actually becoming a theocratic state.”

Kancha Ilaiah (1952) Indian scholar, activist and writer

Quoted in DNA India (04 March 2015) http://www.dnaindia.com/india/interview-maharashtra-s-beef-ban-is-not-merely-communal-it-is-theocratic-kancha-ilaiah-2066223.

People, Question, Parting, Dependency

“I see Legros less often sometimes at Andler's as little as possible it means I get to bed late and I am short of funds, it is very pleasant nonetheless Courbet is so charming, Legros often goes there they get on very well he has some superb articles in the figaro. in the gazette des Beaux Arts.... then he will have one in the courrier du Commerce those are the ones I know about. success, women, good food, wine, beer, new acquaintances as a result of these articles, in short an accolade!!!!!!!!.... success can be harmful, it makes you relax, you sit on it and are distracted.... you alone should correct the faults, you know what I think of advice, correction. the gifted man should walk alone, straight to his goal, what happens is nothing, rejection, success, selling pleasing, all that is nonsense.”

Henri Fantin-Latour (1836–1904) painter from France

quote from a letter of Fantin-Latour, Paris, 26 June 1859, to James Whistler in London; from The Correspondence of James McNeill Whistler - Repository: Glasgow University Library http://www.whistler.arts.gla.ac.uk/correspondence/people/display/?cid=1073&nameid=Fantin_Latour_IH&sr=0&rs=1&surname=Fantin-latour&firstname= - System Number: 01073; Call Number: MS Whistler F 4.

Women, Art, Beer, Thinking

“The standard four food groups are based on American agricultural lobbies. Why do we have a milk group? Because we have a National Dairy Council. Why do we have a meat group? Because we have an extremely powerful”

Marion Nestle American academic

meat lobby Reported in "Feeding Frenzy" by Laura Shapiro, in Newsweek (27 May 1991) http://europe.newsweek.com/feeding-frenzy-203990?rm=eu

“With… small-town life… there are hundreds of thousands… who are not content. The more intelligent young people… flee to the cities… and… stay there, seldom returning even for holidays. The reason, Carol insisted… is an unimaginatively standardized background, a sluggishness of speech and manners, a rigid ruling of the spirit by the desire to appear respectable. It is contentment… the contentment of the quiet dead, who are scornful of the living for their restless walking. It is the prohibition of happiness. It is the slavery self-sought and self-defended. It is dullness made God. A savorless people, gulping tasteless food and sitting afterward, coatless and thoughtless, in rocking-chairs prickly with inane decorations, listening to mechanical music, saying mechanical things about the excellence of Ford automobiles, and viewing themselves as the greatest race in the world.”

Sinclair Lewis book Main Street

Main Street (1920)

Life, God, Happiness, People

“Great and little cannot understand one another. But in every child born of man, Father Redwood, lurks some seed of greatness — waiting for the Food.”

H. G. Wells book The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth

The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth (1904) - Online PDF and Epub http://books.google.com/books?id=VOyeAAAAIAAJ

Understanding, Waiting

“Voluntary birth control methods only work on the people who choose to use ’em. A population check that doesn’t work on everybody doesn’t work at all, because it simply breeds out the ones who use it. The only population check that really works is one that affects everybody, like a limit of space or food.”

Damon Knight book A for Anything

Source: A for Anything (1959), Chapter 10 (p. 122)

People, Birth

“They [the true instructors of the people] will accustom children to the vegetable régime. The peoples living on vegetable foods, are, of all men, the handsomest, the most vigorous, the least exposed to diseases and to passions, and they whose lives last longest. Such, in Europe, are a large proportion of the Swiss. The greater part of the peasantry who, in every country, form the most vigorous portion of the people, eat very little flesh-meat. The Russians have multiplied periods of fasting and days of abstinence, from which even the soldiers are not exempt; and yet they resist all kinds of fatigues. The negroes, who undergo so many hard blows in our colonies, live upon manioc, potatoes, and maize alone. The Brahmins of India, who frequently reach the age of one hundred years, eat only vegetable foods. It was from the Pythagorean sect that issued Epaminondas, so celebrated by for his virtues, Archytas, by his genius for mathematics and mechanics; Milo of Crotona, by his strength of body. Pythagoras himself was the finest man of his time, and, without dispute, the most enlightened, since he was the father of philosophy amongst the Greeks. Inasmuch as the non-flesh diet introduces with many virtues and excludes none, it will be well to bring up the young upon it, since it has so happy an influence upon the beauty of the body and upon the tranquillity of the mind. This regimen prolongs childhood, and, by consequence, human life.”

Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (1737–1814) writer and botanist from France

Vœux d'un solitaire, pour servir de suite aux "Études de la nature", as quoted in The Ethics of Diet by Howard Williams (University of Illinois Press, 2003, p. 175 https://books.google.it/books?id=o9ugCcZ13BMC&pg=PA175)

Life, Men, Happiness, Children

“But we seldom spoke of sex, for starving men dream of food, not women, and our bodies were generally too tired to lust.”

Wilfred Thesiger book Arabian Sands

Source: Arabian Sands (1959), p. 110.

Women, Men, Dreams, Sex

“Our study [China Diet and Health Study] suggests that the closer one approaches a total plant food diet, the greater the health benefit. … It turns out that animal protein, when consumed, exhibits a variety of undesirable health effects. Whether it is the immune system, various enzyme systems, the uptake of carcinogens into the cells, or hormonal activities, animal protein generally only causes mischief. High fat intake still can be a problem, and we ought not to be consuming such high-fat diets. But I suggest that animal protein is more problematic in this whole diet/disease relationship than is total fat.”

T. Colin Campbell (1934) American biochemist

Interview, 1994; as quoted in Souls Like Ourselves by Andrea Wiebers and David Wiebers (Rochester, MN: Sojourn Press, 2000), p. 51.

Health, Disease, Problem, Study

“I believe honestly and deeply that the treatment of whales is an example of the evil intelligence of humankind in relation to the rest of the natural world. We have seen greed of the most impossible kind descending on the Arctic and the Antarctic to destroy the most intelligent and beautiful creatures that the planet can produce…We are in the process of destroying much of the planet through destruction of the ozone layer, leading to the greenhouse effect, and the destruction of life. The whale is an example of how such destruction happens. As the ozone layer is destroyed the plankton in the Southern ocean will die and the whales will lose much of their food. Last year we opposed the Antarctic Minerals Bill because we feared that it would lead to pollution of the Southern ocean and damage the whales' food supply. The Government must oppose any extension of whaling of any type, scientific or otherwise, and I hope and trust that they will do so. But we must go further. Countries which engage in the barbarity of so-called scientific whaling, which in reality is crude commercialism of the nastiest kind, deserve retribution from us all and we must bring every possible sanction to bear against them. If we do not take care of our planet and our environment, and of animals such as the whale, mankind will suffer and our planet will die because we have not cared for the natural environment that we all share.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1990/mar/02/whaling in the House of Commons (2 March 1990). 1990s

Life, World, Fear, Beauty

“In academia much bogus knowledge is tolerated in the name of academic freedom – which is like allowing for the sale of contaminated food in the name of free enterprise. I submit that such tolerance is suicidal: that the serious students must be protected against the “anything goes” crowd.”

Mario Bunge (1919) Argentine philosopher and physicist

Matter and Mind (2010), p. 264.
2010s

Knowledge, Suicide, Freedom

“I have heard the rumours,” said the captain, directing his attention to the food on his plate.
“Ah, but rumours,” said Lebret easily, “may not be trusted. Appearances, you see, can trump reality.”

Adam Roberts book Twenty Trillion Leagues Under the Sea

Source: Twenty Trillion Leagues Under the Sea (2014), Chapter 2, “The Captain’s Last Supper” (p. 10)

Reality, Appearance

“Of course what makes breakfast in bed so special is you're lying down and eating bacon, the most beautiful thing on Earth. Bacon's the best, even the frying of bacon sounds like an applause. (sizzling sounds) YEAAAA BACON!!!! You wanna hear how good bacon is? To improve other food they wrap it in bacon. If it wasn't for bacon we wouldn't even know what a water chestnut is. "Thank you bacon. Sincerely, Water Chestnut the third". And those bits of bacon, bits of bacon are like the fairy dust of the food community. "you don't want this baked potato," bbbrrriinnnggg! it's now your favorite part of the meal. "not interested in a salad?" bippady boppidy bacon! Just turned it into an entre. And once you put bacon into a salad it's no longer a salad, it just becomes a game of find the bacon in the lettuce. It's like you're panning for gold, hmmmmm, EUREKA! bacon! not many ways to prepare bacon, you can either fry it or get botulism. It's amazing the shrinkage that occurs. You start with a pound you end up with a book mark. You know the only bad part about bacon is it makes you thirsty… for more bacon! I never feel like I get enough bacon. at breakfast it's like they're rationalizing it. "Here's your two strips of bacon." "But I want more! More bacon!" Whenever you're at a brunch buffet and you see that metal tray filled with the four thousand strips of bacon, don't you almost expect a rainbow to be coming out of it? "I found it I found the source of all bacon!"”

Jim Gaffigan (1966) comedian, actor, author

That bacon tray is always at the end of the buffet, you always regret all the stuff on your plate. "What am I doing with all this worthless fruit? I should have waited! If I had known you were here I would've waited...."
King Baby

Books, Beauty, Way, Feeling

“We have to consider that the foods we ingest let a certain amount of soluble toxic substances dispersed in the environment into our bodies. These polluting substances are harmful if we breathe them in, but they are even more so if we ingest them. By consuming meat, we put ourselves precisely in that position, because such substances in the atmosphere fall back to Earth, and hence, onto the grass that, when eaten by cattle, introduces harmful substances into their adipose deposits and therefore into their flesh, and finally, onto our plates.”

Umberto Veronesi (1925–2016) Italian oncologist and politician

The First Day Without Cancer (2013)

Grass

“Those who keep the masses of men in subjection by exercising force and cruelty deprive them at once of two vital foods, liberty and obedience; for it is no longer within the power of such masses to accord their inner consent to the authority to which they are subjected. Those who encourage a state of things in which the hope of gain is the principal motive take away from men their obedience, for consent which is its essence is not something which can be sold.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), The Needs of the Soul (1949), p. 97

Men, Hope, Exercises, Motivation

“There can be no permanent progress in the battle against hunger until the agencies that fight for increased food production and those that fight for population control unite in a common effort.”

Norman Borlaug (1914–2009) American biologist

1970 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech

Hunger, Effort, Fight

“Of what benefit is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but he does not have works? That faith cannot save him, can it? If a brother or a sister is lacking clothing and enough food for the day, yet one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but you do not give them what they need for their body, of what benefit is it? So, too, faith by itself, without works, is dead.”

James, son of Zebedee major religious figure in Christian tradition and one of the Twelve Apostles

James 2:14-17 http://www.jw.org/en/publications/bible/nwt/books/james/2/, NWT

Peace, Faith, Sister, Clothes

“The tradition of "turkey pardoning" in the US is a wonderful allegory for new racism. Every year, the National Turkey Federation presents the US president with a turkey for Thanksgiving. Every year, in a show of ceremonial magnanimity, the president spares that particular bird (and eats another one). After receiving the presidential pardon, the Chosen One is sent to Frying Pan Park in Virginia to live out its natural life. The rest of the 50 million turkeys raised for Thanksgiving are slaughtered and eaten on Thanksgiving Day. ConAgra Foods, the company that has won the Presidential Turkey contract, says it trains the lucky birds to be sociable, to interact with dignitaries, school children and the press.

That's how new racism in the corporate era works. A few carefully bred turkeys - the local elites of various countries, a community of wealthy immigrants, investment bankers, the occasional Colin Powell, or Condoleezza Rice, some singers, some writers (like myself) - are given absolution and a pass to Frying Pan Park.
The remaining millions lose their jobs, are evicted from their homes, have their water and electricity connections cut, and die of AIDS. Basically, they're for the pot. But the fortunate fowls in Frying Pan Park are doing fine. Some of them even work for the IMF and the World Trade Organisation - so who can accuse those organisations of being anti-turkey? Some serve as board members on the Turkey Choosing Committee - so who can say that turkeys are against Thanksgiving? They participate in it! Who can say the poor are anti-corporate globalisation? There's a stampede to get into Frying Pan Park. So what if most perish on the way?”

Arundhati Roy (1961) Indian novelist, essayist

From a speech http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2004/569/569p12.htm given at the World Social Forum in Mumbai, 16 January 2004 Speeches

Life, Children, World, School

“How to get stimulation out of simple food and water drink, and not alcohol.”

Frank Crane (1861–1928) American Presbyterian minister

Four Minute Essays Vol. 7 (1919), A School for Living

Alcohol, Drink, Water

“The thing I liked about writing about food when I started it was that I felt I was writing about food in a different way. Not like a food writer.”

Nigella Lawson (1960) British food writer, journalist and broadcaster

As quoted in "Reality bites" by Simon Hattenstone in The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,784535,00.html (2 September 2002)

Way

“…a victim of bad medicine, bad air, bad food, farcical education, a despicable popular culture.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, 1985 (1978)

Education

“Antony, however, according to his custom, returned alone to his own cell, increased his discipline, and sighed daily as he thought of the mansions in Heaven, having his desire fixed on them, and pondering over the shortness of man's life. And he used to eat and sleep, and go about all other bodily necessities with shame when he thought of the spiritual faculties of the soul. So often, when about to eat with any other hermits, recollecting the spiritual food, he begged to be excused, and departed far off from them, deeming it a matter for shame if he should be seen eating by others.”

Athanasius of Alexandria (295–373) Patriarch of Alexandria

§ 45
Life of Anthony of Egypt

Life, Soul, Sleep

“I can’t pretend to have worked my way up through adversity. I need the money not for food like other people, but to prove that I’m worth something. Jaws freed me to discover that a successful movie didn’t make a damn bit of difference to my life.”

Lorraine Gary (1937) American actress

Lorraine Gary Got a Big Bite of Jaws 2—but Not, She Insists, Because She's the Boss's Wife http://people.com/archive/lorraine-gary-got-a-big-bite-of-jaws-2-but-not-she-insists-because-shes-the-bosss-wife-vol-10-no-6/ (August 7, 1978)

Life, Money, People, Way

“Painting is aesthetic enjoyment; I want to be a 'poet'. As an artist I must conform to my nature. My nature has a lyrical as well as a dramatic disposition. Not one day is the same. One day I feel wonderful to work and I feel an expression, which shows in the work. Only with a very clear mind on a clear day I can paint without interruptions and without food because my disposition is like that. My work should reflect my moods and the greatest enjoyment I had when I did the work…”

Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) American artist

Quote from 'Artists' Session at Studio 35', (1950); as cited in Abstract Expressionism Creators and Critics (1990), ed. Clifford Ross, p. 225 
1950s

Feeling, Mood, Nature, Painting

“I became a vegetarian in 1969. … About eight and a half years ago, my husband and I decided to stop eating meat and then about six months later we stopped eating fish. … Partly because of my attitude towards health, and partly because of my husband's attitude toward animals. He's such an avid animal lover that, slaughtering them for food, he felt, was a worthless endeavor. I came to it from the point of view of someone who likes to be healthy, energetic, and vital. Together we both came to the same conclusions, but from different viewpoints, and eventually our reasons began to mingle. I began to share his attitude about animals and he began to appreciate the physical rewards of being a vegetarian. … I had two beautiful births as a vegetarian; they were great labors—no bleeding, no complications, no problems. The diet worked perfectly for me.”

Susan Saint James (1946) American actress and activist

Interview in The Vegetarians by Rynn Berry (Brookline, MA: Autumn Press, 1979), pp. 46–47.

Health, Beauty, Lovers, Birth

“Populations with diets with little or no saturated fat have little or no heart disease. The development of heart disease begins in childhood. Not only do unhealthy childhood diets high in saturated fat and low in the protective micronutrients found in unprocessed plant foods accelerate heart disease, but they promote the aging process, and create a cellular environment favorable for the development of cancer. To add insult to injury, much of the processed foods children eat are rich in trans fat, a man-made fat that is also linked to cancer and heart disease. We could not have designed a cancer-causing environment more effectively if we scientifically planned it. We feed our children a diet high in saturated fat, add lots of processed foods with those dangerous (man-made) trans fats, and combine it with an insufficient intake of unrefined plant foods to guarantee sufficient phytochemical deprivation, and presto, we have created a nation rich in autoimmune illnesses, allergies, obesity, diabetes, and finally, heart disease and cancer.”

Joel Fuhrman (1953) Family Physician and author

Source: Disease-Proof Your Child (2005), Ch. 1, pp. 11-12

Children, Age, Disease, Heart

“Stripped to its essentials, every decision in life amounts to choosing which lottery ticket to buy.... Most organisms don't buy lottery tickets, but they all choose between gambles every time their bodies can move in more than one way. They should be willing to 'pay' for information---in tissue, energy, and time---if the cost is lower than the expected payoff in food, safety, mating opportunities, and other resources, all ultimately valuated in the expected number of surviving offspring. In multicellular animals the information is gathered and translated into profitable decisions by the nervous system.”

Steven Pinker book How the Mind Works

Source: How the Mind Works (1997), p. 175

Life, Way, Decision, Time

“Food $200
Data $150
Rent $800
Candles $3,600
Utility $150
someone who is good at the economy please help me budget this. my family is dying”

Dril Twitter user

[ Link to tweet https://twitter.com/dril/status/384408932061417472] Tweets by year, 2013

Family, Help

“Restaurants get you in with food to sell you liquor; religions get you in with belief to sell you rules.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 21

Religion

“Food is a tool. It is a weapon in the U. S. negotiating kit”

Earl Butz (1909–2008) American government official

Cited in: " Food Fights http://www.inthesetimes.com/mobile/article/food_fights" By Jeremy Gantz on inthesetimes.com

“Remember that Moses led his people through the desert for forty years, and that after twenty years people began to complain… they told Moses that life in the desert was too difficult, and that at least while they were slaves they had had food and water and places to sleep. Moses's friends asked him how long he thought people would be complaining like this, and he replied, "Until the last person born under slavery has died". Our situation is very similar. The psychological gap between eastern and western Germany will last for at least a generation, or perhaps until the last person born under Communism has passed away.”

Lothar de Maizière (1940) German politician

As quoted in "A Wall of Resentment Now Divides Germany" http://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/14/world/five-years-later-eastern-europe-post-communism-special-report-wall-resentment.html?pagewanted=all (14 October 1994), by Stephen Kinzer, New York Times, New York

Life, People, Communication, Sleep

“Some have argued that the seeds to most fruit should not be eaten since they contain cyanide. It is true that many seeds contain cyanide, but that does not mean they cannot be eaten. Water has hydrogen and oxygen both dangerous around fires! Yet water is used to put fires out! The cyanide in seeds is locked into a molecule that renders it harmless to all human cells except cancer cells. There are scores of Web sites touting the eating of seeds or the laetrile (B-17) derivative to treat and cure cancer. Could it be that God put all we need in the original foods to prevent all diseases?”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Source: What On Earth Is About To Happen… For Heaven’s Sake? (2013), p. 48

God, Disease, Water

“Now, six years ago, al-Qaeda was planning to attack the Twin Towers. It wasn't a very nice world. And I think that if you think about six years ago, al-Qaida was preparing to attack the Twin Towers, Pakistan was allied with the Taliban, Afghanistan was the base from which al-Qaida was going to operate; the Israelis and the Palestinians had given up on a chance for -- or let me put it, the Palestinians had walked away from a chance for a Palestinian state, launched the second intifada, elected Ariel Sharon who basically said there would never be a Palestinian state and there will be a greater Israel; the North Korean were cheating on a deal that they had just signed; China and others were indifferent to that because it was a U. S.-North Korea bilateral deal; Iran was cheating on the IAEA out of sight. I could go on and on and on. That was the world in 2000 and 2001. And there is no doubt that by confronting -- oh, by the way, and Saddam Hussein was shooting at our pilots regularly in the no-fly zone and making a mockery of the Oil-for-Peace -- Oil-for-Food program and corruption was running rampant in that program. So, a worse world? I think so.”

Condoleezza Rice (1954) American Republican politician; U.S. Secretary of State; political scientist

Interview With the Associated Press Editorial Board http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2007/06/86248.htm, June 8, 2007.

World, Peace, Way, Thinking

“I don’t necessarily trust the way the food is being processed. I don’t agree with the way the animals are mass-slaughtered. So that’s one thing that kind of got me looking at what they call a vegan diet. … My mind is extremely clear. I’m not easily flustered [now]. My attitude is totally different. I had a really bad temper growing up, something I worked on for years. And now I’m able to recognize different emotions and I’m not governed by them. Doesn’t mean I don’t have them. I’m human. But I’m not easily moved. … I think a lot of people look at things as being restrictions, but that kind of shows me the way they view life. I don’t view it as restriction ― I look at what I can eat, what’s going to be the best source of energy for me.”

Kendrick Farris (1986) American weightlifter

"Kendrick Farris, The Only Male U.S. Weightlifter In The Olympics, Is Totally Vegan" https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/kendrick-farris-olympics-vegan_us_57ab6be7e4b0db3be07ccc07?guccounter=1, interview with HuffPost (August 10, 2016).

Life, People, Way, Thinking

“The history of the twelve-week return to the so-called original conditions of work is soon told. The daily and weekly output rose to a point higher than at any other time and in the whole period "there was no downward trend." At the end of twelve weeks, in period thirteen, the group returned, as had been arranged, to the conditions of period seven with the sole difference that whereas the Company continued to supply coffee or other beverage for the mid-morning lunch, the girls now provided their own food. This arrangement lasted for thirty-one weeks—much longer than any previous change. Whereas in period twelve the group's output had exceeded that of all the other performances, in period thirteen, with rest-pauses and refreshment restored, their output rose once again to even greater heights”

Elton Mayo (1880–1949) Australian academic

Source: The Human Problems of an Industrial Civilisation, (1933), p. 65, chapter 3: The Hawthorne experiment Western Electric Company

History, Girl, Coffee, Change

“Of all the elements of critical importance to plants, phosophorus is the least commonly found, and sources are rarely available locally. Of all the phosphatic fertilisers used, Europe and North America consume 75% (and get least return from this input because of overuse, over-irrigation, and poor soil economy). If we really wanted to reduce world famine, the redirection of these surplus phosphates to the poor soils of Africa and India (or any other food-deficient area) would do it. Forget about miracle plants; we need global ethics for all such essential soil resources. As long as we clear-cultivate, most of this essential and rare resource will end up in the sea.”

Bill Mollison (1928–2016) Australian permaculturist

table 8.1
Permaculture: A Designers' Manual (1988)

World, Sea, Forgetting

“[Vegan lifestyle] just shows a different side of me that I love to express and the fact that I love my life so much and I look into it so much that I try to make everything as efficient as possible and do everything that I was put on earth to do. … Every five blocks there’s a McDonald’s, but there may be one Whole Foods every 30 blocks or every 30 miles. You’ve just got to have the dedication to where you’re like, ‘OK, I’m passing all these obstacles just to go to the goal.’ It’s just like living in the hood and somebody trying to get over the addiction of drugs. On every corner you’ve got somebody asking you, ‘Yo, you good?’ You’re just trying to make it to the bus stop and go to work and live a clean life, but somebody at every corner just keeps stopping you and saying, ‘We got this weed. We got this coke. I got that new s--t.’ It’s the same thing. You’ve just got to be strong, and you’ll fight through it and know what’s best for you.”

Bryant Jennings (1984) boxer

"Meet Bryant Jennings: The Vegan Gunning to Be Heavyweight Champion" https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2599932-meet-bryant-jennings-the-vegan-gunning-to-be-heavyweight-champion, interview with Bleacher Report (December 17, 2015).

Love, Life, Strong, Fight

“Now, consciousness. That’s a fun thing, isn’t it? Product of an arms race between predators and prey. If you watch a cat creeping up on a mouse, you’ll be able to impute to the cat intentions that are most easily explained by the cat having a theory of mind concerning the mouse—an internal simulation of the mouse’s likely behavior when it notices the predator. Which way to run, for example. And the cat will use its theory of mind to optimize its attack strategy. Meanwhile, prey species that are complex enough to have a theory of mind are at a defensive advantage if they can anticipate a predator’s actions. Eventually this very mammalian arms race gave us a species of social ape that used its theory of mind to facilitate signaling—so the tribe could work collectively—and then reflexively, to simulate the individual’s own inner states. Put the two things together, signaling and introspective simulation, and you’ve got human-level consciousness, with language thrown in as a bonus—signaling that transmits information about internal states, not just crude signals such as ‘predator here’ or ‘food there.”

Charles Stross book Accelerando

Source: Accelerando (2005), Chapter 9 (“Survivor”), p. 397

Way, Behavior, Cats, Optimism

“Pick out any trait you want in your child… By surrounding this child with sunshine from the sky and your own heart, by giving the closest communion with nature, by feeding this child well-balanced, nutritious food, by giving it all that is implied in healthful environmental influences, and by doing all in love, you can thus cultivate in the child and fix there for all its life all of these traits.”

Luther Burbank (1849–1926) American botanist, horticulturist and pioneer in agricultural science

p, 125
The Training of the Human Plant (1907)

Love, Life, Health, Nature

“There may be some ground for believing that brontosaurs ate… soft foods. If the possibility of gizzard stones is ignored, the brontosaurs' dentition does seem little equipped to deal with meals of tougher plants. But there are no ground whatsoever for believing it of duckbills. The mouth of a duckbill dinosaur contained one of the efficient cranial Cusinarts in land-vertebrate history. Duckbill teeth and jaws were incomparable grinders, designed to cope with foods right inside the duckbill's oral compartment.”

Robert T. Bakker book The Dinosaur Heresies

The Dinosaur Heresies: A Revolutionary View of Dinosaurs (1986), Longman Scientific & Technical, p. 160-161
The Dinosaur Heresies (1986)

History

“It is interesting to note that scientific men all over the world are awakening to the fact that the flesh of animals as food is not a pure nutriment, but is mixed with poisonous substances, excrementitious in character, which are the natural results of animal life.”

John Harvey Kellogg (1852–1943) American physician

Quoted in Some Glimpses of Occultism: Ancient and Modern https://books.google.it/books?id=WufWAAAAMAAJ by C. W. Leadbeater, Rajput Press, 1909, p. 265.

Life, Men, World, Nature

“The billionaire boom is not a sign of a thriving economy but a symptom of a failing economic system. The people who make our clothes, assemble our phones and grow our food are being exploited to ensure a steady supply of cheap goods, and swell the profits of corporations and billionaire investors.”

Winnie Byanyima (1959) Ugandan aeronautical engineer, politician and diplomat

Richest 1 percent bagged 82 percent of wealth created last year - poorest half of humanity got nothing https://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressreleases/2018-01-22/richest-1-percent-bagged-82-percent-wealth-created-last-year, Oxfam International (22 January 2018)

People, Clothes

“The terrorists are the van-guard of Mohammedanism. They set out to cow the non-Mohammedan population, so that the ‘moderate Muslims’ can get on establishing Sharia courts, forcing halal food in school and works canteens, and making the authorities look the other way regarding criminal activities for fear of being called racist and Islamophobic. A phobia is an irrational fear. A normal non Mohammedan should have a perfectly rational fear of ‘Islam’. The question is: what is our Government going to do about it? Or will they take the Mayor of London’s view that terrorist attacks are just ‘part and parcel of living in a major city’.”

Gerard Batten (1954) British politician

Yesterday’s attack has everything to do with Islam or rather ‘Mohammedanism' http://gerardbattenmep.co.uk/2017/03/23/yesterdays-attack-has-everything-to-do-with-islam-or-rather-mohammedanism/ (March 23, 2017) 2017

Fear, School, Way, Question

“Whilst traveling through Afghanistan, we lost our corkscrew. Had to live on food and water for several days.”

W.C. Fields (1880–1946) actor

My Little Chickadee (1940)

Travel, Water

“Would the delicate ladies who devour sanguinary beef-steaks like to see their sons working as slaughtermen? If not, then they have no right to put this task upon some other woman's son. We have no right to impose upon a fellow-citizen work which we ourselves should decline to do. It may be said that we force no one to undertake this abominable means of livelihood; but that is a mere tergiversation, for in eating this horrible food we are making a demand that some one shall brutalize himself, that some one shall degrade himself below the level of humanity.”

Charles Webster Leadbeater (1854–1934) English theosophist

Source: Vegetarianism and Occultism (1913), p. 27

“And, of course, the funniest food: "kumquats". I don't even bring them home anymore. I sit there laughing and they go to waste.”

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

"Fussy Eater, Pt. 1"
A Place for My Stuff (1981)

Home

““I Critic am. Critics follow Festival for many lifetimes. We come to Criticize. First want I to know, am I Criticizing sapients? Or is just puppet show on cave wall of reality? Zombies or zimboes? Shadows of mind? Amusements for Eschaton?
A shiver ran up and down Burya’s spine. “I think I’m sapient,” he said cautiously. “Of course, I’d say that even if I wasn’t, wouldn’t I? Your question is unanswerable. So why ask it?”
Sister Seventh leaned forward. “None of your people ask anything,” she hissed. “Food, yes. Guns, yes. Wisdom? No. Am beginning think you not aware of selves, ask nothing.””

Charles Stross book Singularity Sky

Source: Singularity Sky (2003), Chapter 6, “Telegram from the Dead” (p. 143)

Wisdom, People, Question, Thinking

“After making careful inquiry I can not find a half a dozen cases of a man or woman who has completed a full course of education in any of our reputable institutions like Hampton, Tuskegee, Fiske, or Atlanta, who are imprisoned. The records of the South show that 90 percent of the colored people imprisoned are without knowledge of trades and 61 percent are illiterate. But it has been said that the negro proves economically valueless in proportion as he is educated. Let us see. All will agree that the negro in Virginia, for example, began life forty years ago in complete poverty, scarcely owning clothing or a day's food. The reports of the State auditor show the negro today owns at least one twenty-sixth of the real estate in that Commonwealth exclusive of his holdings in towns and cities, and that in the counties east of the Blue Ridge Mountains he owns one-sixteenth. In Middlesex County he owns one-sixth: in Hanover, one-fourth. In Georgia the official records show that, largely through the influence of educated men and women from Atlanta schools and others, the negroes added last year $1,526,000 to their taxable property, making the total amount upon which they pay taxes in that State alone $16,700,000. Few people realize under the most difficult and trying circumstances, during the last forty years, it has been the educated negro who counseled patience, self-control, and thus averted a war of races. Every negro going out of our institutions properly educated becomes a link in the chain that shall forever bind the two races together in all essentials of life.”

Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) African-American educator, author, orator, and advisor

Speech in New York (12 February 1904), as quoted in speech by Edward de Veaux Morrell in the House of Representatives https://cdn.loc.gov/service/rbc/lcrbmrp/t2609/t2609.pdf (4 April 1904) 1900s

Life, Women, Men, War

“Moses … denied to the members of the sacred commonwealth unrestricted liberty to use and partake of the other kinds of food. All the animals of land, sea or air whose flesh is the finest and fattest, thus titillating and exciting the malignant foe pleasure, he sternly forbade them to eat, knowing that they set a trap for the most slavish of the senses, the taste, and produce gluttony, an evil very dangerous both to soul and body.”

Philo (-15–45 BC) Roman philosopher

69.
On the Special Laws

Pleasure, Soul, Sense, Evil

“There is a subtle difference in the way sugar molecules are utilized. Momentarily, the body uses less sugar. However, sugar is important in fueling the consciousness on its journey. It also aids in connecting the consciousness to the body. In other words, there is indeed a connection that is and must be partially physical, between the body and the travelling consciousness, and it is based upon a certain sugar molecule in a form not normally seen. Before conscious projections I would therefore recommend that you take a small amount of starchy or sugar food. A small snack before bed is a good idea from this viewpoint. Alcohol is of some benefit, though not to any great degree. Excellent results can be achieved in a dream-based projection during the day, in a nap.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: Seth, Dreams & Projections of Consciousness, (1986), p. 348, quoting from Session 276

Alcohol, Dreams, Way, Travel

“Sometimes I suspect that our own civilization is not altogether perfect. When I think of the penitentiaries crammed to suffocation, and of the many who ought to be in; of the want, the filth, the depravity of the great cities; of the starvation in the manufacturing centers of Great Britain, and, in fact, of all Europe; when I see women working like beasts of burden, and little children deprived, not simply of education, but of air, light and food, there is a suspicion in my mind that Christian civilization is not a complete and overwhelming success.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

"To the Indianapolis Clergy." The Iconoclast (Indianapolis, IN) (1883)

Women, Children, Education, Thinking

“Several implications follow from Hayek's insights into the nature of capitalism.(a) The claim "I deserve my pretax income" is not generally true. Nor should the basic organization of property rules be based on considerations of moral desert. Hence, claims about desert have no standing in deciding whether taxation for the purpose of funding social insurance is just.
(b) The claim that people rocked by the viccisitudes of the market, or poor people generally, are getting what they deserve is also not generally true. To moralize people's misfortunes in this way is both ignorant and mean. Capitalism continuously and randomly pulls the rug out from under even the most prudent and diligent people. It is in principle impossible for even the most prudent to forsee all the market turns that could undo them. (If it were possible, then efficient socialist planning would be possible, too. But it isn't.)
(c) Capitalist markets are highly dynamic and volatile. This means that at any one time, lots of people are going under. Often, the consequences of this would be catastrophic, absent concerted intervention to avert the outcomes generated by markets. For example, the economist Amartya Sen has documented that sudden shifts in people's incomes (which are often due to market volatility), and not absolute food shortages, are a principal cause of famine.
(d) The volatility of capitalist markets creates a profound and urgent need for insurance, over and above the insurance needs people would have under more stable (but stagnant) economic systems. This need is increased also by the fact that capitalism inspires a love of personal independence, and hence brings about the smaller ("nuclear") family forms that alone are compatible with it. We no longer belong to vast tribes and clans. This sharply reduces the ability of individuals under capitalism to pool risks within families, and limits the claims they can effectively make on nonhousehold (extended) family members for assistance. To avoid or at least ameliorate disaster and disruption, people need to pool the risks of capitalism.”

Elizabeth S. Anderson (1959) professor of philosophy and womens' studies

How Not to Complain About Taxes (III): "I deserve my pretax income" http://left2right.typepad.com/main/2005/01/how_not_to_comp_1.html (January 26, 2005)

Love, People, Family, Way

“Hunting for sport is an improvement over hunting for food, in that there has been added to the test of skill and ethical code, which the hunter formulates for himself, and must live up to without the moral support of bystanders.”

Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) American writer and scientist

Source: 1930s, Game Management, 1933, Chapter XVI, "Game Economics and Esthetics", p. 391.

Support, Sport

“The Chinese do not draw any distinction between food and medicine.”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), Ch. IX : The Enjoyment of Living, p. 249

Drawing

“The fission bomb was a costly mistress. Consider, your Honors. In 1979 this planet celebrated the International Year of the Child. Of the one hundred and twenty-two million children born that year, one of every ten was dead by 1982, and most died for lack of inexpensive food and vaccines. Yet in 1982 the world spent one trillion dollars on weapons. One trillion dollars!”

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

Source: This Is the Way the World Ends (1986), Chapter 12, “In Which It Is Shown that the End of the World Was More Necessary than Previously Supposed” (pp. 156-157)

Children, World, Dead

“I used to wear food briefs. They were crumby.”

Bill Allred

Radio From Hell (May 16, 2007)

“I was imprisoned in Concepción for a few days and then realeased. They didn't torture me, as I had feared; they didn't even rob me. But they didn't give me anything to eat either, or any kind of covering for the night, so I had to rely on the goodwill of other prisoners, who shared their food with me. In the small hours I could hear them torturing others; I couldn't sleep and there was nothing to read except a magazine in English that someone had left behind. The only interesting article in it was about a house that had once belonged to Dylan Thomas. … I got out of that hole thanks to a pair of detectives who had been at high school with me in Los Ángeles…”

Roberto Bolaño book Last Evenings on Earth

His experience of being imprisoned during the regime of Augusto Pinochet, as depicted in "Dance Card", p. 215
Last Evenings on Earth (2006)

Fear, School, Sleep, Reading

“Ever since the Industrial Revolution, Western society has benefited from science, logic, and reductionism over intuition and holism. Psychologically and politically we would much rather assume that the cause of a problem is “out there,” rather than “in here.” It’s almost irresistible to blame something or someone else, to shift responsibility away from ourselves, and to look for the control knob, the product, the pill, the technical fix that will make a problem go away.
Serious problems have been solved by focusing on external agents — preventing smallpox, increasing food production, moving large weights and many people rapidly over long distances. Because they are embedded in larger systems, however, some of our “solutions” have created further problems. And some problems, those most rooted in the internal structure of complex systems, the real messes, have refused to go away.
Hunger, poverty, environmental degradation, economic instability, unemployment, chronic disease, drug addiction, and war, for example, persist in spite of the analytical ability and technical brilliance that have been directed toward eradicating them. No one deliberately creates those problems, no one wants them to persist, but they persist nonetheless.
That is because they are intrinsically systems problems-undesirable behaviors characteristic of the system structures that produce them. They will yield only as we reclaim our intuition, stop casting blame, see the system as the source of its own problems, and find the courage and wisdom to restructure it.”

Donella Meadows (1941–2001) American environmental scientist, teacher, and writer

Pages 3-4.
Thinking in systems: A Primer (2008)

Wisdom, Hunger, War, People

“So my campaign is about the 100% in America, and I'm concerned about them. I'm concerned about the fact that over the past four years life has become harder for Americans. More people have fallen into poverty, more people we just learned have had to go onto food stamps. When the President took office 32 million were on food stamps, today 47 million people are on food stamps.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

Univision interview, , quoted in * 2012-09-19
Will Romney's claim he's for '100 percent' help him bounce back? (+video)
Steve
Holland
Christian Science Monitor / Reuters
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News-Wires/2012/0919/Will-Romney-s-claim-he-s-for-100-percent-help-him-bounce-back-video, also in [2012-09-19, RomneyComms, Romney: My Campaign Is About The 100 Percent, YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLwU2wjYyiM]
2012

Life, People, Learning, Past