Quotes about food
page 7

“The most beautiful things in this country have the flavor of other places. Chinese food. Pizza came from the Italians, but it's an American experience. French fries. There's always some other cultures involved. You don't have to be a hyphenated American, but you can certainly be an American who doesn't forget where they came from.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

quoted in commentary on www.orlandosentinel.com (July 6, 2007)
2007, 2008

Beauty, Country, Forgetting

“The destruction of life is always a crime. There may be certain cases in which it is the lesser of two evils; but here it is needless and without a shadow of justification, for it happens only because of the selfish unscrupulous greed of those who coin money out of the agonies of the animal kingdom in order to pander to the perverted tastes of those who are sufficiently depraved to desire such loathsome aliment. Remember that it is not only those who do the obscene work, but those who by feeding upon this dead flesh encourage them and make their crime remunerative, who are guilty…of this awful thing. Every person who partakes of this unclean food has his share in the indescribable guilt and suffering by which it has been obtained.”

Charles Webster Leadbeater (1854–1934) English theosophist

Source: Vegetarianism and Occultism (1913), p. 25

Life, Money, God, Suffering

“As the only black kid in my primary school playground, animals had become my friends. By 15 I was vegan, although I didn't give up honey until 16. For a while my mother thought it was just "a rasta phase". … I can honestly say I've not been tempted to give up veganism in 27 years. I sometimes smell a chip shop and like the smell but then feel guilty because fish might be part of it. But I'll go home and make vegan chips. After all these years, my favourite food is my mother's butter bean stew with whole potatoes, yam and dasheen. I don't think I've ever made a meal for her, to be honest. I think she would consider it a failing of her motherhood and say "Boy, get out the kitchen."”

Benjamin Zephaniah (1958) English poet and author

"Interview: Benjamin Zephaniah" by John Hind, TheGuardian.com (18 July 2010) https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/jul/18/benjamin-zephaniah-life-on-a-plate.

School, Feeling, Home, Boy

“The days and weeks before a true commitment to Jesus can be terrible and lonely. I think I was feeling bitter about the human experience. I never asked to be human. Nobody can to the womb and explained the situation to me, asking for my permission to go into the world and live and breathe and eat and feel joy and pain. I started thinking about how odd it was to be human, how we are stuck inside this skin, forced to be attracted to the opposite sex, forced to eat food, and use the rest room and then stuck to the earth by gravity. I spent an entire week feeling bitter because I couldn't breathe underwater. I told God I wanted to be a fish. I also felt a little bitter about sleep. Why do we have to sleep? I wanted to be able to stay awake for as long as I wanted, but God had put me in this body that had to sleep. Life no longer seemed like and experience of freedom.”

Donald Miller book Blue Like Jazz: nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality

Blue Like Jazz (2003, Nelson Books)

Life, God, Pain, World

“From now on, I'm staying away from fatty foods, by eating healthy foods, and going on a strict diet”

Wesley Willis (1963–2003) American singer-songwriter

I'm Sorry That I Got Fat (I Will Slim Down)
Lyrics, Spookydisharmoniousconflicthellride (1996)

“There are so many good reasons not to eat meat, but for me, the well-being of my children is the most important. … I want them to be healthy and also to understand that when they say ‘No!’ to meat, they’re saying ‘No!’ to animal cruelty. We talk about our pets, and I say, ‘You wouldn’t eat Biscuit, would you? Well, then let’s not eat any animal, O. K.? … I don’t think I really realized what I was putting into my body and the actual effects that it was having on me, so now I feel so much healthier, and I have so much more energy, and foods taste better!”

Shanna Moakler (1975) American actress and model

Ad for PETA, as quoted in "Shanna Moakler Makes PETA Ad", LookToTheStars.org (October 10, 2008) https://web.archive.org/web/20081201113815/https://www.looktothestars.org/news/1361-shanna-moakler-makes-peta-ad.

Children, Feeling, Understanding, Thinking

“You really do have to wonder whether a few years from now we’ll look back at the first decade of the 21st century—when food prices spiked, energy prices soared, world population surged, tornados plowed through cities, floods and droughts set records, populations were displaced and governments were threatened by the confluence of it all—and ask ourselves: What were we thinking? How did we not panic when the evidence was so obvious that we’d crossed some growth/climate/natural resource/population redlines all at once?”

Thomas Friedman (1953) American journalist and author

The Earth Is Full, New York Times, June 7, 2011, June 26, 2011 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/08/opinion/08friedman.html?_r=3&ref=opinion,

World, Nature, Thinking

“Anything having to do with food is pleasurable for me. Any conversation about food, review of food, story of food, picture of food, thought of food…”

Sarah Jessica Parker (1965) American actress

Interview for Allure magazine, February 2008

Pleasure

“I do not find it surprising that the Jains, the Buddhists, and the Hindus have all taken seriously the lives of others. The ability to imagine ourselves into the minds and bodies of “others”—whether humans we term different from us (Down syndrome children; Alzheimer sufferers; the so-called mentally ill) or the animals we use for our food—is of central importance because the failure to do so is precisely what led to the horrors of Auschwitz. So, when people ask, Have you nothing more important to think about? the answer is: There is nothing more important to think about than the heart of empathy, which in the final analysis is nothing other than the ability to love. Becoming a vegan is simply one manifestation of that love.”

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (1941) American writer and activist

Introduction, pp. 27-28
The Face on Your Plate (2009)

Love, Children, People, Imagination

“Ethologists and comparative psychologists have discovered a host of refined adaptations in animal behavior during the past few decades. Food-finding, avoidance of predators, and behavioral adaptations to environmental stresses, including constructing shelters, nests, and burrows, all involve impressively versatile tactics on the animal's part, rather than rigid, stereotyped reflexes. Social behavior, especially courtship and care of developing young, call forth an efficiently tuned and controlled matrix of interactions among many different and potentially conflicting behavior patterns. Animal orientation and navigation have provided several striking examples of previously unsuspected modes of perception. Finally, the versatility of animal communication used to coordinate group activities has implications that can only be described as revolutionary. The flexibility and appropriateness of animal behavior suggest both that complex processes occur within their brains, and that these events may have much in common with our own conscious mental experiences.”

Donald Griffin (1915–2003) American zoologist

The Question of Animal Awareness: Evolutionary Continuity of Mental Experience https://books.google.it/books?id=2iTTlLpYaNsC&pg=PA0 (Revised and Enlarged Edition, New York: The Rockefeller University Press, 1981), chapter 1.

Behavior, Communication, Past, Animals

“I'll never forget that Christmas, I sat up the whole night crying ‘cause daddy felt like a bum, see daddy had a job, but his job was to keep the food on the table for you and mom.”

Eminem (1972) American rapper and actor

"Mockingbird".
2000s, Encore (2004)

Moms, Christmas, Cry, Night

“I think a lot of people see food in terms of whether it's going to make them fat or make them skinny. I'm seeing food in terms of how it's going to make me think and will it give me clarity.”

David Zabriskie (1979) road bicycle racer

"Riding the Tour De Vegetable" https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304314404576414124184873028, interview with The Wall Street Journal (29 June 2011).

People, Thinking

“I’m vegan in my fashion and vegetarian in my food. I don’t buy any leather goods or anything made from animal products – no down, nothing. It’s something people should be mindful of. … I think because I came to live in L. A. the transition was simple because vegetarianism is so common there. And I didn’t feel like I was missing that much by being a vegetarian. … I had a moment about 9 years ago. It was so odd. I was talking to my then-boyfriend and he was talking about a fishing trip and how he’d never had the experience of ‘killing’ his food. Even though I had fished my whole life, something just snapped in me and I said, I’m not eating this anymore. … Being vegan is more challenging, especially when it comes to going out to eat. But I found Chicago has great vegetarian and vegan restaurants. … Healthwise, I notice when I wasn’t eating meat anymore I felt so much lighter.”

Torrey DeVitto (1984) actress, model, violinist

"‘Chicago Med’ star Torrey DeVitto takes holistic approach to health, life" https://chicago.suntimes.com/entertainment/chicago-med-star-torrey-devitto-takes-holistic-approach-to-health-life/, interview with Chicago Sun-Times (24 January 2018).

Life, People, Feeling, Fashion

“Nothing was ever in tune. People just blindly grabbed at whatever there was: communism, health foods, zen, surfing, ballet, hypnotism, group encounters, orgies, biking, herbs, Catholicism, weight-lifting, travel, withdrawal, vegetarianism, India, painting, writing, sculpting, composing, conducting, backpacking, yoga, copulating, gambling, drinking, hanging around, frozen yogurt, Beethoven, Bach, Buddha, Christ, TM, H, carrot juice, suicide, handmade suits, jet travel, New York City, and then it all evaporated and fell apart. People had to find things to do while waiting to die. I guess it was nice to have a choice.”

Charles Bukowski book Women

Women (1978)

People, Health, Travel, Communication

“Said the great Teacher, “If your son asks for bread, will you give him a stone?” The body calls for bread, for life-giving food, but how often we supply, instead, such indigestible, unwholesome rubbish as pickles, green olives, fried foods, and various abominable mixtures which bring into the body death rather than life. How often, too, the voice which calls for pure, life-giving water is insanely answered by such disease-producing drinks as beer, whisky, wine, tea, or coffee, and the like.”

John Harvey Kellogg (1852–1943) American physician

Source: The Living Temple, p. 58

Life, Death, Disease, Coffee

“I've been vegan for about a year now … It’s more than just food, it’s a lifestyle, and so my whole life has changed, I get up earlier, I wanna exercise, I feel better, my skin feels better. And these are things I didn’t even know coming from the South, coming from New Orleans — a girl who needs crawfish and gumbo, you know, you never would think that you would need avocados instead, and now I'm kind of an avocado junkie. … People are forgetting that it starts with the animals and we have misused them as if they are not like us.”

Dawn Richard (1983) American musician

“Body by Vegan—The Stunning D△wn,” video interview with PETA (22 July 2015) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVDOSq6w1aM.

Life, People, Feeling, Exercises

“It frequently happens that people grow tired of always eating the same food, and desire a change of diet.”

Giovanni Boccaccio book The Decameron

Sempre non può l' uomo un cibo, ma talvolta desidera di variare.
Seventh Day, Sixth Story
The Decameron (c. 1350)

People, Change

“Western European societies are unprepared for the massive immigration of brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and maintaining different standards of hygiene … All immigrants bring exotic customs and attitudes, but Muslim customs are more troublesome than most.”

Daniel Pipes (1949) U.S. neoconservative columnist, author, counter-terrorism analyst, and scholar of Middle Eastern history

National Review (November 19, 1990).

People, Cooking

“Far from there being a constant flow of resources and aid from northern countries to southern countries, the opposite is the case, and has been for most of the past 200 years. Colonialism was not about exporting civilisations; it was not about improving the lot of people in the poorest countries—it was driven by greed and avarice and a determination to control other people's lives. It was about ensuring that the work, the raw materials and the food of the poorer countries flowed out to the richest parts of the world. That is the legacy of colonialism and imperialism that we have to deal with today. I honestly believe that the role of the world's twin financial institutions, the International Monetary Fund and the World bank, is essentially to reassert that old-world order so that once more a minority of northern, predominantly rich countries dominate the majority of southern, predominantly poor countries.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1990/dec/14/overseas-development in the House of Commons (14 December 1990). 1990s

People, World, Past, Parting

“[Going vegan] was originally for my health and sporting performance – however, it has grown from that to being based on ethical views, also. … I noticed right away that I had more focus and reduced recovery times and generally felt lighter from the inside. … I think as more athletes realise the benefits of this lifestyle and the positive impact it can have on your health, we will hopefully see more switches. … I like to think of it as crowding out the bad stuff. The more good plant-based foods you bring into your kitchen, the more your body will start to crave them.”

David Smith (rower) (1978) British rower

"Q&A With Plant-Fuelled Paralympian Dave Smith" https://www.peta.org.uk/blog/vegan-paralympian-athlete-dave-smith/, interview with PETA (5 September 2014).

Health, Thinking, Sport, Time

“Is that food?.. that looks like food… I think I'll taste it.”

Darby Conley (1970) American cartoonist

Bucky Katt's Big Book of fun, page 125
Bucky Katt, Satchel Pooch

Thinking

“Barbaro dog food is dog-gone good.”

Bill Allred

Radio From Hell (February 12, 2007)

Dogs

“Hasan Nizami writes that after the suppression of a Hindu revolt at Kol (Aligarh) in 1193 AD, Aibak raised “three bastions as high as heaven with their heads, and their carcases became food for beasts of prey. The tract was freed from idols and idol-worship and the foundations of infidelism were destroyed.” In 1194 AD Aibak destroyed 27 Hindu temples at Delhi and built the Quwwat-ul-Islãm mosque with their debris. According to Nizami, Aibak “adorned it with the stones and gold obtained from the temples which had been demolished by elephants”. In 1195 AD the Mher tribe of Ajmer rose in revolt, and the Chaulukyas of Gujarat came to their assistance. Aibak had to invite re-inforcements from Ghazni before he could meet the challenge. In 1196 AD he advanced against Anahilwar Patan, the capital of Gujarat. Nizami writes that after Raja Karan was defeated and forced to flee, “fifty thousand infidels were despatched to hell by the sword” and “more than twenty thousand slaves, and cattle beyond all calculation fell into the hands of the victors”. The city was sacked, its temples demolished, and its palaces plundered. On his return to Ajmer, Aibak destroyed the Sanskrit College of Visaladeva, and laid the foundations of a mosque which came to be known as ADhãî Din kã JhoMpaDã. Conquest of Kalinjar in 1202 AD was Aibak’s crowning achievement. Nizami concludes: “The temples were converted into mosques… Fifty thousand men came under the collar of slavery and the plain became black as pitch with Hindus.””

Hasan Nizami Persian language poet and historian

Hasan Nizami, quoted from Goel, Sita Ram (2001). The story of Islamic imperialism in India. ISBN 9788185990231 Ch. 6

Men, Hell

“We celebrated a little early at the White House this year, on quatro de Mayo, with a fiesta on the South Lawn. With the mariachi music, folklorika dancing and an ample supply of Mexican food. For a little while, it was just like being in Texas again.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2001, Radio address (May 2001)

Music, Dance, Housing

“People starving and thirsting; grain elevators are bursting. You know, it costs more to store the food than it do to give it.”

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

Song lyrics, Slow Train Coming (1979), Slow Train

People

“I have noticed that when chickens quit quarreling over their food they often find that there is enough for all of them i wonder if it might not be the same with the human race”

Don Marquis (1878–1937) American writer

archy's life of mehitabel, random thoughts by archy (1933)

“I don’t like eating in the dark. Dimly lit restaurants always make me think they’re trying to hide the food.”

Michael Kurland book The Unicorn Girl

Source: The Unicorn Girl (1969), Chapter 9 (p. 130)

Thinking

“I determined there was a great future in the mail-order business, and I landed a job that brought me to the head of a large department. About this time our daughter Joan was born.
Having a good job and every prospect for advancement, I decided to go into business for myself, with harrowing results. I had no capital when I started and less when I got through. At this time the mail-order company offered me an excellent position if I wanted to come back If I had accepted it, I would probably have been fixed for life with a good living salary. Yet the chances are that I would never have written a story, which proves that occasionally it is better to do the wrong thing than the right.
When my independent business sank without a trace, I approached as near financial nadir as one may reach. My son, Hulbert, had just been born. I had no job, and no money. I had to pawn Mrs, Burroughs' jewelry and my watch in order to buy food. I loathed poverty, and I should have liked to have put my hands on the man who said that poverty is an honorable estate. It is an indication of inefficiency and nothing more. There is nothing honorable or fine about it. To be poor is quite bad enough. But to be poor without hope … well, the only way to understand it is to be it.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875–1950) American writer

How I Wrote the Tarzan Books (1929)

Life, Money, Hope, Way

“I’ve been a vegetarian for 14 years, just about my entire racing career. The past 3 years I’ve been completely vegan, which means I don’t use any animal products whatsoever. … Hard training is, at its essence, a process of making yourself almost sick with work, recovering from it, and adapting to it. … Adequate protein intake from plant sources should not be a concern if you’re consuming the right foods. Again, the primary mistake to avoid is to define your vegetarianism by what you don’t eat, rather than what you do. If you use vegetarianism as an opportunity to explore new dietary options, particularly from cultures that have a tradition of vegetarianism, you should find that you eat a wider, rather than narrower, variety of foods.”

Adam Myerson (1972) American professional bicycle racer

"The Vegetarian Athlete, Part I" https://web.archive.org/web/20041225183944/http://www.cycle-smart.com/Articles/find.php?search=37, on his website Cycle-Smart (2004).

Past, Animals, Training

“Abu Karima al-Miqdam ibn Ma'dikarib said, "I heard the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, say, "A human being fills up no vessel worse than his belly. Enough for a son of Adam are some morsels which will kept his back straight. If it cannot be avoided, then a third is for his food, a third for his drink, and a third for himself."”

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

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 4, hadith number 516
Sunni Hadith

Peace, Drink

““In the end Humankind destroyed the heaven and the earth,” Soapstone began…
“And Humankind said, ‘Let there be security,’ and there was security. And Humankind tested the security, that it would detonate. And Humankind divided the U-235 from the U-238. And the evening and the morning were the first strike.” Soapstone looked up from the book. “Some commentators feel that the author should have inserted, ‘And Humankind saw the security, that it was evil.’ Others point out that such a view was not universally shared.”…
Casting his eyes heavenward, Soapstone continued. “And Humankind said, ‘Let there be a holocaust in the midst of the dry land.’ And Humankind poisoned the aquifers that were below the dry land and scorched the ozone that was above the dry land. And the evening and the morning were the second strike.”…
“And Humankind said, ‘Let the ultraviolet light destroy the food chains that bring forth the moving creature!’ And the evening and the morning—”…
“And Humankind said, ‘Let there be rays in the firmament to fall upon the survivors!’ And Humankind made two great rays, the greater gamma radiation to give penetrating whole-body doses, and the lesser beta radiation to burn the plants and the bowels of animals! And Humankind sterilized each living creature, saying, ‘Be fruitless, and barren, and cease to—’””

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

Source: This Is the Way the World Ends (1986), Chapter 9, “In Which by Taking a Step Backward the City of New York Brings Our Hero a Step Forward” (pp. 115-116; ellipses not in the original)

Books, Feeling, Light, Universe

“As a general definition, it may be stated that a food is a substance which, when introduced into the body, supplies material which renews some structure or maintains some vital process; and it is distinguished from a medicine in that the latter modifies some vital action, but does not supply the material which sustains such action.”

Edward Smith (physician) (1819–1874) British physician, born 1819

Introd., p. 1
Foods

“One of the first applications of the simplex algorithm was to the determination of an adequate diet that was of least cost. In the fall of 1947, Jack Laderman of the Mathematical Tables Project of the National Bureau of Standards undertook, as a test of the newly proposed simplex method, the first large-scale computation in this field. It was a system with nine equations in seventy-seven unknowns. Using hand-operated desk calculators, approximately 120 man-days were required to obtain a solution. … The particular problem solved was one which had been studied earlier by George Stigler (who later became a Nobel Laureate) who proposed a solution based on the substitution of certain foods by others which gave more nutrition per dollar. He then examined a "handful" of the possible 510 ways to combine the selected foods. He did not claim the solution to be the cheapest but gave his reasons for believing that the cost per annum could not be reduced by more than a few dollars. Indeed, it turned out that Stigler's solution (expressed in 1945 dollars) was only 24 cents higher than the true minimum per year $39.69.”

George Dantzig (1914–2005) American mathematician

cited in: John J. O'Connor & Edmund F.; Robertson (2003) " George Dantzig http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Dantzig_George.html". in: MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of St Andrews. Linear programming and extensions (1963)

Way, Mathematics, Problem, Study

“There's probably no subject with quite so many conflictin' opinions about it as there are about food, and 'tis better to swap bubble gum with a rabid bulldog than challenge a single one o' the varyin' beliefs your average human holds about nutrition.”

Tom Robbins book Jitterbug Perfume

Jitterbug Perfume (1984)

“Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are gods.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

2007-11-06
The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever
Christopher Hitchens
978-0306816086
http://quotes.pink/god/quote-8195/
2000s, 2007

God, Dogs, Cats, Thinking

“I have seen cowboy bebop, Jojo, food wars and tanya evil”

Barron Trump (2006) son of Donald and Melania Trump

13 May 2017 http://www.crunchyroll.com/forumtopic-992031/barron-trump-is-an-anime-fan

War, Evil

“A moment of truth here: If you continue to eat processed foods full of sugar and fat, you won’t lose weight. But you knew that. And that’s not why you’re here. You’re here to discover how good you’ll feel on a diet of vegetarian proteins, whole grains, and all the glorious and diverse vegetables and fruits of the earth. If you look around, you won’t see many fat vegans. Vegans tend to be slim and strong, gorgeous and glowing, and that’s because a healthy, plant-based diet creates vitality and vigor—and weight loss simply happens as a result of not eating fatty animal protein. And lest you think a plant-based diet is for weaklings, consider bulls, elephants, gorillas, orangutans, and stallions. These plant eaters are pure lean and powerful muscle.”

Kathy Freston American self-help writer

Source: Veganist: Lose Weight, Get Healthy, Change the World (2011), p. 3

Truth, Feeling, Thinking, Strong

“A certain area within a channel may function as a “gate”; the constellation of the forces before and after the gate region is decisively different in such a way that the passing or not passing of the unit through the whole channel depends to a high degree upon what happens in the gate region. This holds not only for food channels but also for the travelling of a news item through certain communication channels in a group, for movement of goods, and the social locomotion of individuals in many organizations.”

Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) German-American psychologist

Source: 1940s, Frontiers in group dynamics II, 1947, p. 145.

Way, Travel, Communication, Decision

“Most of the people on the Cloud Ark were going to have to be women.
There were other reasons for it besides just making more babies. Research on the long-term effects of spaceflight suggested that women were less susceptible to radiation damage than men. They were smaller on average, requiring less space, less food, less air. And sociological studies pointed to the idea that they did better when crammed together in tight spaces for long periods of time.
This was controversial, as it got into fraught topics of nature vs. nurture and whether gender identity was a social construct or a genetic program.
But if you bought into the idea that boys had been programmed by Darwinian selection to run around in the open chucking spears at wild animals—something that every parent who had ever raised a boy had to take seriously—then it was difficult to envision a lot of them spending their lives in tin cans.”

Neal Stephenson book Seveneves

"Scouts"
Seveneves (2015), Part One

Women, Men, People, Boy

“I consider it absurd that we should permit our senses to sate themselves without hindrance with their own material food, but that we should exclude the mind alone from its own particular activity.”

Basil of Caesarea (329–379) Christian Saint

Source: Letters, p. 91

Sense

“Diet for a New America let me in on the truth that I kind of knew but didn't want to think about—about how animals are processed for food for human consumption. … Some of the most disgusting things you'll see is when corporations feed people, because they're bottom-line-minded. In that situation I think that respect for life is forgotten. … Think for yourself, think about what you eat, and try a little compassion.”

John Campbell (bassist)

On vegetarianism. “Lamb of God interview,” by Peta2.com, on YouTube (19 February 2007) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D91k1aOy1tY.

Life, People, Truth, Thinking

“Not much goes on in the mind of a squirrel.
Huge portions of what is loosely termed "the squirrel brain" are given over to one thought: food.
The average squirrel cogitation goes something like this: I wonder what there is to eat.”

Kate DiCamillo book Flora & Ulysses

Source: Flora & Ulysses (2013), Chapter Two: The Mind of a Squirrel, p. 10

“Nothing more shameless is than Appetite,
Who still, whatever anguish load our breast,
Makes us remember in our own despite
Both food and drink.”

Homér The Odyssey (Cowper)

VII. 216–218 (tr. P. S. Worsley).
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)

Drink

“So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the time being.”

Franz Kafka book Investigations of a Dog

"Investigations of a Dog"
The Complete Stories (1971)

Question, Time

“For the average North Korean over the last two decades, the times of Kim Il Sung have often been seen as a lost era of order and stability, in which everyone could be sure that twice a month they would receive food rations sufficient for survival, and essentially free of charge. This was also a time when corruption was kept under control and was largely invisible, material inequality was also almost unnoticeable. Objectively speaking, it was Kim Il Sung’s policies that made the disaster of the 1990s unavoidable. But this had little impact on public perception, and he continues to be held in high esteem by many. Remarkably, such sentiments toward the late Generalissimo are even expressed by refugees – not usually known for their sympathies for the North Korean system and its embodiment, the Kim family. Thus, it is that Kim Il Sung remains venerated, and due to the luck of dying in time, has a remarkably good reputation in death. The opposite is very much the case with his unfortunate son, Kim Jong Il, who inherited power in 1994 and reigned for 17 turbulent years, till 2011.”

Andrei Lankov (1963) Russian academic

Kim Jong Un's Popularity, Explained (September 2015)

Death, Family, Time

“Were I to concentrate exclusively on the body of Prometheus, I would be seriously limiting the scope of my rendering of the demigod; but because I concentrate also on the myth of Prometheus, on all that the great poets have written about him, I expand the meaning of the demigod's physical form and try to communicate.... the basic message of the legend of Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods and taught man to cook his foods, to smelt metal ore and to forge his tools and weapons.”

Ossip Zadkine (1890–1967) French sculptor

c. 1960
Source: 1960 - 1968, Dialogues – conversations with.., quotes, c. 1960, pp. 153-154

God, Communication, Cooking

“If you're a single mother with two children—which is the toughest job in America, as far as I'm concerned—you're working hard to put food on your family.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

Speech to the Nashua Chamber of Commerce in New Hampshire (27 January 2000), quoted in Fort Worth Star-Telegram (28 January 2000) "Campaign 2000 Highlights From The Campaign Trail Yesterday" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j76bLFbpuLQ#t=0m27s 2000s, 2000

Children, Family

“In every age its [liberty's] progress has been beset by its natural enemies, by ignorance and superstition, by lust of conquest and by love of ease, by the strong man's craving for power, and the poor man's craving for food.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian

p, 125
The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)

Love, Age, Nature, Strong

“…1776 is a very significant year. and this is not just because the American Revolution began. Watt's patent of the steam engine… Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations… the failure of the French to reorganize their political system occurred in 1776, and so forth. …The destruction of communities, the destruction of religion and the frustration of emotions were greatly intensified by the Industrial Revolution: railroads, factories, growth of cities, technological revolution in the countryside and in the growing of food and so forth.”

Carroll Quigley (1910–1977) American historian

Oscar Iden Lecture Series, Lecture 3: "The State of Individuals" (1976)

Religion, Communication, Failure, Wealth

“If we harden our hearts to the suffering of the creatures, we must by an immutable law harden our hearts to our brother and sister, and this can never lead to ideal conditions. The adoption of this vegetarian way of life, if the food is balanced, will lead to a new, better, higher, and more noble rhythm of living.”

Gordon Latto (doctor) (1911–1998)

Speech at the 24th International Vegetarian Congress, India, 1977; quoted in The Vegetarians by Rynn Berry (Autumn Press, 1979), pp. 133-134.

Life, Law, Way, Sister

“The man who desires to have a clear head, a brain keenly alive to the subtle influences of the universe about him, alert to respond to every call made upon it by the bodily organs under its supervision, ready to receive impressions from the infinite source of universal thought, and capable of thinking the high thoughts of God after him, must live simply, abstemiously, naturally, and must avoid every harmful and inferior food. He will select the choicest food stuffs. These will consist of fruits, nuts, legumes, and dextrinized grains,—that is, well-toasted grain preparations, toasted bread, toasted wheat flakes, etc. He will eat sparingly, never to repletion. He will exercise out of doors at least two or three hours daily, living as much of the time as possible in the open air. He will sleep eight hours at night. He will take a vigorous cold bath every morning on rising, and, at least two or three times a week, will take a warm cleansing bath just before going to bed at night. He will conserve for useful work every energy of mind and body. He will endeavor to live righteously in the largest sense of the word.”

John Harvey Kellogg (1852–1943) American physician

Source: The Living Temple, pp. 422-423

God, Exercises, Nature, Thinking

“3036. As he that doth not eat when he should, may have no Stomach when he is weak, but presently vomits up his Food again; so if thou studiest not the Art of Patience, and preparest not thy mind before-hand, and takest not in Grounds of Consolation, till thou art in Troubles, and hast need of great Comfort, thou wilt find thy Soul very impatient of Remedies, and 'twill be irksome to thee but even to read such Things as should quiet thee.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727)

Art, Soul, Reading, Patience

“The morning slips away in a Valium haze and catalogues,
And numerous cups of coffee,
In the afternoon the weekly food is put in bags - as you float off down the high street.
The shop windows reflect, play a nameless host to a closet ghost -
A picture of your fantasy, a victim of your misery…”

Paul Weller (singer) (1958) English singer-songwriter, Guitarist

Private Hell, from Setting Sons (1979)

Coffee

“It was January and snowing like crazy. It was tough; the food was terrible. Eighteen months of my life for nothing? I thought my own dreams were more important.”

Tarkan (1972) Turkish singer

Pop Music's Young Turk, Washington Post, November 18, 2001, https://archive.is/v9Jw, 2012-12-09 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A41014-2001Nov16&notFound=true, About his military service

Life, Dreams

“There's a cat that's a stray that's been coming around my house for the last couple of years. … I noticed upon petting her for the very first time that beneath her fur, almost beneath my hand, was ripples and ripples of wounds — amazing — wounds upon wounds and scars upon scars — old, of course, but she had been through it a lot! Anyway, I named her "Has Wounds But Still Lives" … Well a few days ago, she came by, and dry food that I'd put out there was falling from her mouth. And upon closer inspection, it was because this side of her face was practically gone! … And it looked to me as if she could survive it, but it was grisly, it really was — and it brought you to tears, and made you nervous and afraid, and all kinds of things.”

Ysabella Brave (1979) American singer

Has wounds but still lives (2010)

Cats, Tear, Time, Housing

“Many years ago, when I was merely a vegetarian, I met the great Cesar Chavez, and he said to me: "If you are interested in preventing animal suffering, the first thing you should give up is eggs and milk, because the animals who produce those foods lead the most unhappy lives. You would do better to eat meat and stop eating eggs and dairy products." I was shocked, since I had no intention of eating meat but had never thought of giving up eggs or dairy products. But when I looked into it I realized he was right, and now, years later, after I have studied the matter up close, I know for certain that he was completely correct about the cruel treatment of the animals raised for such products. The advantages of a vegan diet are enormous for our health, for the environment, for the animals themselves.”

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (1941) American writer and activist

Conclusion, p. 226
The Pig Who Sang to the Moon (2003)

Health, Study, Suffering, Animals

“It would have to be considered from the Imperial point of view whether the system of reciprocal tariffs would really bind the mother country more closely with her colonies than was now the case…how Great Britain might have annually to submit to the pressure of various colonies who were discontented with the tariff as then modified and wanted it modified still further. If they considered Great Britain as a target at which all these proposals for modification and rectification would be addressed, he thought it would occur to their Chamber that it would not altogether add to the harmony of those relations to have these shifting tariffs existing between Great Britain and her colonies. (Cheers)…He thought we should have some form of direct representation from the colonies to guide us and advise us with regard to this question of tariffs…Under a system of free trade every branch of industry did not prosper. He was interested in the landed industry (hear), and he did not know that the land industry had prospered particularly under free trade…he thought it could not be denied that under a system of free trade large tracts of country had been turned out of cultivation, that our own food supply had been diminished, and that the population which had been reared in the rural districts had ceased to be reared in those districts…he was not a person who believed that free trade was part of the Sermon on the Mount, and that we ought to receive it in all its rigidity as a divinely-appointed dispensation.”

Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery (1847–1929) British politician

Speech to the Burnley chamber of commerce (19 May 1903) in the aftermath of Joseph Chamberlain's speech advocating Imperial Preference tariffs on imports, as reported in The Times (20 May 1903), p. 12. The Times reported Rosebery's speech in third person.

Question, Parting, Personality, Country

“Cadets are people. Behind the gray suits, beneath the Pom-pom and Shako and above the miraculously polished shoes, blood flows through veins and arteries, hearts thump in a regular pattern, stomachs digest food, and kidneys collect waste. Each cadet is unique, a functioning unit of his own, a distinct and separate integer from anyone else. Part of the irony of military schools stems from the fact that everyone in these schools is expected to act precisely the same way, register the same feelings, and respond in the same prescribed manner. The school erects a rigid structure of rules from which there can be no deviation. The path has already been carved through the forest and all the student must do is follow it, glancing neither to the right nor left, and making goddamn sure he participates in no exploration into the uncharted territory around him. A flaw exists in this system. If every person is, indeed, different from every other person, then he will respond to rules, regulations, people, situations, orders, commands, and entreaties in a way entirely depending on his own individual experiences. Te cadet who is spawned in a family that stresses discipline will probably have less difficulty in adjusting than the one who comes from a broken home, or whose father is an alcoholic, or whose home is shattered by cruel arguments between the parents. Yet no rule encompasses enough flexibility to offer a break to a boy who is the product of one of these homes.”

Pat Conroy book The Boo

Source: The Boo (1970), p. 10

People, Alcohol, School, Family

“We must come to terms with the fact that the foods we've grown accustomed to—that have even helped to create the concept of our ethnic identity—may actually be feeding the machine of neocolonialism; that we remain enslaved to a system that thrives on our addictions and mental, physical, and emotional illnesses.”

A. Breeze Harper (1976) African-American critical race feminist and writer

“Social Justice Beliefs and Addiction to Uncompassionate Consumption,” in Sistah Vegan (Lantern Books, 2010), p. 39 https://books.google.it/books?id=JlRK0tfulkwC&pg=PA39.

Help

“By circumstance and perhaps also by inclination, I think in complete intellectual isolation. To expect others to help me think seems to me almost like expecting them to help me digest my food.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Entry (1954)
Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook (2005)

Thinking, Help

“Question: Does a detached person remain unoccupied all the time, or what does he or she do?
Answer: The activity of really detached people lies in their becoming detached, and their achievement is to remain unoccupied because they remain calm in action and unconcerned about their achievements.
Question: What is their conduct toward their fellow human beings?
Answer: They enjoy the companionship of people, but without being compromised by them. They love them without attachment, and they show them sympathy without anxious concern - all in true freedom.
Question: Is such a person required to go to confession?
Answer: The confession that is motivated by love is nobler than one motivated by necessity.
Question: What is such people’s prayer like? Are they supposed to pray, too?
Answer: Their prayer is effective because they forestall the influence of the senses. God is spirit and knows whether this person has put an obstacle in the way or whether he or she has acted from selfish impulses. And then a light is enkindled in their highest power, which makes clear that God is the being, life and activity within them and that they are merely instruments.
Question: What are such a person's eating, drinking and sleeping like?
Answer: Externally, and in keeping with their sensuous nature, the outward person eats. Internally, however, they are as if not eating; otherwise, One does not arrive at the goal by asking questions. It is rather through detachment that one comes to this hidden truth they would be enjoying food and rest like an animal. This is also the case in other things pertaining to human existence.”

Henry Suso (1295–1366) Dominican friar and mystic

The Exemplar, The Little Book of Truth

Love, Life, God, People

“You like the Earth, Man, and you — pawing the ground — think of God, the little nursling will recognize you, and will think of you with love, because God lives even in it also. Give nourishment to the developing little creatures, either to plant or to animal, and it will develop for your sweet amazement. Give food for the wild animal starving, and it will slick to you.”

Tivadar Csontváry Kosztka (1853–1919) painter from Hungary

The Authority

Love, God, Thinking, Animals

“With each succeeding year on the diet — it's called lacto-ovo-vegetarianism — I've felt better. I'm more healthy, I can train with more energy, and I'm not as much of a "hard guy" as I used to be. I've become more concerned with my fellow man and the other inhabitants I share the earth with. Judy and I have now been vegetarians for almost 35 years. We have no fish, fowl or red meat in our diet. Yet I can still carry the same amount of muscle mass as I did in winning my four Mr. Universe titles. People can't believe it. They think that to have big muscles you have to eat meat — it's a persistent and recurring myth. But take it from me, there's nothing magic about eating meat that's going to make you a champion bodybuilder. Anything you can find in a piece of meat, you can find in other foods as well.”

Bill Pearl (1935) American bodybuilder

Getting Stronger: Weight Training for Sports (20th anniversary ed. Bolinas, CA: Shelter Publications, 2005), p. 374 https://books.google.it/books?id=wQD2PgD85O8C&pg=PA374.

People, Guy, Thinking, Fish

“Her absence is no more emphatic in those places than anywhere else. It's not local at all. I suppose if one were forbidden all salt one wouldn't notice it much more in any one food more than another. Eating in general would be different, every day, at every meal. It is like that. The act of living is different all through. Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.”

Clive Staples Lewis book A Grief Observed

A Grief Observed (1961)

“Margarine? That’s not food. I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter? I can. If you’re planning on using margarine in anything, you can stop reading now, because I won’t be able to help you.”

Anthony Bourdain (1956–2018) Chef and food writer

Kitchen Confidential (2000)

Reading, Help

“Of course it’s also a lot easier to slap a health claim on a box of sugary cereal than on a potato or carrot, with the perverse result that the most healthful foods in the supermarket sit there quietly in the produce section, silent as stroke victims, while a few aisles over, the Cocoa Puffs and Lucky Charms are screaming about their newfound whole-grain goodness.”

Michael Pollan (1955) American author, journalist, activist, and professor of journalism

[Unhappy Meals, 2007-01-28, The New York Times Magazine, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t.html?ei=5090&en=a18a7f35515014c7&ex=1327640400&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print, 2007-01-28]

Health, Box

“It is unbearable to consider that at this very moment that we are gathered together in this hall on this festive occasion, hundreds and thousands of prisoners of conscience are suffering from undernourishment, as the result of year-long hunger, and of an almost total lack of proteins and vitamins in their daily food, of a shortage of medicines (there is a ban on the sending of vitamins and medicines to internees), and of over-exertion. They shiver with cold, damp, and exhaustion in ill-lit dungeons, where they are forced to wage a ceaseless struggle for their human dignity and their conviction against the "indoctrination machine", in fact against the very destruction of their souls.”

Andrei Sakharov (1921–1989) Soviet nuclear physicist and human rights activist

Nobel Peace Prize Speech (1975)

Hunger, Soul, Suffering

“The right to food has to become the right to good food”

M. S. Swaminathan (1925) Indian scientist

Source: S., Bala Ravi, I., I. Hoeschle-Zeledon, I., Swaminathan, M.S., Frison, E. (eds.), Hunger and poverty: the role of biodiversity, http://books.google.com/books?id=zKkd79GWbBoC&pg=PA69, Bioversity International, 978-92-9043-703-1, 69–

“Israel will never have lasting peace until she obeys God. If she will obey His statutes and keep His commandments, He will give her rain in due season, an abundance of food, freedom from fear, victory over the enemy, and peace within the land”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

Leviticus 26:1-13
God doesn't believe in atheists (2002)

God, Fear, Peace, Freedom

“As I began to move away from a meatheavy diet to a plantbased menu, it felt as if the doors to truly delicious foods were finally opening up.”

Neal D. Barnard (1953) American physician, author, and clinical researcher

Power Foods for the Brain https://books.google.it/books?id=V9RkAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA0 (Hachette, 2013), ch. 9.

“The philosophy of nonviolence, which I learned from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., during my involvement in the civil rights movement was first responsible for my change in diet. I became a vegetarian in 1965. … Under the leadership of Dr. King I became totally committed to nonviolence, and I was convinced that nonviolence meant opposition to killing in any form. I felt the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” applied to human beings not only in their dealings with each other—war, lynching, assassination, murder and the like—but in their practice of killing animals for food or sport. Animals and humans suffer and die alike. Violence causes the same pain, the same spilling of blood, the same stench of death, the same arrogant, cruel and brutal taking of life.”

Dick Gregory (1932–2017) American comedian, social activist, social critic, writer, and entrepreneur

Source: Dick Gregory's Natural Diet For Folks Who Eat (1973), pp. 15-16

Life, Death, Pain, War

“Even on Central Avenue, not the quietest dressed street in the world, he looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.”

Raymond Chandler book Farewell, My Lovely

Source: Farewell, My Lovely (1940), chapter 1

World, Angels

“She just wanted to be somewhere safe, somewhere familiar, where people looked and spoke like her and she could stand to eat the food.”

Nalo Hopkinson book Midnight Robber

Section 4 (p. 217)
Midnight Robber (2000)

People

“As we have said, the bankers are for bullets—for the fool patriots that enlist at paupers' wages to stop the bullets, while the bankers clip coupons, boost food prices, increase dividends, and pile up millions and billions for themselves. Say, Mr. Workingman, suppose you have sense enough to be as patriotic as the banker, but not a bit more so. When you see the bankers on the firing line with guns in their hands ready to stop bullets as well as start them, then it is time enough for you to be seized with the patriotic itch and have yourself shot into a crazy-quilt for their profit and glory. Don't you take a fit and rush to the front until you see them there. They own the country and if they don't set the example of fighting for it, why should you?”

Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) American labor and political leader

As quoted in "American State Trials: A Collection of the Important and Interesting Criminal Trials which Have Taken Place in the United States, from the Beginning of Our Government to the Present Day", Vol. 13, 1921

Fools, Sense, Time, Fight

“So I think we need a new plan. Next time a country wants to take us on, 'stead of sending bombs, let's try this: send everyone in the country a color television and a satellite dish. And give 'em the basic package, not HBO — screw those people. And before the war starts, we make them all sit down. "Okay, we'll go to war with you. You want a piece of us, fine, fine. Before we go, I want you guys to understand us a little better, so you have to sit down and watch ESPN2 for 24 hours. 'Cause you watch ESPN2 for a full day, you're gonna understand America a lot better. 'Hi, we're America! We build monster trucks for fun! We developed the top fuel dragster, zero to three hundred thirty miles an hour in under five seconds, cause, pfft, we were bored. Piss us off, heh, and see what we build! And we may feel bad about it later! Ask Japan. But before we feel bad…we're gonna jack you up! And then we're gonna send you FOOD! 'Cause we're America; we're schizophrenic. Don't mess with a nation that needs medication!'"”

Christopher Titus (1964) actor, writer, podcaster

The Fifth-Annual End-of-the-World Tour (2007)

War, People, Color, Guy

“In a culture whose media extols thinness as the great panacea that will bring happiness, sexuality, self-respect and social acceptance, they are blind to the insidious lies of the false goddess. Possessed by their own damaged instincts, and ironically driven by the same desire for power that their parents used in raising them, some children wolf down food, or reject it, or vomit it out. Whether that rejection of life is concretized in 200 pounds of armor, or 90 pounds of bone, or vomit in the toilet, the surest way out of the neurosis is to try to understand what food symbolizes in the individual psyche and why the energy is pulled in that direction.”

Marion Woodman (1928–2018) Canadian writer

Source: The Pregnant Virgin (1985), p. 103

Life, Happiness, Children, Way

“98 percent of the animals raised for food suffer horrifically on factory farms before being slaughtered. Every time you eat a vegan meal, you're voting for something different.”

Victoria Moran (1950) American writer

Source: The Good Karma Diet (2015), Ch. 2: The Good Karma Diet

Suffering, Time, Animals

“And I go to my room and stretch out my arms to the West—that it is far away [from here], that I will someday return. Outside those painful sensations—it is horrible to be before these people and their lives. Service and family troubles -a hard beginning, pay raise, promotion - sweet dreams, scandal - daily bread, [This is a figurative reference to Our Lord's Prayer, "give us this day our daily bread.."] and their happiness reminds me sweetly, of those who buy "for the people," and whose food you wouldn't put in your mouth. I think of Munich and of my health. All that is here is suffering and this horror of beauty and this horrible life and this overbearing literature, and the complete superfluousness of art.”

Marianne von Werefkin (1860–1938) expressionist painter

1906 - 1911 Source: a letter to Alexej von Jawlensky, between December 1909 and Spring 1910; as quoted in 'Ambiguity of Home: Identity and Reminiscence in Marianne Werefkin's Return Home, c. 1909', Adrienne Kochman http://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/spring06/52-spring06/spring06article/171-ambiguity-of-home-identity-and-reminiscence-in-marianne-werefkins-return-home-c-1909

Life, Pain, Happiness, People

“The Bible predicts that in the last days of man-made regimes on earth, a totally godless, anti-Christ world government will arise, led by a Devil-possessed dictator, Satan incarnate, who will bring a temporary false peace on earth and a counterfeit utopia. Its price will be enforced worship of him as the imitation Messiah. All of his subjects will be branded with a credit number in order to buy or sell or obtain food or employment, and all those who refuse to cooperate will be hunted, persecuted, and slaughtered by his commandment. This will be a time of Great Tribulation.
This anti-Christ government of anti-Christ forces under the leadership of the Antichrist himself, this superhuman world dictator of man's last one-world godless government, will then set up its headquarters in Jerusalem, his capital, and unite all peoples of the world into a one-world worship of this demon-demagogue and his magical image which can speak.
These startling events will immediately precede the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, which is the major endtime event, the grand climax, as the Lord Himself returns and wipes out the Antichrist and his followers and sets up the last and most lasting and only perfect government the world has ever known, and "the meek shall inherit the earth"”

David Berg (1919–1994) Children of God founder

Psalm 37:11
A More Sure Word of Prophecy (2 Peter 1:19)

People, World, Peace, Time

“On Swinburne - He invited me to eat; the service was silver and gold, but no food therein save pepper and salt.”

Sidney Lanier (1842–1881) American musician, poet

“When more nutrient-rich foods are present in the diet, the body does not have to eat as much as it would with less nutrient-rich foods. In addition, when the body is fed the nutrients it needs, the brain turns off the hunger signal. And so, the need to continually consume, a state many people who subsist on a refined-food diet experience, ceases, and not as much needs to be eaten and digested.”

Brendan Brazier (1975) Canadian triathlete, publisher, writer, editor

Source: The Thrive Diet, Ch. 2

Hunger, People

“A dead cow or sheep lying in a pasture is recognised as carrion. The same sort of a carcass dressed and hung up in a butcher's stall passes as food! Careful microscopic examination may show little or no difference between the fence corner carcass and the butcher shop carcass. Both are swarming with colon germs and redolent with putrefaction.”

John Harvey Kellogg (1852–1943) American physician

Source: Quoted in Romance of the Cow https://books.google.it/books?id=HSHOAAAAMAAJ by Dahyabhai H. Jani, The Bombay Humanitarian League, 1938, p. 81.

Lying, Dead

“Three and a half million years separate the individual who left these footprints in the sands of Africa from the one who left them on the moon. A mere blink in the eye of evolution. Using his burgeoning intelligence, this most successful of all mammals has exploited the environment to produce food for an ever-increasing population. In spite of disasters when civilisations have over-reached themselves, that process has continued, indeed accelerated, even today. Now mankind is looking for food, not just on this planet but on others. Perhaps the time has now come to put that process into reverse. Instead of controlling the environment for the benefit of the population, perhaps it's time we control the population to allow the survival of the environment.”

David Attenborough (1926) British broadcaster and naturalist

Closing lines
The Life of Mammals (2002)

Intelligence, Time, Success

“There is much to be said for post-menopausal celibacy. Sex is rough on loners because you have to have somebody else around, but now I don't. No more diets to stay slim and desirable: I've had sex and I've had food, and I'd rather eat.”

Florence King (1936–2016) American writer

Lump It or Leave It (1990)

Sex

“Eggs are generally considered kosher, but what about eggs from chickens who spend their entire lives imprisoned in a cage one cubic foot in size? Food pellets are brought to them on one conveyor belt; their droppings and eggs are taken away on another. The Bible forbids us to torment animals or cause them any unnecessary grief. Raising chickens who can go out sometimes and see the sky or eat a worm or blade of grass is one thing, but manufacturing them in the concentration camp conditions of contemporary "poultry ranches" is quite another.”

Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (1924–2014) American writer and activist, Jewish Renewal movement pioneer

The First Step: A Guide for the New Jewish Spirit, with Donald Gropman (New York: Bantam Books, 1983), p. 74.

Grass, Animals

“A mind does not receive truth as a chest receives jewels that are put into it, but as the stomach takes up food into the system. It is no longer food, but flesh, and is assimilated. The appetite and the power of digestion measure our right to knowledge. He has it who can use it. As soon as our accumulation overruns our invention or power to use, the evils of intellectual gluttony begin,— congestion of the brain, apoplexy and strangulation.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

The Natural History of Intellect (1893)

Truth, Knowledge, Evil

“Since the belief in transmission of acquired adaptations arose from preconception rather than from evidence, it is worth observing that, rightly considered, the probability should surely be the other way. For the adaptations relate to every variety of exigency. To supply themselves with food, to find it, to seize and digest it, to protect themselves from predatory enemies whether by offence or defence, to counter-balance the changes of temperature, or pressure, to provide for mechanical strains, to obtain immunity from poison and from invading organisms, to bring the sexual elements into contact, to ensure the distribution of the type; all these and many more are accomplished by organisms in a thousand most diverse and alternative methods. Those are the things that are hard to imagine as produced by any concatenation of natural events; but the suggestions that organisms had had from the beginning innate in them a power of modifying themselves, their organs and their instincts so as to meet these multifarious requirements does not materially differ from the more overt appeals to supernatural intervention. The conception, originally introduced by Hering and independently by S. Butler, that adaptation is a consequence or product of accumulated memory was of late revived by Semon and has been received with some approval, especially by F. Darwin. I see nothing fantastic in the notion that memory may be unconsciously preserved with the same continuity that the protoplasmic basis of life possesses. That idea, though purely speculative and, as yet, incapable of proof or disproof contains nothing which our experience of matter or of life at all refutes. On the contrary, we probably do well to retain the suggestion as a clue that may some day be of service. But if adaptation is to be the product of these accumulated experiences, they must in some way be translated into terms of physiological and structural change, a process frankly inconceivable.”

William Bateson (1861–1926) British geneticist and biologist

Source: Problems In Genetics (1913), p. 190

Life, Way, Imagination, Idea

“I go down to Blooms for kosher food. I can go anywhere. People don’t notice you if you go about your business. It’s only if you make a big scene.”

Craig David (1981) English singer

Jewish Chronicle interview 1 February 2008 http://website.thejc.com/home.aspx?AId=57854&ATypeId=1&search=true2&srchstr=loftus&srchtxt=0&srchhead=1&srchauthor=0&srchsandp=0&scsrch=0

People, Business

“My food is not that of man; I do not destroy the lamb and the kid to glut my appetite; acorns and berries afford me sufficient nourishment. My companion will be of the same nature as myself and will be content with the same fare. We shall make our bed of dried leaves; the sun will shine on us as on man and will ripen our food. The picture I present to you is peaceful and human, and you must feel that you could deny it only in the wantonness of power and cruelty.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

The monster to Victor Frankenstein in Ch. 17
Frankenstein (1818)

Peace, Feeling, Nature, Sun

“No. It is not wonderful. It is an ugly world. Not like this one. Anarres is all dusty and dry hills. All meager, all dry. And the people aren’t beautiful. They have big hands and feet, like me and the waiter there. But not big bellies. They get very dirty, and take baths together, nobody here does that. The towns are very small and dull, they are dreary. No palaces. Life is dull, and hard work. You can’t always have what you want, or even what you need, because there isn’t enough. You Urrasti have enough. Enough air, enough rain, grass, oceans, food, music, buildings, factories, machines, books, clothes, history. You are rich, you own. We are poor, we lack. You have, we do not have. Everything is beautiful here. Only not the faces. On Anarres nothing is beautiful, nothing but the faces. The other faces, the men and women. We have nothing but that, nothing but each other. Here you see the jewels, there you see the eyes. And in the eyes you see the splendor, the splendor of the human spirit. Because our men and women are free—possessing nothing, they are free. And you the possessors are possessed. You are all in jail. Each alone, solitary, with a heap of what he owns. You live in prison, die in prison. It is all I can see in your eyes—the wall, the wall!”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, (1974), Chapter 7 (pp. 228-229)

Life, Women, Men, People

“In Gaia, there's no such thing as pollution. The rules of the game are that any species that produces something noxious that affects the environment, is doomed. Imagine there's some green bug… that decides it would be a neat trick to make chlorine. That bug is not going to succeed. If it doesn't kill itself off, it will certainly kill off its progeny, and destroy the environment around it and have no food to eat.”

James E. Lovelock (1919) independent scientist, environmentalist and futurist

"The Man Who Named the World" (1990)

Imagination, Game

“I do not compare the past with the present without a prejudice for either, but, great as the improvement in country life is in many respects, it seems a pity the old cheap, wholesome dishes have gone to make way for tinned and preserved foods.”

Flora Thompson (1876–1947) English author and poet

August Chapter The Peverel Papers - A yearbook of the countryside ed Julian Shuckburgh Century Hutchinson 1986
The Peverel Papers

Life, Way, Past, Country

“The woman raised her languid head,
And said, "My child was weak
He knew no one amid the dead
His daily food to seek!
My husband was a hunter good
As ever arrows bore :
I know my child will now have food,
Therefore I weep no more.
I sit and think upon the past,
And sing my mournful strain :
I know that we shall meet at last,
And never part again."”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The London Literary Gazette (24th January 1835) Versions from the German (Fourth Series.) 'The Huron's Child'— Herder.
Translations, From the German

Thinking, Singing, Past, Parting

“The landlord, qua landlord, performs no function in the economy of industry or of food production. He is a rent receiver; that, and nothing more. Were the landlord to be abolished, the soil and the people who till it would still remain, and the disappearance of the landowner would pass almost unnoticed. So too with the capitalist.”

Keir Hardie (1856–1915) Scottish socialist and labour leader

Source: From Serfdom to Socialism (1907), p. 11

People

“If eating meat why not eat the most highly organised form of meat, which is not beef or mutton, but human flesh? If you still believe in the eating of flesh, then you must admit that at least as far as the fitness of food is concerned the cannibal has the best of the argument.”

Otoman Zar-Adusht Ha'nish (1844–1936) German religious movement founder

Source: Mazdaznan Dietetics and Cookery Book (1913), p. 199

“‘ Is the war coming to Eldacre, my lord?’ asked Ramus, as he settled into the chair.
'I fear it is. A more stupid and wasteful business there never was. Fields will not be planted, food will run low, tax revenues will dry up — save from the makers of swords and munitions.”

David Gemmell book Stormrider

Source: Rigante series, Stormrider, Ch. 15

War, Stupidity, Fear, Business

“Rachel Trachtenburg: I really like the food at that place (Sidewalk Cafe). They have salads and pastas and stuff like that. What's your favorite food?
Kimya Dawson: I like cherries.
Rachel: That's a fruit. I said food.
Kimya: Fruit's food.
Rachel: You don't sit down and eat it. You don't eat it at a restaurant, like, "Oh, I'd like a fruit, please." You say, "I'd like a pizza please, or the pasta." Do you like Indian food? Mexican food? Italian food?
Kimya: Japanese food.
Rachel: Okay.”

Rachel Trachtenburg (1993) American musician

Time Out New York Kids http://www.timeoutnykids.com/music/1/w1.mar03.music.opener.html

“I was the baby of a large family, and as a youngster fresh to an infant school my mother tried to break me of lefthandedness. I always held my knife in the left hand and fork in the right. One day at dinner my mother said, ' You're not a boy; you must be girl to eat your food like that. We shall have to call you Peggy.' My elder brothers, always glad to take it out of me, carried that name to school, where the other boys seized upon it, and it has stuck to me through a life-time, though it is years since anybody was curious enough to ask how I got it.”

Arthur Frederick Bettinson (1862–1926) Manager and promoter of the National Sporting Club

Life, School, Family, Girl

“If the fork is not removed when the spider has arrived it seems to have the same charm as any fly: for the spider seizes it, embraces it, and runs about on the legs of the fork as often as it is made to sound, never seeming to learn by experience that other things may buzz besides its natural food.”

C. V. Boys (1855–1944) British physicist

[Boys, C. V., 16 December 1880, The influence of a tuning-fork on the garden spider, Nature, 23, 149–150, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015012106640;view=1up;seq=177]

Nature, Learning, Flying

“Even sticking to the higher plane of love, is it so very obvious that you can't love more than one person? We seem to manage it with parental love (parents are reproached if they don't at least pretend to love all their children equally), love of books, of food, of wine (love of Chateau Margaux does not preclude love of a fine Hock, and we don't feel unfaithful to the red when we dally with the white), love of composers, poets, holiday beaches, friends... why is erotic love the one exception that everybody instantly acknowledges without even thinking about it?”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

Banishing the Green-Eyed Monster http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/panelists/richard_dawkins/2007/11/banishing_the_greeneyed_monste.html, November 2007.

Love, Children, Books, Unfaithfulness

Quotes about food page 7

Quotes about food
page 7