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Famine Quotes

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Famine Quotes

“Famine images remain powerful and salient in modernity because they recall a precarious pre-modern existence that industrialised society has allegedly overcome. Understood as a natural disaster in which there is a crisis of food supply, famine is seen as a symptom of a lack of progress that results in the death of an innocent. It is for this reason that famine images are, more often than not, of individuals, frequently including children, barely clothed, staring passively into the lens, flies flitting across their faces.”

PovertyFamineClass Struggle
Book:Observant States: Geopolitics and Visual Culture
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“Let any one who is acquainted with what multitudes of people get their daily bread in this city by their labour, whether artificers or meer workmen—I say, let any man consider what must be the miserable condition of this town if, on a sudden, they should all be turned out of employment, that labour should cease, and wages for work be no more. This was the case with us at that time; and had not the sums of money contributed in charity by well-disposed people of every kind, as well as abroad as at home, been prodigiously great, it had not been in the power of the Lord Mayor and sheriffs to have kept the publick peace. Nor were they without apprehensions, as it was, that desperation should push the people upon tumults and cause them to rifle the houses of rich men and plunder the markets of provisions; in which case the country people, who brought provisions very freely and boldly to town, would have been terrified from coming any more, and the town would have sunk under an unavoidable famine.”

PoorPovertyTradeUnemploymentPlagueFamine
Book:A Journal of the Plague Year
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“Villain Foulon taken, my sister! Old Foulon taken, my mother! Miscreant Foulon taken, my daughter! Then, a score of others ran into the midst of these, beating their breasts, tearing their hair, and screaming, Foulon alive! Foulon who told the starving people they might eat grass! Foulon who told my old father that he might eat grass, when I had no bread to give him! Foulon who told my baby it might suck grass, when these breasts were dry with want! O mother of God, this Foulon! O Heaven our suffering! Hear me, my dead baby and my withered father: I swear on my knees, on these stones, to avenge you on Foulon! Husbands, and brothers, and young men, Give us the blood of Foulon, Give us the head of Foulon, Give us the heart of Foulon, Give us the body and soul of Foulon, Rend Foulon to pieces, and dig him into the ground, that grass may grow from him!”

PovertyRevengeFamineFrench Revolution
Book:a tale of two cities
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“May we always be burdened with thinking of the suffering of others, for that is what it means to be human.”

ThinkingLoveInspirationalKindWarHelpingTogetherInspirational QuotesSufferingHumanityQuotesPeaceCompassionPovertyKindnessSupportRightsViolenceInspireDespairDiseaseEmpathyHumanHarmonyUnityHungerHuman RightsIllnessBurdenThoughtReliefGenocideCompassionateHelpHumankindThinkOne LoveRapeTogethernessKamandKojouriKamand KojouriFamineOthersAlwaysSufferEncourageEmpatheticHumannessOne WorldUpliftAidAssistOne People
Author:Kamand Kojouri
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“Do not avert your eyes. It is important that you see this. It is important that you feel this.”

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Author:Kamand Kojouri
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“With the money my mother earned from selling cakes, my father cut a deal with Mangochi and bought one pail of maize. My mother took it to the mill, saved half the flour for us, and used the rest for more cakes. We did this every day, taking enough to eat and selling the rest. It was enough to provide our one blob of nsima each night, along with some pumpkin leaves. It was practically nothing, yet knowing it would be there somehow made the hunger less painful. "As long as we can stay in business," my father said, "we'll make it through. Our profit is that we live.”

PovertySurvivalCornFamineMalawi
Book:The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope
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“Papa, why are you selling our goats? I like these goats." "A week ago the price was five hundred, now it's four hundred. I'm sorry, but we can't wait for it go any lower." Mankhalala and the others were tied by their front legs with a long rope. When my father started down the trail, they stumbled and began to cry. They knew their future. Mankhalala looked back, as if telling me to help him. Even Khamba whined and barked a few times, pleading their case. But I had to let them down. What could I do? My family had to eat.”

PovertyFamineGoatsDifficult ChoicesMalawiHard Choices
Book:The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope
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“Don't worry about the water," said a man with a nervous grin. "This is hardwood, it won't ruin. You'll have this chair into your old years. How much do you have? I'll take anything. My children need to eat." A few of the businessmen like Mister Mangochi bought things they later gave back. But most people had no money. They simply shrugged and shook their heads.”

PovertyKindnessFamineHeartbreakingMalawi
Book:The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope
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“News came of Beni Beni, the madman of Wimbe, who'd always made us laugh in better times. He'd run up to merchants in the trading center with his raving eyes and snatch cakes and Fantas from their stalls. No one ever took them away because his hands were always so filthy. The mad people had always depended on others to care for them, but now there were none. Beni Beni died at the church.”

PovertyMental IllnessFamineIt Takes A VillageMalawi
Book:The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope
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“Dr. Kim couldn't remember the last time she'd seen a bowl of pure white rice. What was a bowl of rice doing there, just sitting out on the ground? She figured it out just before she heard the dog's bark. Up until that moment, a part of her had hoped that China would be just as poor as North Korea. She still wanted to believe that her country was the best place in the world. The beliefs she had cherished for a lifetime would be vindicated. But now she couldn't deny what was staring her plainly in the face: dogs in China ate better than doctors in North Korea.”

PovertyCommunismDictatorshipTotalitarianismNorth KoreaFamine
Book:Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea
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“When reading the history of the Jewish people, of their flight from slavery to death, of their exchange of tyrants, I must confess that my sympathies are all aroused in their behalf. They were cheated, deceived and abused. Their god was quick-tempered unreasonable, cruel, revengeful and dishonest. He was always promising but never performed. He wasted time in ceremony and childish detail, and in the exaggeration of what he had done. It is impossible for me to conceive of a character more utterly detestable than that of the Hebrew god. He had solemnly promised the Jews that he would take them from Egypt to a land flowing with milk and honey. He had led them to believe that in a little while their troubles would be over, and that they would soon in the land of Canaan, surrounded by their wives and little ones, forget the stripes and tears of Egypt. After promising the poor wanderers again and again that he would lead them in safety to the promised land of joy and plenty, this God, forgetting every promise, said to the wretches in his power:—'Your carcasses shall fall in this wilderness and your children shall wander until your carcasses be wasted.' This curse was the conclusion of the whole matter. Into this dust of death and night faded all the promises of God. Into this rottenness of wandering despair fell all the dreams of liberty and home. Millions of corpses were left to rot in the desert, and each one certified to the dishonesty of Jehovah. I cannot believe these things. They are so cruel and heartless, that my blood is chilled and my sense of justice shocked. A book that is equally abhorrent to my head and heart, cannot be accepted as a revelation from God. When we think of the poor Jews, destroyed, murdered, bitten by serpents, visited by plagues, decimated by famine, butchered by each, other, swallowed by the earth, frightened, cursed, starved, deceived, robbed and outraged, how thankful we should be that we are not the chosen people of God. No wonder that they longed for the slavery of Egypt, and remembered with sorrow the unhappy day when they exchanged masters. Compared with Jehovah, Pharaoh was a benefactor, and the tyranny of Egypt was freedom to those who suffered the liberty of God. While reading the Pentateuch, I am filled with indignation, pity and horror. Nothing can be sadder than the history of the starved and frightened wretches who wandered over the desolate crags and sands of wilderness and desert, the prey of famine, sword, and plague. Ignorant and superstitious to the last degree, governed by falsehood, plundered by hypocrisy, they were the sport of priests, and the food of fear. God was their greatest enemy, and death their only friend. It is impossible to conceive of a more thoroughly despicable, hateful, and arrogant being, than the Jewish god. He is without a redeeming feature. In the mythology of the world he has no parallel. He, only, is never touched by agony and tears. He delights only in blood and pain. Human affections are naught to him. He cares neither for love nor music, beauty nor joy. A false friend, an unjust judge, a braggart, hypocrite, and tyrant, sincere in hatred, jealous, vain, and revengeful, false in promise, honest in curse, suspicious, ignorant, and changeable, infamous and hideous:—such is the God of the Pentateuch.”

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Book:Some Mistakes of Moses
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“The most obvious and the most distinctive features of the History of Civilisation, during the last fifty years, is the wonderful increase of industrial production by the application of machinery, the improvement of old technical processes and the invention of new ones, accompanied by an even more remarkable development of old and new means of locomotion and intercommunication. By this rapid and vast multiplication of the commodities and conveniences of existence, the general standard of comfort has been raised, the ravages of pestilence and famine have been checked, and the natural obstacles, which time and space offer to mutual intercourse, have been reduced in a manner, and to an extent, unknown to former ages. The diminution or removal of local ignorance and prejudice, the creation of common interests among the most widely separated peoples, and the strengthening of the forces of the organisation of the commonwealth against those of political or social anarchy, thus effected, have exerted an influence on the present and future fortunes of mankind the full significance of which may be divined, but cannot, as yet, be estimated at its full value.”

ScienceHistoryInfluenceMankindIgnoranceDevelopmentComfortCivilizationFutureIncreasePrejudiceFortuneValueObstaclesImprovementInventionSignificanceAnarchyMachineryConvenienceFaminePestilenceProductionForcesLocomotionIntercommunication
Book:Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century, The
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“He had complicated our task of being pleasant dinner companions by mentioning famine, something that Americans had never known. The word could only conjure otherworldly landscapes of the skeletal dead, which was not the spectral image we wanted to present, for what one should never do was to require other people to imagine they were just like one of us. Spiritual teleportation unsettled most people, who, if they thought of others at all, preferred to think that others were just like them or could be just like them.”

DeathEmpathySympathyFamineAmericans
Book:The Sympathizer
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“They want us to be afraid. They want us to be afraid of leaving our homes. They want us to barricade our doors and hide our children. Their aim is to make us fear life itself! They want us to hate. They want us to hate 'the other'. They want us to practice aggression and perfect antagonism. Their aim is to divide us all! They want us to be inhuman. They want us to throw out our kindness. They want us to bury our love and burn our hope. Their aim is to take all our light! They think their bricked walls will separate us. They think their damned bombs will defeat us. They are so ignorant they don’t understand that my soul and your soul are old friends. They are so ignorant they don’t understand that when they cut you I bleed. They are so ignorant they don’t understand that we will never be afraid, we will never hate and we will never be silent for life is ours!”

LoveLifeInspirationalKindChildrenWarSoulHomeLightInspirationGovernmentHateHumanityHopePoliticsFearPeaceChangeCommunityDarkSilenceKindnessDarknessMediaIgnoranceRevolutionArmsFriendsTrumpBattleConflictHumanHatredMurderAimUnitySilentDefeatHungerScaredCorruptionScaryActivismSeparationIgnorantOnenessBombsHopefulProtestHopelessDivisionActivistGenocideRebelFightScarExecutionAggressionSolidarityWholenessHopelessnessPoliticiansOne LoveHostilityHumaneRebelliousUnderstandKamandKojouriKillKamand KojouriRevoltFamineCorruptAfraidAnnihilationInhumanAdvocacyDonald TrumpUnionDoorHideAnimosityWar QuotesBurnCamaraderieUnity QuotesAntagonismWallsHumannessOthernessMassacreHousesInhumaneBombSeparateLove WinsCutBleedExtortionObjectDivideBuryFutileExecuteLife PoemsLove RevolutionOutcryDisapproveObliterateHope PoemsObjectionSolidarity QuotesWar PoemsAnnihilateBarricadeOne NationUnity PoemsOne EarthSolidarity PoemsLove Trumps WarNo Wall
Author:Kamand Kojouri
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“. . . every society that grows extensive lawns could produce all its food on the same area, using the same resources, and . . . world famine could be totally relieved if we devoted the same resources of lawn culture to food culture in poor areas. These facts are before us. Thus, we can look at lawns, like double garages and large guard dogs, [and Humvees and SUVs] as a badge of willful waste, conspicuous consumption, and lack of care for the earth or its people. Most lawns are purely cosmetic in function. Thus, affluent societies have, all unnoticed, developed an agriculture which produces a polluted waste product, in the presence of famine and erosion elsewhere, and the threat of water shortages at home. The lawn has become the curse of modern town landscapes as sugar cane is the curse of the lowland coastal tropics, and cattle the curse of the semi-arid and arid rangelands. It is past time to tax lawns (or any wasteful consumption), and to devote that tax to third world relief. I would suggest a tax of $5 per square metre for both public and private lawns, updated annually, until all but useful lawns are eliminated.”

FoodFaminePermaculturePeak OilPostcarbon
Author:Bill Mollison
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“Famine sometimes increases the number of people who are overweight.”

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Author:Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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“I do not see how it is possible for a man to die worth fifty million of dollars, or ten million of dollars, in a city full of want, when he meets almost every day the withered hand of beggary and the white lips of famine. How a man can withstand all that, and hold in the clutch of his greed twenty or thirty million of dollars, is past my comprehension. I do not see how he can do it. I should not think he could do it any more than he could keep a pile of lumber on the beach, where hundreds and thousands of men were drowning in the sea.”

MoneyRichGreedInequalityPossibleComprehensionFamineAvarice
Book:The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child
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“War seems like a fine adventure, the greatest most of them will ever know. Then they get a taste of battle. For some, that one taste is enough to break them. Others go on for years, until they lose count of all the battles they have fought in, but even a man who has survived a hundred fights can break in his hundred-and-first. Brothers watch their brothers die, fathers lose their sons, friends see their friends trying to hold their entrails in after they’ve been gutted by an axe. They see the lord who led them there cut down, and some other lord shouts that they are his now, They take the wound, and when that’s still half-healed they take another. There is never enough to eat, their shoes fall to pieces from marching, their clothes are torn and rotting, and half of them are shitting in their breeches from drinking bad water. If they want new boots or a warmer cloak or maybe a rusted iron half helm, they need to take them from a corpse, and before long they are stealing from the living too, from the small folk whose land they’re fighting in, men very like the men they used to be. They slaughter their sheep and steal their chickens, and from there it’s just a short step to carrying off their daughters too. And one day they look around and realize all their friends and kin are gone, that they are fighting beside strangers beneath a banner that they hardly recognize. They don’t know where they are or how to get back home and the lord they’re fighting for does not know their names, yet here he comes, shouting for them to form up, to make a line with their spears and scythes and sharpened hoes, to stand their ground. And the knights come down on them, faceless men clad in all steel, and the iron thunder of their charge seems to fill the world. And the man breaks.”

WarKnightsFamineKnight
Book:A Feast for Crows
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“In childhood, overhearing everyday conversations among relatives about collectivization, famine, war, and political repression, I perceived these stories as curious — sometimes frightening — episodes my loved ones had endured. Although they belonged to a past not so distant, I felt them as something that had happened long ago, almost like events that occurred only slightly later than the fairy tales I loved so much. Much of what I heard I did not yet understand, but my young memory — still largely unfilled — carefully recorded these fragments of history, preserving events and facts deep within its silent annals.” — Volodymyr Shablia, Stone. Book One. Author's foreword Context note: This reflection from the author’s foreword shows how the collective trauma of the early twentieth century entered a child’s consciousness indirectly — through family conversations, half-understood words, and inherited memory. What first felt distant and almost mythical would later reveal itself as lived history, shaping both the author’s worldview and the moral foundation of the novel.”

WarComing Of AgeFamineFamily HistoryChildhood MemoryCollective MemoryPolitical RepressionUssr HistoryHistorical MemoryHistorical Trauma
Book:Камінь. Біографічний роман. Книга перша. Перші кроки до світла та назад: Дитинство та занурення в ГУЛАГ.
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“Friends and relatives encouraged me to erect a gravestone for my father. I thought that even though I was not a high official, I would erect for my father a tombstone grander than any of those others. Then I recalled that in 1958, many of the village's tombstones had been dismantled for use in irrigation projects or as bases for smelting ovens in the steelmaking campaign during the Great Leap Forward; some had been laid out on roadways. The more impressive the monument, the greater the likelihood of it being demolished. My father's tombstone had to be erected not on the ground, but in my heart. A tombstone in the heart could never be demolished or trampled underfoot.”

LoveDeathFatherLossGriefFamilyCommunismStarvationFamineTombstone
Book:Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962
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“I took my own and Kolya’s two-day ration of bread and lard to the hospital,” the boy said, with unsettling calm beyond his years. “We must do everything we can to save him. If he dies, he won’t need food anymore.” Danilo’s eyes filled with tears. “Oh God, how could you let this happen?” he thought bitterly. “Is it fair to take a piece from one starving child to give it to another?” He pulled his son’s head to his chest. “You’re probably right,” he said quietly. After a while, he returned from the pantry with an unusually full bucket of cornmeal and two bundles. “Mother,” Danilo said to his mother-in-law, handing her the food, “besides the usual bread, bake a few pies with lard and pumpkin—for Kolya… and for Peter.” — Volodymyr Shablia, Stone. Book Three Context note: Set during the Holodomor, this scene captures the impossible moral choices faced by families during the man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine. A child’s stark logic forces adults to confront the inhuman calculus of survival—where compassion meant redistributing hunger, and saving one life could mean endangering another.”

SacrificeSurvivalHistorical FictionParents And ChildrenUkraineStarvationFamineHolodomorMoral DilemmasHuman Cost
Book:Камінь. Біографічний роман. Книга третя. Несправджені сподівання.: Все буде Голодомор.
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“Post-apocalyptic world will never unfold like in the movies, the post-apocalyptic world already exists, may be not for you, as you're born on the lucky side of privilege - but that world of drought, flood, famine, plague and persecution already exists - ten steps from the door of the privileged.”

Social JusticeInequalityOccupationGenocideTotalitarianismFamineDisparityHuman Rights ViolationDisplacementGlobal Goals
Book:Neurosonnets: The Naskar Art of Neuroscience
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“Some searched for metaphors to describe what had happened. Tetiana Pavlychka remembered that her sister Tamara “had a large, swollen stomach, and her neck was long and thin like a bird’s neck. People didn’t look like people — they were more like starving ghosts.” Another survivor remembered that his mother “looked like a glass jar, filled with clear spring water. All her body that could be seen . . . was see-through and filled with water, like a plastic bag.” A third remembered his brother lying down, “alive but completely swollen, his body shining as if it were made of glass”.”

CommunismUkraineStarvationFamineBolsheviksStalinCollectivizationHolodomor
Book:Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine
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“Голод став зброєю масового знищення українців, на довгі десятиліття порушив їх природний генетичний фонд, призвів до морально-психологічних змін у суспільній свідомості. Був зруйнований традиційний український устрій життя. Внаслідок Голодомору українське суспільство, стало і значною мірою досі залишається травмованим, постгеноцидним. Десятки мільйонів людей, які пережили Голодомор, пройшли через невимовні страждання і просто не могли відкинути цього досвіду. Їхній опір було зламано, а страх повторення Голодомору залишався на довгі десятиліття та призвів до втрати впевненості й ініціативності. На свідомому та підсвідомому рівні травма Голодомору передавалася від батьків до дітей.”

GenocideUkraineFamineUkrainianGenerational TraumaHolodomor
Book:Голодомор: Комуністичний геноцид в Україні
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“A Magnum Paucity by Stewart Stafford Build the nation's mausoleum, Light the people's funeral pyre, For Hibernia's sons and daughters, In genocide to expire. Romantic Ireland has no grave, It died foraging at the roadside for bites, Or on a coffin ship out of reach of the New World, An empire's boot on the throat for last rites. Did you know your identity all along? Or find it struggling and aghast? Old Eireann was the first expendable colony, And egregiously, not Britannia's last. Constricting stomachs do not growl patriotic oaths, Freedom is a stranger to a starved mind, Force-feed our children grapes of wrath, With liberation dead on the vine. © Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.”

HistoryIrelandStarvationFamineBritish EmpireIrish HistorySt Patrick S DayPotato FamineThe IrishEmigration And Immigration
Author:Stewart Stafford
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