quotations about hunger
For prejudice to reduce the threat of hunger effectively, the hungry must be assimilated into a category laden with negative stereotypes. Consequently, the images of the hungry are colored. Dominant-culture whites perceive the hungry as people of color, mostly black. This is true on both a global and domestic level. Despite the fact that the majority of the world's hungry live in Asia, it is African hunger--black hunger--that is the prevailing stereotype. When the hungry are colored black, the principles of attribution that characterize prejudicial perception come into play. The reader will recall that when negative events occur, blame is placed on the victim if that person is a member of an out-group. Correspondingly, the hungry themselves (or, by extension, their parents or their governments) often are blamed for their plight. African people, and hungry Africans in particular, are thought to lack sufficient industriousness or knowledge or integrity. Of course, massive hunger does not readily fit this paradigm. Consequently, when the severity of hunger is extreme and the numbers of hungry immense, such as in a large-scale famine, then the stereotype shifts to that of helpless children bantered about by the cruel but impersonal forces of nature. In either case, hungry people are not viewed as equals; they are not encountered as full human persons with dignity, individuality, and competence.
DAVID L. L. SHIELDS
"Race and Poverty in the Psychology of Prejudice", The Color of Hunger
I saw the world I had walked since my birth and I understood how fragile it was, that the reality was a thin layer of icing on a great dark birthday cake writhing with grubs and nightmares and hunger.
NEIL GAIMAN
The Ocean at the End of the Lane
We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry each night. Well that was probably true. They were all on a diet.
RONALD REAGAN
speech, "A Time for Choosing", October 27, 1964
A stomach accustomed to hunger is satisfied with very little.
JOSÉ SARAMAGO
Baltasar and Blimunda
Hunger teachesh many things.
LABERIUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
Hunger has always been more or less at my elbow when I played, but now I began to wake up at night to find hunger standing at my bedside, staring at my gauntly.
RICHARD WRIGHT
Black Boy
Their anger in darkness turning, unreleased, unspoken, it's mouth a red wound, its eyes hungry ... hungry for the moon.
ALAN MOORE
Swamp Thing #40
My more-having would be as a sauce
To make me hunger more.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Macbeth