No one should have to go hungry, especially in a world with as much wealth as ours. But the sad reality is that more than 821 million people are currently suffering from hunger. That's one in nine people on earth who don't have enough to eat.
Hunger is a complex problem with many root causes, including poverty, conflict, and climate change. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, but there are things that we can all do to help bring an end to world hunger — and opportunities to create systemic change.
While world hunger is a massive and complex problem, it's important to remember that each and every one of us can do something about it — whether through combating food waste, advocating for fair policies, or supporting nonprofits. These inspiring quotes remind us of the importance of acknowledging the problem and working together to fight this global justice issue.
Quotes About Word Hunger, To Motivate You To Make a Difference
Best quotes about feeding the poor
“Hunger is not a problem. It is an obscenity. How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”
— Anne Frank
“My work with the poor and the incarcerated has persuaded me that the opposite of poverty is not wealth; the opposite of poverty is justice. ”
— Bryan Stevenson, social justice activist & death penalty abolitionist
“They got money for wars but can’t feed the poor.”
— Tupac Shakur
“Food is national security. Food is economy. It is employment, energy, history. Food is everything.”
— Chef José Andrés, founder of World Central Kitchen
“Extreme poverty anywhere is a threat to human security everywhere.”
— Kofi Annan, Seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations
“Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.”
— Aristotle, Greek philosopher
Related: The best quotes about poverty and the best quotes about homelessness
From Mahatma Gandhi, on feeding the hungry
“There’s enough on this planet for everyone’s needs but not for everyone’s greed.”
— Mahatma Gandhi
“There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.”
— Mahatma Gandhi
“Poverty is the worst form of violence.”
— Mahatma Gandhi
From Paul Farmer, on poverty and eradicating suffering
“If I am hungry, that is a material problem; if someone else is hungry, that is a spiritual problem.”
— Paul Farmer
“For me, an area of moral clarity is: you're in front of someone who's suffering and you have the tools at your disposal to alleviate that suffering or even eradicate it, and you act.”
— Paul Farmer
Related: The best Paul Farmer quotes about justice and global health
From Mother Teresa, on making a difference for people who are starving
“I never look at the masses as my responsibility. I look at the individual. I can love only one person at a time. I can feed only one person at a time. Just one, one, one.”
— Mother Teresa
“If you cannot feed a hundred people, then feed just one.”
— Mother Teresa
“Make us worthy, Lord, to serve those throughout the world who live and die in poverty or hunger. Give them, through our hands, this day their daily bread; and by our understanding love, give peace and joy. Amen.”
— Mother Teresa
Related: The best quotes from Mother Teresa
From faith leaders, on caring for the poor and food insecurity
“It is important for people to realize that we can make progress against world hunger, that world hunger is not hopeless. The worst enemy is apathy.”
— Reverend David Beckmann
“You pray for the hungry. Then you feed them. This is how prayer works.”
— Pope Francis
“When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.”
— Dom Helder Camara, Dom Helder Camara: Essential Writings
“When people were hungry, Jesus didn’t say, ‘Now is that political, or social?’ He said, ‘I feed you.’ Because the good news to a hungry person is bread.”
— Archbishop Desmond Tutu
Related: The best quotes from Desmond Tutu about forgiveness and hope
From U.S. Presidents, on hunger in America
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.”
— Dwight D. Eisenhower
“We know that a peaceful world cannot long exist, one-third rich and two-thirds hungry.”
— Jimmy Carter
“The war against hunger is truly mankind’s war of liberation.”
— John F. Kennedy
Related: The best quotes from President Jimmy Carter on hope and human rights
From Martin Luther King Jr., on hunger and economic justice
“Why should there be hunger and deprivation in any land, in any city, at any table, when man has the resources and the scientific know-how to provide all mankind with the basic necessities of life? There is no deficit in human resources. The deficit is in human will.”
— Martin Luther King Jr.
“I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits.”
— Martin Luther King Jr.
“The rich nations must use their vast resources of wealth to develop the underdeveloped, school the unschooled, and feed the unfed. Ultimately a great nation is a compassionate nation. No individual or nation can be great if it does not have a concern for ‘the least of these.’”
— Martin Luther King Jr.
“Let us march on poverty until no American parent has to skip a meal so that their children may eat.”
— Martin Luther King Jr.
Related: The best quotes from Martin Luther King Jr.
Related: The best quotes from MLK's daughter, Bernice King — and his wife, Coretta Scott King
Related: The best quotes about justice
More inspiring quotes about conquering hunger and food distribution
“Poverty is a very complicated issue, but feeding a child isn't.”
— Jeff Bridges
Related: The best quotes about hope and optimism
“Saving our planet, lifting people out of poverty, advancing economic growth…these are one and the same fight.”
— Ban Ki-moon, Eighth Secretary-General of the United Nations
“In a world where one-third of all edible food never makes it to the mouths of the hungry, we all have an individual moral responsibility to do our part.”
— Madeleine Albright
“Hunger is not an issue of charity. It is an issue of justice.”
— Jacques Diouf
“It is an eternal obligation toward the human being not to let him suffer from hunger when one has a chance of coming to his assistance.”
— Simone Weil
“If we can conquer space, we can conquer childhood hunger.”
— Buzz Aldrin
“I went to bed hungry many nights as a child. It was a Dream that dressed me up when I was ragged, and it was a Dream that filled me up when I was hungry. Now it’s my Dream to see that no child in this world ever goes hungry, certainly not here in America, the most bountiful country in the world. We can do better…we must!”
— Dolly Parton
“If you want to eliminate hunger, everybody has to be involved.”
— Bono
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