Frances Moore Lappe Quotes

There is no formula. We all must become spirited inventors. There's no single answer - not even a single starting point. Even the 'teachers' ... don't offer us the answer. They do offer us approaches, ways of thinking, possibilities we can adapt, and hope that might generate in us wholly new ideas.

Every choice we make can be a celebration of the world we want.

Despite a tenfold increase in the use of pesticides between 1947 and 1974 (in the US), crop losses due to pests have ... remained at an estimated 33%. Losses due to insects alone have nearly doubled, ... from 7% in the 1942-1951 period to about 13% in 1974.

Hunger is not caused by a scarcity of food but a scarcity of democracy,

What an extraordinary time to be alive. We're the first people on our planet to have real choice: we can continue killing each other, wiping out other species, spoiling our nest. Yet on every continent a revolution in human dignity is emerging. It is re-knitting community and our ties to the earth. So we do have a choice. We can choose death; or we can choose life.

Even the fear of death is nothing compared to the fear of not having lived authentically and fully.

You have increasing poverty and increasing wealth. Fine food is one way to dispense with a lot of money ... It's understanding that our daily choices about food connect us to a worldwide economic system. And that economic system - not scarcity - creates worldwide hunger for millions of people.

Each of us carries within us a worldview, a set of assumptions about how the world works - what some call a paradigm - that forms the very questions we allow ourselves to ask, and determines our view of future possibilities.

Democracy is not what we have. It is what we do.

I understand, of course, that grain-fed meat is not the cause of the world hunger problem-and eating some of it doesn't directly take food out of the mouths of starving people-but it is, to me, a symbol and a symptom of the basic irrationality of a food system that's divorced from human needs. Therefore, using less meat can be an important way to take responsibility. Making conscious choices about what we eat, based on what the earth can sustain and what our bodies need, can help remind us that our whole society must begin to balance sustainable production with human need.

Honest hope has an edge. It's messy. It requires that we let go of all pat answers, all preconceived formulas, all confidence that our sailing will be smooth. It's not a resting point. Honest hope is movement.

I've grown certain that the root of all fear is that we've been forced to deny who we are.

Freedom is not the capacity to do whatever we please; freedom is the capacity to make intelligent choices.

The real cause of hunger is the powerlessness of the poor to gain access to the resources they need to feed themselves.

Hope is not what we find in evidence, it's what we become in action.

Every aspect of our lives is, in a sense, a vote for the kind of world we want to live in.

The act of putting into your mouth what the earth has grown is perhaps your most direct interaction with the earth.

[O]ur greatest contributions to the cause of freedom and development overseas is not what we do over there, but what we do right here at home.

My whole mission in life is to help us find the power we lack to create the world we want.

No society has fulfilled its democratic promise if people go hungry ... If some go without food they have surely been deprived of all power. The existence of hunger belies the existence of democracy.

Imagine sitting down to an eight ounce steak, and then, imagine the room filled wit 45 to 50 people with empty bowls ... For the feed cost of your steak, each of their bowls could be filled with a cup pf cooked cereal grains.

The notion that economic life is a distinct realm, governed by immutable laws of narrow self-interest, is giving way to a much older notion: economic life is only one strand in the rich web of human relationships.

In a world where only a minor portion of the land is really well suited to agriculture, man is using much of the best land with dubious efficiency.

I also believe that it's almost impossible for people to change alone. We need to join with others who will push us in our thinking and challenge us to do things we didn't believe ourselves capable of.

Hunger is a people-made phenomenon, so the central issue is power: the power of those who make the decisions about what is grown and who, or what, it's grown for.

For me hope isn't wishful thinking or blind faith about the future. It's a stance toward life - one of curiosity and humility.

Recent breakthroughs in science show we have just the capacities we need to face our planet's challenges. We're "soft-wired" for cooperation, empathy, fairness, along with a deep need to "make a dent," as social philosopher Erich Fromm put it. My hunch is that one reason depression is a global pandemic is that the dominant mental map denies so many of us expression of these deep needs and capacities.

Our heavily meat-centered culture is at the very heart of our waste of the earth's productivity ...

This is the first generation to know that the choices we're making have ultimate consequences. It's a time when you either choose life or you choose death ... Going along with the current order means that you're choosing death.

With an eco-mind, we get ready for surprises, for we realize it's just not possible to know what's possible.

Hope is not wishful thinking. It's not a temperament we're born with. It is a stance toward life that we can choose ... not not. The real question for me, though, is whether m hope is effective, whether it produces or is just where I hide to ease my own pain.