Quotes from Frances Moore Lappé

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.

Old models of farming with chemicals and credit mostly favored privileged men.

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

The spirit that I am advocating is reframing how we view the world, and shifting from the negativity of lack and "not enough" to the positive frame of aligning with Nature.

Nature has an incredible capacity for regeneration and growth, but we can't experience it if we stay fearful and focused on lack.

Approaches to growing food that align with nature changed human relationships.

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.

History doesn't proceed in incremental little notches.

The problem is that our whole tribe - if you will, the larger community of humanity itself - is on a death march ecologically and in terms of the intensification of violence and conflict.

Women can succeed in villages all over the world today without relying on heavy machinery or debt. They can take leadership roles in agriculture, eliminating hunger and inequity.

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

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

Engagement is the good life. What could be more exciting than getting involved in something that you care about and joining with others and seeing something change? What could be more thrilling?

The good life for me always meant connecting with those big, important issues that grown-ups get so excited about.

That's what happened when my own life crumbled. The people who came into my life bolstered me to take more risks, to be even more true to myself.

The good life is not about avoiding fear. Just the opposite.

Breaking with the pack may be exactly what we should be doing. Saying "no" to the dominant culture that is trapping us in destructive ways of living might be the most life-serving thing we can do.

Nature is with us if we can learn how to align with it and not break the basic laws that generate life.

A life-long mission has been to counter the notion that political engagement is the spinach we must eat in order to have the dessert of freedom.

If we cannot know what's possible, then we are free to do that which is pulling our hearts and that which is life serving.

Food has always been at the center of community bonding, of family life, and simple pleasure, but it is becoming more and more an obsession, a source of pain.

Every time you take a step and walk with your fear, you'll never know the impact. But you can be certain somebody's watching, and that courage is contagious.

We can't see ahead of time what actions are going to be the ones that move history in dramatic ways.

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