Frances Moore Lappé Quotes - Page 4

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

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.

I think that luxury has nothing to do with money, and everything to do with beauty.

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

What we see today is a world movement represented by the World Social Forum, involving all sorts of interactions across cultures, not to create some new "ism," but to learn as we walk and to create more democratic forms of social organization that re-embed economic life in community.

My children threw me a life line: "Return to your roots - food - and rewrite your first book, Diet for a Small Planet." I learned that if I could just show up, in this case, if I could just get myself out of bed, get to the computer in my tiny office at MIT, and start writing, help would start arriving.

I believe it is possible that we can turn today's breakdown into a planetary breakthrough on one condition. We can do it if we can break free of a set of dominant but misleading ideas that are taking us down.

I had left graduate school, determined that I wasn't going to do anything else to "save the world" until I understood how I could get at the underlying causes of deepening suffering. To do that, I had to start by admitting that I didn't know.

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.

much agricultural land which might be growing food is being used instead to 'grow' money (in the form of coffee, tea, etc.).

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.

We are very much social creatures who model ourselves on one another.

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

Beauty is created by fellow human beings, and enhanced because they are in relationship with each other.

Beauty exists irrespective of financial circumstances.

I never like to use those terms [like pessimistic].

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.

History doesn't proceed in incremental little notches.

With organic approaches, women - who have been gardeners for millennia and mothers forever - can rise because of their intimate knowledge of nature.

I had no identity [when I was 27] - I was terrified that somebody would ask me what I was doing, and I would have no answer.

Because we are living in a culture increasingly dominated by fear where many feel blocked.

Fear doesn't have to stop us.

For me, just showing up for the traveling and writing gave me the power to overcome my fear of fear.

Diane Wilson asked, "Why aren't people upset? Why aren't people protesting?" The mayor and county commissioners told her to keep quiet, and everybody else was afraid to speak out against the companies, which included some of the country's biggest chemical companies. There were even attempts on her life. Family members abandoned her, and certainly none of the other shrimpers stood with her.

What gave her [Diane Wilson] the courage? If you look at someone like Diane, it's easy to say, well I could never be like that. But we don't know. We do know that it's possible for a woman, who didn't grow up as a world changer, to find it in herself to take a stand.