The real cause of hunger is the powerlessness of the poor to gain access to the resources they need to feed themselves.
Frances Moore LappRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Hope is a conscious choice rather than an inherent trait, and it should be evaluated for its effectiveness.
This quote emphasizes that hope is not simply a passive or whimsical feeling; rather, it is an active decision to approach life with optimism and intention. The author questions the validity and impact of their hope, suggesting that it should be assessed based on whether it leads to tangible outcomes or merely serves as a coping mechanism for personal struggles.
Themes
HopeChoiceLifeEffectivenessOptimism
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about resilience, one could quote this to encourage individuals to actively choose hope.
More from Frances Moore Lapp
All quotes →I'm neither an optimist nor a pessimist. I am a dyed-in-the-woo l possibilist! By this, I mean with an eco-mind, we see that everything's connected and change is the only constant.
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We got hooked on grain-fed meat just as we got hooked on gas guzzling automobiles. Big cars made sense only when oil was cheap; grain-fed meat makes sense only because the true costs of producing it are not counted.
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Hunger is not caused by a scarcity of food but a scarcity of democracy.
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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.
Frances Moore LappRead
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