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If we start with limits and a premise of scarcity and fear, it makes us fearful of each other, and that makes us vulnerable to anti-democratic systems.

Frances Moore Lappé

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Frances Moore Lappé
Age: 80
Born: 1944
Born: February 10
Author
Writer
Pendleton
Oregon
Frances Moore Lappe
Start
Scarcity
Fear
Premises
Makes
Fearful
Systems
Anti
Vulnerable
Democratic
Limits
Premise

More quotes by Frances Moore Lappé

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Fear doesn't have to stop us.
Frances Moore Lappé
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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 Lappé
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For me, just showing up for the traveling and writing gave me the power to overcome my fear of fear.
Frances Moore Lappé
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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.
Frances Moore Lappé
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I think of Wangari Mathai in Kenya. If she started out saying she wanted to plant 20 million trees, she would have been laughed at. In fact, the foresters and the government did laugh at her. They said, Villagers? Un-schooled villagers? Planting trees? No, no, no, it takes foresters. So she planted trees anyway.
Frances Moore Lappé
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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.
Frances Moore Lappé
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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.
Frances Moore Lappé
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What we need to get right is not focusing on the fear associated with quantity - not enough, scarcity, and lack - and moving instead to a worldview that explores quality and connectedness.
Frances Moore Lappé
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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.
Frances Moore Lappé
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[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.
Frances Moore Lappé
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The good life may mean doing some things that do not feel comfortable. It may mean sitting long hours just with yourself as you begin to listen to your own questions. That was the reality for me when I was 27, and it was really terrifying.
Frances Moore Lappé
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For me hope isn't wishful thinking or blind faith about the future. It's a stance toward life - one of curiosity and humility.
Frances Moore Lappé
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We didn't evolve to be passive victims or shoppers.
Frances Moore Lappé
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Our food system takes abundant grain,which people can't afford,and shrinks it into meat,which better-off people will pay for.
Frances Moore Lappé
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[Fear] means that we are human beings walking into the unknown, and that we are risking breaking with others for something we believe in.
Frances Moore Lappé
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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.
Frances Moore Lappé
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My whole mission in life is to help us find the power we lack to create the world we want.
Frances Moore Lappé
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On the one hand, our social nature is our greatest beauty - it means that we have natural empathy and sympathy. But our social nature also means that we may let ourselves be controlled by the judgments of others, precisely because we care so much about our status in community.
Frances Moore Lappé
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What was so moving for [Diane Wilson], and also for me, is that she felt the Bay itself was like her grandmother. She said, I don't think there's a woman alive who would give up fighting for her child, or her mother, or her grandmother.
Frances Moore Lappé
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A teacher told me this story some time ago: She asked her students to line up in order of how much power they thought they had relative to the others in the class, and they all fought to be last in line. They didn't want to acknowledge that they had personal power.
Frances Moore Lappé