There is no reason why poverty should call us away from philosophy—no, nor even actual want. For when hastening after wisdom, we must endure even hunger. Men have endured hunger when their towns were besieged, and what other reward for their endurance did they obtain than that they did not fall under the conqueror’s power? How much greater is the promise of the prize of everlasting liberty, and the assurance that we need fear neither God nor man! Even though we starve, we must reach that goal.

For a man will not have strength to fight his way forward all day
long until the sun goes down if he is starved for food.

The man who is extremely and dangerously hungry has no other interest but food. Capacities not useful for the satisfying of hunger are pushed into the background. 'But what happens to man's desires when there is plenty of food and his belly in chronically filled? At once, other (and higher) needs emerge and these, rather than the psychological hungers, dominate the organism.

The question arises: why, in a world so well endowed, does hunger exist to such degree? Why, with food enough and more for all, do millions still sadly starve and bring disgrace on man's divinity? By what law do men assume the right to mark those who shall live and those who must die? From what complacent depths are such judgements made? ...Man, of his own free will, must choose the path to future glory: the path of brotherhood and love, justice and sharing... The signs are there for all to see: the signs of the new time, when hunger will be no more.

I was often humiliated to see men disputing for a piece of bread, just as animals might have done. My feelings on this subject have very much altered since I have been personally exposed to the tortures of hunger. I have discovered, in fact, that a man, whatever may have been his origin, his education, and his habits, is governed, under certain circumstances, much more by his stomach than by his intelligence and his heart.

…thirst is harder to bear than hunger, heat, or cold.

How can you frighten a man whose hunger is not only in his own cramped stomach but in the wretched bellies of his children? You can't scare him — he has known a fear beyond every other.

Hunger, prolonged, is temporary madness! The brain is at work without its required food, and the most fantastic notions fill the mind. Hitherto I had never known what hunger really meant. I was likely to understand it now.

You can't brace yourself for famine if you've never known hunger.

Hunger and thirst must be avoided...they grate on and inflame the mind. It’s an old saying that quarrels are sought by the weary’ just as much, too, but the hungry and the thirsty, and by every man who yearns for anything.

The hunger will give you everything and it will take from you, everything. It will cost you your life, and there isn't a damn thing you can do about it. But knowing this, of course, is what ultimately sets you free.

Nobody has to go hungry today. There is plenty of work for a man who wants to work. A kid can make plenty of dough for himself doing almost anything. I was hungry. I had to fight my way along. Freights and the like, fight, fight all the time. The life was tough, but it hardened you.

Ah, how fortunate are those who have never learned the awful truth taught by hunger: that a man will do anything, to live one single day more!

The man afflicted by hunger for power or money for its own sake is just that: afflicted. He is tormented by incessant desires for more without cause. He is the most likely to wear a social mask to succeed, and thus he is always unsure of himself and his life, the deep tear inside always causing him to obsess about how to get more, why he doesn't have it already, and whom he will have to please or become in order to get it.