Norman Borlaug Quotes

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Norman Borlaug

Profession : Scientist

Birth : March 25, 1914

If some consumers believe that it's better from the point of view of their health to have organic food, God bless them. Let them buy it. Let them pay a bit more.

Norman Borlaug

Food is the moral right of all who are born into this world.

Norman Borlaug

Without food, man can live at most but a few weeks; without it, all other components of social justice are meaningless.

Norman Borlaug

Contrasting sharply, in the developing countries represented by India, Pakistan, and most of the countries in Asia and Africa, seventy to eighty percent of the population is engaged in agriculture, mostly at the subsistence level.

Norman Borlaug

The green revolution has an entirely different meaning to most people in the affluent nations of the privileged world than to those in the developing nations of the forgotten world.

Norman Borlaug

If people want to believe that the organic food has better nutritive value, it's up to them to make that foolish decision. But there's absolutely no research that shows that organic foods provide better nutrition.

Norman Borlaug

We will be guilty of criminal negligence, without extenuation, if we permit future famines.

Norman Borlaug

Yet food is something that is taken for granted by most world leaders despite the fact that more than half of the population of the world is hungry.

Norman Borlaug

When wheat is ripening properly, when the wind is blowing across the field, you can hear the beards of the wheat rubbing together. They sound like the pine needles in a forest. It is a sweet, whispering music that once you hear, you never forget.

Norman Borlaug

Man can and must prevent the tragedy of famine in the future instead of merely trying with pious regret to salvage the human wreckage of the famine, as he has so often done in the past.

Norman Borlaug

There can be no permanent progress in the battle against hunger until the agencies that fight for increased food production and those that fight for population control unite in a common effort.

Norman Borlaug

Plant diseases, drought, desolation, despair were recurrent catastrophes during the ages - and the ancient remedies: supplications to supernatural spirits or gods.

Norman Borlaug

Man's survival, from the time of Adam and Eve until the invention of agriculture, must have been precarious because of his inability to ensure his food supply.

Norman Borlaug

Some of the environmental lobbyists of the Western nations are the salt of the earth, but many of them are elitists.

Norman Borlaug

Most people still fail to comprehend the magnitude and menace of the 'Population Monster.'

Norman Borlaug

As far as plants are concerned, they can't tell whether that nitrate ion comes from artificial chemicals or from decomposed organic matter.

Norman Borlaug

We must recognize the fact that adequate food is only the first requisite for life. For a decent and humane life, we must also provide an opportunity for good education, remunerative employment, comfortable housing, good clothing, and effective and compassionate medical care.

Norman Borlaug

Water covers about 70 percent of the Earth's surface. Of this total, only about 2.5 percent is fresh water, and most of this is frozen in the ice caps of Antarctica and Greenland, in soil moisture, or in deep aquifers not readily accessible for human use.

Norman Borlaug

One of the greatest threats to mankind today is that the world may be choked by an explosively pervading but well camouflaged bureaucracy.

Norman Borlaug

It's a free society. But don't tell the world that we can feed the present population without chemical fertilizer. That's when this misinformation becomes destructive.

Norman Borlaug