"Three-quarters of the world's population doesn't have enough to eat!"
About this Quote
The specific intent is shock-to-action. By choosing “three-quarters,” Reddy reaches for scale so large it short-circuits the usual moral bargaining (“I donate sometimes,” “it’s complicated”). Even if the number is imprecise by today’s standards, the rhetorical move is precise: overwhelm the audience’s sense of normal. Hunger isn’t a niche tragedy; it’s the default condition for most humans, which makes our indifference feel less like ignorance and more like complicity.
The subtext is also about power and gender. Reddy, best known for “I Am Woman,” spent the 1970s turning personal empowerment into public critique. In that cultural moment, when activists and artists were increasingly yoking fame to causes (from famine relief to antiwar politics), a woman insisting on global stakes challenged the tidy expectation that entertainers should be grateful, apolitical, and pretty. She’s not offering policy; she’s asserting a moral perimeter: if you can sing about liberation, you can’t ignore the bodies for whom freedom is as basic as food.
Contextually, it fits the era’s rising consciousness about global inequality and televised catastrophe, when distant suffering became newly visible - and newly easy to look away from.
Quote Details
| Topic | Human Rights |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Reddy, Helen. (2026, January 16). Three-quarters of the world's population doesn't have enough to eat! FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/three-quarters-of-the-worlds-population-doesnt-91214/
Chicago Style
Reddy, Helen. "Three-quarters of the world's population doesn't have enough to eat!" FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/three-quarters-of-the-worlds-population-doesnt-91214/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Three-quarters of the world's population doesn't have enough to eat!" FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/three-quarters-of-the-worlds-population-doesnt-91214/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.






