Van Jones Quotes

Now is not the time to shrink from the challenge of saving our only home in the universe. Now is not the time to pull into ourselves, retreating into either survivalist or escapist mode. To the contrary, this is the time for titans, not turtles. Now is the time to open our arms, expand our horizons, and dream big. Big problems require big solutions.

It's in that convergence of spiritual people becoming active and active people becoming spiritual that the hope of humanity now rests.

The message is going to be the same. It's very simple. We're either going to turn to each other or on each other.

In a democracy, you won't always get to have your way. But you should always get to have your say.

Dr. King didn't get famous giving a speech that said,"I have a complaint."

We seem to forget that everything that is good for the environment is a job. Solar panels don't put themselves up. Wind turbines don't manufacture themselves. Houses don't retrofit themselves and put in their own new boilers and furnaces and better-fitting windows and doors. Advanced biofuel crops don't plant themselves. Community gardens don't tend themselves. Farmers' markets don't run themselves. Every single thing that is good for the environment is actually a job, a contract, or an entrepreneurial opportunity.

If we stand for change, we can spark a popular movement with power, influence, magic and genius.

All humans have fear, and those of us who are fortunate have faith.

The green economy should not just be about reclaiming throw-away stuff. It should be about reclaiming thrown-away communities. It should not just be about recycling things to give them a second life. We should also be gathering up people and giving them a second chance.

Stop using your phones and laptops as toys and use them to start a revolution.

When it gets harder to love, love harder.

The usual pattern of demagogues is to promise the moon, fail to deliver, and then blame vulnerable others for those failures.

If the road to social transformation can be paved only by saints who never make mistakes, the road will NEVER be built.

Each and every one of us should stop playing small and license ourselves to become one of the giants of the new century. We will need champions by the truckload.

The surest path to safe streets and peaceful communities is not more police and prisons, but ecologically sounds economic development. And that same path can lift us to a new, green economy - one with the power to lift people out of poverty while respecting and repairing the environment.

I'm willing to forgo the cheap satisfaction of the radical pose for the deep satisfaction of radical ends.

Environmental justice is the movement to ensure that no community suffers disproportionate environmental burdens or goes without enjoying fair environmental benefits.

If you think love is weak, that's a personal problem because real love is the strongest thing in the universe.

America should be leading the world in green and clean solutions, and human rights. We shouldn't be leading the world in wars and incarceration rates and pollution. We can be a better country. I think we're going to be a better country.

Well, we in America are about to break up with oil. Why not break up with poverty and discrimination too?

You know it's not "you have to see it to believe it" - sometimes you have to believe it to see it. You have to know what you're looking for when you're seeing signs of an authoritarian takeover of your country.

If I didn't have that deep grounding, it would be very easy for me to just be someone who is consumed with anger and hatred. And that would be Trump's great victory: to turn us into replicas of him, just on the other side of a wall screen. I refuse to let me or my family or my movement or my friends be turned into the opposite of Trump. I want to be the antidote for Trump.

Now we stand at our own crossroads, looking out upon two futures: one with rising temperatures, rising oceans, and rising violence on a hot and strip-mined planet and another with expanding organic harvests, growing solar arrays, and deepening global partnerships on a green and thriving Earth.

Come, then, let us go forward together with our united strength - and win a better future for generations to come.

Trump is much, much worse than people understand. A lot of his supporters are actually much, much better than people know. Most of his supporters are not signed up for an authoritarian coup. Most of his supporters are signing up for better jobs for themselves.