Robert Greenwald Quotes

The disaster in the Gulf was no accident. It was the result of years of oil money buying off politicians to lead to an unregulated and ill focused addiction to oil and drilling. The doomed fate of the local fisherman and the environment were foretold in the infamous chants of 'Drill, Baby, Drill.

Our goal isn't to close Wal-Mart down. It is to make it a better, more humane company toward its employees and the communities it is in.

Even though the Koch brothers' businesses put 4.4 million people at risk with pollutants, the Kochs have poured millions into lobbyists' coffers and political contributions to ensure their bottom line stays unchanged by the most basic safety precaution.

What I always try to do is make the political personal.

People may be surprised at how hard and difficult filmmaking can be, having the creativity and the technical aspects together is very hard to do.

It appears the Kochs are among the most defensive billionaires, preferring the comfy confines of their callous and intellectually dishonest world view.

A lot of progressives really believe that if we can turn out one more white paper with bullet points about how to fix Problem X, we can fix it. But that's not primarily the way you reach people or move them. You reach the heart first.

Economic research demonstrates that tax dollars spent in early childhood development provide extraordinary return on investment-16% for high quality programs

New media has made it possible for filmmakers like me to get their message out. No big Hollywood studios are needed anymore to make and release a film. More and more people are watching movies and television online than going to the movie theater because of costs. This freedom gives me the opportunity to create the film I want to be seen and heard.

The Occupy movement has drawn attention to how too many in the 1 percent get to play by their own rules while exploiting the 99 percent.

You're talking to somebody who two years ago couldn't figure out how to use e-mail and who now has carpal tunnel. It has totally changed in that these films would not be getting out to people the way they're getting out without the Internet.

Filmmakers now have the freedom to create the type of movie they want. More screenwriters, directors, and producers now have the chance to see their words on screen now that VOD and streaming outlets are available. Overall, it's a good thing for filmmaking and documentarians.

Artists tend to be people of strong character and opinion. Often they are dismissed in our culture if they don't fit a certain mainstream media mold. It's a reason why filmmakers are now releasing films online. Art, in any form can invoke various emotions and actions. I think some can be frightened of the power that a simple image can invoke and that's why they tend to shy away from it. But art documents moments in our history and that image is often what many people remember of a certain time.

Corporate conglomerates run without regulation do not work in the service of society, and run reckless and unchecked whenever possible.

We know that BP cuts safety corners, takes risks, and is unconcerned about anything other than their own profit.

After a short period of time in Pakistan, it's clear that drones are not a security solution. If you believe in drones, the original idea was to go after so-called high-value targets, which according to the NYU-Stanford study 2% of the people killed by drones are high-value targets - now, who are all the rest of the people? Well, it's a secret program, so therefore the CIA doesn't have to tell us anything, yet they claim that with each attack they're getting militants. Now we have people coming forward, saying, actually, no we're not terrorists.

Ideology has consequences.

It makes no sense to spend $6 billion a month to go after 100 Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Everyone knows drones are being deployed outside the US for assassinations. Let's say you even believe in drones. Shouldn't we have a system that would "justify" their use? i.e. we did this attack, because these bad guys were there, and here's what we did. We don't even have that.

As far as the he Taliban goes, it is not one unified organization Some of them are brutal to the population, some are less aggressive. But the key is that none of them pose an immediate threat to the U.S.