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.

Mr. Vice President, the most fiscally conservative thing this government has ever done, is to invest massively in the green part of the recovery. Because those green dollars are the hardest working dollars in the history of American politics. That same dollar that is being used to cut energy bills, is also cutting global warming gas emissions, is also cutting unemployment, is also cutting poverty, through retrofits it's also raising the value of homes, is also by cleaning the air, cutting asthma rates.

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

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

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

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

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.

That's one component: rather than creating job-training pipelines that put these kids at the back of the line for the last century's pollution-based jobs, we need to be creating opportunities for them to be at the front of the line for the new clean and green jobs.

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

The time has come to move beyond eco-elitism to eco-populism.

When it gets harder to love, love harder.

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.

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.

The problem that we have in America now is, some people only see the positive stuff and wave off the toxic stuff, and some people only see the toxic stuff and wave off the positive stuff. You can't have an honest conversation.

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

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

Barack Obama volunteered to be the Captain of the Titanic AFTER it hit the iceberg

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.

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

Listen, here's reality. It is completely unfair and absolutely necessary that people who have been oppressed and marginalized have to lead everybody. That is MLK, that is Dolores Huerta, that is Fannie Lou Hamer, that is Ella Jo Baker, that is Nelson Mandela. You walk down the line.

The time has come to move beyond eco-elitism to eco-populism. Ecopopulism. To change our laws and culture, the green movement justice, political solutions and social change.

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.

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.

Anybody who's mad should run for something.

To shift America (and the world) to a cleaner energy economy, millions of people will have to go to work in new industries. This necessary shift opens up tremendous new opportunities for work and wealth creation.

Right now, the government is spending billions of dollars supporting the problem-makers in the U.S. economy - the polluters, despoilers, incarcerators, and warmongers.

I cannot in good conscience ask my colleagues to expend precious time and energy defending or explaining my past. We need all hands on deck, fighting for the future.

If [Donald ] Trump goes after - if Trump fails, frankly, to stand up right now for the Muslim community - right now, Muslims are being bullied. Women wearing hijabs are being bullied and people are saying, "Trump, Trump!" when they're doing it.

Frankly, the conservatives need to be better conservatives. Real conservatives actually respect our Constitution and would stand up to an authoritarian. Real conservatives believe in clean, limited government and would stand up to anybody who is basically setting up a kleptocracy, nepotism, and crony capitalism. And real conservatives are actually strong for America and not weak for Russia.

Civility isn't just some optional value in a multicultural, multistate democratic republic. Civility is the key to civilization.

Americans need to see people who are honestly trying to learn from each other, even as we make our own points powerfully and fight for our own values and policies.

Deep patriots don't just sing the song, 'America the Beautiful' and then go home. We actually stick around to defend America’s beauty -- from the oil spillers, the clear-cutters and the mountaintop removers. Deep patriots don't just visit the Statue of Liberty and send a postcard home to grandma. We defend the principles upon which that great monument was founded -- 'give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.'

Any successful long-term strategy will require that the green wave fully and passionately embrace the principles of eco-equity.

We have the chance to build this new energy economy in ways that reflect our deepest values of inclusion, diversity, and equal opportunity for everyone.

Distorting attacks when people already don't trust you is not smart.

In a two-year period, all my dreams came true: the birth of a son... publishing a best-selling book... launching a successful organization... joining the [Barack] Obama Administration... And then all my nightmares came true.

Let's stop wasting billions of dollars on prisons, which send people home who are too often less capable and more damaged than when they went in. We would have safer neighborhoods if we spent the same money on true rehabilitation, job training, employment and entrepreneurship.

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.

We need to send hundreds of millions of dollars down to our public high schools, vocational colleges, and community colleges to begin training people in the green-collar work of the future - things like solar-panel installation, retrofitting buildings that are leaking energy, wastewater reclamation, organic food, materials reuse and recycling.

I said and stand by it. I said that race was a part, and there was a part, that alt-right part, that was a part of the whitelash. And if you listened to the whole quote, you would agree with what I said.

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

I think there's going to be a tug of war in this country over who are the real patriots because at a time of national crisis, economic collapse and calamity, ecological peril and social dislocation, the American people deserve to be a partner to the American government.

[Donald] Trump phenomenon is just marbles with all this toxic stuff, the misogyny, the outright bigotry and so now people are left to try to pull this apart.

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

To change our laws and culture, the green movement must attract and include the majority of all people, not just the majority of affluent people.

We need to think bigger, dream bigger, and get bigger.

I think we have every reason to hope for the best but expect and prepare for the worst.

When you take the people who most need work and connect them with the work that most needs doing, you save. You save that young person’s life, you save a whole bunch of money, and you save the soul of this country when you invest and give people a chance, give people hope, give people opportunity.

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

Now I think liberals have gone from underreacting to Trump and saying that Trump is just a clown and a buffoon, and that Hillary Clinton's going to kick his ass, to now overreacting, and saying, "Oh my God, 60 million people consciously endorsed a white supremacist for president."