Al Gore Quotes

There's no doubt that in the last two to three decades, American democracy has been hacked. It was based on the regular harvesting of the wisdom of crowds, but now big sources of special interest money are able to prevent the passage of almost any meaningful reform that's aimed at the public interest.

Here is the truth: The Earth is round; Saddam Hussein did not attack us on 9/11; Elvis is dead; Obama was born in the United States; and the climate crisis is real.

In order to solve the climate crisis, we need to solve the democracy crisis.

The debate's over. The people who dispute the international consensus on global warming are in the same category now with the people who think the moon landing was staged on a movie lot in Arizona.

Throughout history, religious wars have always been the most brutal and cruel and merciless.

...the emergent capabilities bursting forth from the revolutionary advances in the life sciences are about to make us the principal agent of evolution.

We need to put a price on carbon, and that's what cap-and-trade does and that's also what a CO2 tax does. As long as our current valuation in the marketplace tells us every minute of every day that it's perfectly all right to dump 90 million tons of global warming into the thin atmosphere surrounding the planet every 24 hours as if that atmosphere is an open sewer, then the individual actions are not going to solve the problem.

Many of the green places and open spaces that need protecting most today are in our own neighborhoods. In too many places, the beauty of local vistas has been degraded by decades of ill-planned and ill-coordinated development.

Political will is a renewable resource, and everyone can have it in abundance if they so choose.

Well, the title "An Inconvenient Truth" is a way of highlighting the reasons why some people, including the president, don't seem to accept the truth.

I'm not a psychologist, and I don't know how to play a more sophisticated role than the one that I have played for quite a few years, and that is spending a lot of time with these hard-working scientists in the various fields of expertise that relate to the climate crisis, learning as fully as I can the truths they are discovering, asking them to explain it in language that's simple enough for me to understand and then use that language to convey the essence of it, and then letting the chips fall where they may.

The 'well-informed citizenry is in danger of becoming the 'well-amused audience'.

In physics there's the old law for every action there's a equal amount of reaction. Sometimes that's true in politics. If somebody's out there making nonsensical statements, but wielding power behind them a lot of people say, "Well, I need to react to that." Another reason for the increased prominence of the climate-change issue is the Paris Agreement itself. It's not a small thing when just about every nation in the entire world comes together and makes an historic agreement like this. It's a big deal. And the old cliché "The train is leaving the station" kind of applies.

To use a Southern euphemism, our space program has been snake-bit.

The misconception that there is serious disagreement among scientists about global warming is actually an illusion that has been deliberately fostered by a relatively small but extremely well-funded cadre of special interests, including Exxon Mobil and a few other oil, coal, and utilities companies. These companies want to prevent any new policies that would interfere with their current business plans that rely on the massive unrestrained dumping of global warming pollution into the Earth's atmosphere every hour of every day.

There's lots about politics I don't feel comfortable with. To talk about the politics of future ideas is impossible in soundbite form.

That we can be e pluribus Unum - out of one, many

Although I have a variety of obligations, the climate crisis is my central concern.

I have a personal staff that helps me scour the internet and other media for the latest scientific peer-reviewed findings, the latest examples of climate-related extreme weather events, and the latest examples of progress. The world is in the midst of a sustainability revolution that has the scope of the industrial revolution, but with the speed of the digital revolution. That's not enough without new laws and the right kind of political leadership. But it does give us a base from which to build a movement that will save us from the most catastrophic consequences of the climate crisis.

Now we have things that are obviously false, leading us to war, leading us to deny people health care, leading us to ignore the climate crisis. We have to restore the integrity of the democratic conversation.

What's really important is how our country gets through Trump period, because nothing's getting done in Washington. Every day it's another set of tweets and another set of controversies. And they're not getting anything done.

Junkies find veins in their toes when the veins in their arms collapse. Developing tars sands is the equivalent.

I have felt for a long time that the pathway to solving the climate crisis is through the building of a massive grassroots army of men and women who will go out there and win the conversation on climate, and persuade businesses, and universities, and towns to switch to renewable energy and to reduce emissions. And the big change from ten years ago is that people are way more receptive, not only to the message that we have to act, not only to the message that now we can act, we have the solutions now - that's the biggest change - but also willing to make a commitment that we will act.

I work to promote the idea of sustainable capitalism driven by long-term considerations rather than quarterly profits, which seeks to better people's lives and the planet rather than destroy them.

Our civilization is experiencing unprecedented changes across many realms, largely due to the rapid advancement of information technology. The ability to code and understand the power of computing is crucial to success in today's hyper-connected world.

Making consumer choices that reward eco-friendly products and companies is a great way to start.

As long as the government's actions are secret, it cannot be held accountable. A government for the people and by the people should be transparent to the people.

I just think that a much more important part of the problem we face, which was evident 10 years ago and is even more evident now, is that the way we share information among ourselves as American citizens has been radically transformed. The line between news and entertainment has almost dissolved, where ratings now have a big impact on what kinds of stories are covered and not stories.

During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.

...it is appropriate to have an over representation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are, and how hopeful it is that we are going to solve this crisis.

Tobacco addiction sinks its claws in deeply, it's just as powerful of [sic] an addiction as heroin or crack cocaine.

If you look at the way all of the new reform movements dedicated to the public interest are living and thriving on the Internet, I do think there is still some considerable hope that the full participation of individuals in that conversation of democracy can once again restore the integrity of the way our democracy works.

We're all capable of mistakes, but I do not care to enlighten you on the mistakes we may or may not have made.

I'm passionate about restoring the efficacy of American democracy, making capitalism sustainable, prioritizing advances in technology, and seizing the opportunities to use that kind of innovation to help usher in a new economy that doesn't rely on carbon-spewing fossil fuels.

The gay rights movement of recent years has been an inspiring victory for humanity and it is in the tradition of the civil rights movement when I was a young boy in the South, the women's suffrage movement when my mother was a young woman in Tennessee, the abolition movement much farther back, and the anti-apartheid movement when I was in the House of Representatives. All of these movements have one thing in common: the opposition to progress was rooted in an outdated understanding of morality.

The spiritual sense of our place in nature... can be traced to the origins of human civilization... The last vestige of organized goddess worship was eliminated by Christianity.

There are some bright spots, to be sure, but the internet is still in a Wild West phase, as was the case during the early age of the printing press as well.

When you talk about President Trump, the cable networks turned over so many hours of prime time to him. Why? Because he was entertaining, but also because it drove ratings. And that is different from what the news media is supposed to focus on.

When fear displaces reason, the result is often irrational hatred and division.

Our new technologies, combined with our numbers, have made us, collectively, a force of nature

I'm asking you in your sermons to do the work of the Lord here on earth. I ask for your help in getting that message out urgently tomorrow.

Science is warning us that if we do not quickly reduce the global warming pollution that is trapping so much of the heat our planet normally radiates back out of the atmosphere, we are in danger of creating a permanent 'carbon summer'.

If the only tool we use to analyse what's valuable is a price tag, then those things that don't have price tags begin to look like they have no value.

As many know, the Chinese expression for "crisis" consists of two characters side by side. The first is the symbol for "danger," the second the symbol for "opportunity."

I'm not a vegetarian, but I have cut back sharply on the meat that I eat.

I will tell you that what gives me a sense of joy is having work to do that justifies pouring every ounce of energy I have into it. That's really a blessing to have in your life. And it gives you energy back when you have the privilege of doing work that makes you feel that way.

Take it from me - every vote counts. In our Democracy, every vote has power. And never forget - that power is yours. Don't let anyone take it away or talk you into throwing it away. And let's make sure that this time every vote is counted.

I'm a big fan of Bitcoin ... Regulation of money supply needs to be depoliticized.