Van Jones Quotes

I don't put myself above anyone, and I have as many shortcomings as any non-believer. I just choose to turn to a higher power to help me gain wisdom and, I hope, improve over time.

By kicking its carbon addiction, America will increase its national wealth and generate millions of jobs that can't be outsourced.

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.

The human family has invaluable friends and irreplaceable allies in the plant and animal worlds. We cannot continue to tug at the web of life without tearing a hole in the very fabric of our earthly existence - and eventually falling through that hole ourselves.

Donald Trump's a hell of a performer, he's a hell of an entertainer. If you put him on and let him say his crazy stuff, you're going to get a lot of viewers. If you take him off and have some sober discussion about what's going on in Syria, you're going to lose 80 percent of your audience.

People in red states and blue states can agree that clean air is better than dirty air; therefore we should use clean energy where we can.

Rich countries do civil wars with tweets and votes.

I'm excited about our rising generation.

You put Hillary Clinton up against Donald Trump, I'm scared of the choice no matter what you do.

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.

I want to be remembered as one of the great innovators among social justice advocates of the 21st Century.

People are going to have to do a big reset. But this is a big wake-up call to the entire establishment, including the Democrats. And not just because of the failure.

Playing the villain gets you higher ratings on reality TV and saying outrageous stuff on Twitter gets you more followers.

Everybody should be mad but anger only takes you so far. At some point, you'll have outrage fatigue and burn out.

When it gets harder to love, love harder.

We need to put pressure on Trump, to speak out very forcefully that he's the president of all Americans including Muslims, and that his administration, including his law enforcement, is going to take very, very seriously any crimes against any Americas based on their race or their faith, including Muslims. He needs to send that signal very, very soon and very, very clearly. Otherwise, he's going to be seen as culpable. And his silence may be interpreted as encouragement, rightly or wrongly.

[Donald Trump] is a horrible human being, but he ain't worse than Bull Connor. Fannie Lou loved Bull Connor and beat Bull Connor because she loved him.

Maybe we should be a little bit more tender-hearted.

In countries where there are real civil wars, people go through a lot, and we should be willing to go through a lot to help them.

Keith Ellison is the future of the Democratic Party, the future of the progressive movement.

I think it would be good to get somebody a job. Right now we're in a bubble of green rhetoric and a bowl of actual green investment and job creation. So my goal for next year is to move from inspiration to implementation on this stuff.

I've had a chance to meet some of my civil rights heroes and, more recently, members of the young generation around [Barack] Obama, people in their teens and twenties who were determined to make history and who were too idealistic to think that what they were trying to do might be impossible. They proved that visionary pragmatism can win over the majority. That comes from a particular place in your heart that generation Y is offering America. They just can't afford to be naive now, in terms of the ferocity of the opposition.

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

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.

What I saw during the Hillary Clinton campaign [2016] with data dummies who were more concerned with polls than people, they were more concerned with donors than voters. And it wasn't a lot of heart felt on that campaign and I think it left us vulnerable.

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

[Donald Trump] has a tremendous opportunity, you know, this week, to come out and say I don't want that.

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

We should use the transition to a better energy strategy as an opportunity to create a better economy and a better country all around.

There's a lot of things that I think you got to deal with. Hillary Clinton had to put down a rebellion in her own party, then she's going to have to put down the [Donald] Trump rebellion and then try to govern.

I'm only 42, and I've got a lot more tricks up my sleeve.

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

Rather than continuing to base our economy on a finite supply of dead things, we can base it on sources that are practically infinite and eternal: the sun, the moon, and the Earth's inner fire.

We're going to do three things: teach-ins across the country so people can learn about each other's issues and causes; parties with a purpose so we can shake our butts and not let this man steal our joy; and we're going to do big concerts and revivals with some of the biggest artists in the world. If [Donald] Trump can have 20,000 people for big hate rallies then we can have 40,000 people in arenas for love rallies.

Even if we can solve the carbon problem for coal, it is still a non-renewable resource. At some point, coal supplies will drop.

I used to go to all the environmental conferences when I wasn't an invited speaker. I was just somebody in the back taking a lot of notes. It was when I was least visible that I came up with the most cool stuff. Now, because I don't get to be Clark Kent, I feel like my learning curve is slowing way down. I'm always afraid the conversation will move on and I'll be up at the front of the room saying last year's speech.

We need to aim high - in the area of 20-25 percent - to create the urgent demand for new technologies, manufacturing plants and green jobs.

The first few feet of sea-level rise alone will displace more than 100 million people worldwide and turn all our major Gulf and Atlantic coast cities into preKatrina New Orleans - below sea level and facing super-hurricanes. - Joseph Romm210. The generations living today get to retrofit, reboot, and reenergize a nation. We get to rescue and reinvent the U.S. economy.

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.

I'm an environmentalist, and I don't want you to have a disposable aluminum can. I sure as hell don't want to have a disposable worker and I don't care who you vote for. You've got to have that as a moral position. Otherwise, my concern is, all we are is this petty interest group people who can't say anything back to a petty interest group of white nationalism.

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.

Dirty energy is a finite resource; the more of it we use, the scarcer it becomes.

The problem is that we didn't fight the way we should've fought. We made it be about [Donald Trump] and [Hillary Clinton] as opposed to making it be about us. If we had said this was a fight, not about "I'm with Her" but "I'm with Us" then maybe we would've had a different attitude toward her.

I saw in the Nineties that we were increasing police power with get tough policies and 3 strikes laws, but without additional oversights.

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

I think we were naive during the first two years of the [Barack] Obama Administration because the Republicans didn't fight us on this point during the 2008 Presidential Election. Obama and McCain both ran on a clean energy platform. But now, uncontested lies have eroded hard-won public understanding. So, we have to go back and make the case again.

The problem isn't that the green jobs aren't sexy enough. It's that they're not plentiful enough. A young person looking for a job isn't looking just for a sexy job, they're looking for any job.

There's no higher honor, in my estimation, than being asked to serve in the White House.