Van Jones Quotes & Sayings

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. — Van Jones

I'm excited about our rising generation. — Van Jones

I am sharing my faith with my sons. I pray, meditate and read devotionally. But let me be clear: I am a "person of faith" not because I am a saint, but because I am a sinner. — Van Jones

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

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. — Van Jones

If you look at my career over the past twenty years, I've always been trying to look around corners for low-income communities of color. — Van Jones

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

No one is above the law, and no one is beneath the law. — Van Jones

I consider myself to be sort of a progressive Afrofuturist that is deeply committed to social justice. — Van Jones

The time has come for a public-private community partnership to fix this country and put it back to work. — Van Jones

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. — Van Jones

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

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

Our point of view is, lets not be so elitist that we can't honor good, hard, dignified, ennobling work: people working with their hands, building things, putting up solar panels, weatherizing homes, working on organic agriculture, building wind farms. We don't have robots in society, so somebody has to do that work. Lets make sure that the people who can use that work get a chance to do it. I see that as a first step toward bigger and better things. — Van Jones

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. — Van Jones

"Big" government? Who wants that? I just want effective government. That means America's government needs to be big in some places, small in others and non-existent in others. — Van Jones

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

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

All the big ideas for getting us onto a lower carbon trajectory involve a lot of people doing a lot of work, and that's been missing from the conversation. This is a great time to go to the next step and ask, well, who's going to do the work? Who's going to invest in the new technologies? What are ways to get communities wealth, improved health, and expanded job opportunities out of this improved transition? — Van Jones

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. — Van Jones

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. — Van Jones

We need a much deeper understanding of exactly what it is our industrial society, in its present creation, is jeopardizing. We need a more profound perception of what is at stake. — Van Jones

If we keep pulling death from the ground, we will reap death from the skies. — Van Jones

Clean coal represents a breakthrough in the marketing of coal, but not in the science of burning coal. — Van Jones

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. — Van Jones

The main piece of technology in the green economy is a caulk gun. — Van Jones

Most green-collar jobs are middle-skill jobs. That means they require more education that a high-school diploma, but less than a four-year degree. — Van Jones

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

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

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. — Van Jones

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. — Van Jones

The end of the occupation. The right of return of the Palestinian people. These are critical dividing lines in human rights. We have to be here. No American would put up with an Israeli-style occupation of their hometown for 53 days let alone 54 years. U.S. tax dollars are funding violence against people of color inside the U.S. borders and outside the U.S. borders. — Van Jones

Formerly incarcerated people deserve a second shot at life - and all obstacles to their being able to find that second chance in the green sector should be removed. — Van Jones

Let us say: "We want to ensure that those communities that were locked out of the last century's pollution-based economy will be locked into the new clean and green economy. We know that we don't have any throwaway children or neighborhoods either. All of creation is precious and sacred. And we are all in this together. — Van Jones

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

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

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

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

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

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. — Van Jones

We just want government to be a smart, supportive, reliable partner to the forces that are working for good in this country. — Van Jones

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

Now, here's a good question: should serious people focus on global political instability - terrorism, failing states, nuclear weapons - or should we focus on global climate instability - droughts, floods, extreme weather? Here's the correct answer: yes, both, because climate disruption will make every other national security problem worse. — Van Jones

To solve the new century's mounting social and environmental problems, people of color activist and white activists need to be able to join forces. But all too often, the unconscious racism of white activists stands in the way of any effective, worthwhile collaboration. The Challenging White Supremacy Workshop is the most powerful tool that I have seen for removing the barriers to true partnerships between people of color and white folks. If the CWS trainings were mandatory for all white activists, the progressive movement in the United States would be unstoppable. — Van Jones

That we could live in a country with no rules for the rich, no rights for the poor, and no middle class to speak of, is wrong; it's a crime against the next generation and we've got to do something about it. — Van Jones

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. — Van Jones

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. — Van Jones

There are only two ways to have a middle class in your country: either you have highly skilled manufacturing jobs, or you have a highly skilled, well trained, knowledge-based workforce. In other words, college. — Van Jones

My definition of a green-collar job is this: a family-supporting, career-track job that directly contributes to preserving or enhancing environmental quality. — Van Jones

When it gets harder to love, love harder. — Van Jones

The chief moral obligation of the 21st Century is to build a green economy that is strong enough to lift people out of poverty. Those communities that were locked out of the last century's pollution-based economy must be locked into the new, clean and renewable economy. Our youth need green-collar jobs, not jails. — Van Jones

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. — Van Jones

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. — Van Jones

In the fourth quadrant (lower right), working-class people are motivated to take on green-collar jobs and start green businesses. — Van Jones

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. — Van Jones

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

We're going to be in an economic slowdown for a couple of years. So to take three months, four months, six months to spend this money the right way-we're not going to get a chance to spend a trillion dollars again! Ever. So let's do it the right way. — Van Jones

Let me say what I actually believe. I believe that 9/11 was a conspiracy, by Al Qaeda, and Osama Bin Laden, and no one else trying to hurt America. — Van Jones

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. — Van Jones

Ocean's remarkable stories, depth of commitment, and eloquent communication make him a fantastic resource for conferences, universities, and indeed everyone who wants a potent dose of grounded inspiration. — Van Jones

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. — Van Jones

We pull out of the ground death, we burn death in our power plants, and then we act shocked when we get death in the form of oil spills and global warming. — Van Jones

The Whitehouse is talking different because we are walking different — Van Jones

You've never seen a Columbine done by a black child. Never. They always say, 'We can't believe it happened here. We can't believe it's these suburban white kids.' It's only them! — Van Jones

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. — Van Jones

Former brownfields, depressed urban areas, and hard-hit rural towns blossom as eco-industrial parks, green enterprise zones, and eco-villages. Farmers' markets, community co-ops, and mobile markets get fresh, organic produce to the people who can't afford to shop at health-food stores. — Van Jones

A family-friendly "eco-populism" can mobilize and unite millions who, at this point, would be turned off by a more extreme set of demands. The momentum will build, through these early efforts, for more comprehensive solutions. — Van Jones

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. — Van Jones

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

A green economy begins to replace some of the clunking and chugging of ugly machines with the wise effort of beautiful, skilled people. That means more jobs. — Van Jones

Most people walking around in a mall or on a college campus are carrying on them better technology than the entire U.S. government had when it put a man on the moon. Each one of us is a walking technological superpower. — Van Jones

Now it's the age for the translator. It's the age for the bridge builder. It's the age for Velcro. It's the age for Lego. It's the age for combining what we already have into what we need. — Van Jones

Reversing global warming will take a World War II level of mobilization. It is the work of tens of millions, not hundreds of thousands. — Van Jones

Apparently, the fossil-fuel industry's strategy is to convince the American people that we should just burn all the way through the last of our oil and coal reserves. — Van Jones

Will the new environmental leaders fight for eco-equity in this new "green economy" they are birthing? — Van Jones

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. — Van Jones

Let us all say together: "We want to build a green economy strong enough to life people out of poverty. We want to create green pathways out of poverty and into great careers for America's children. We want this 'green wave' to life all boats. This country can save the polar bears and poor kids too. — Van Jones

Clean energy is hippy power. But its also cowboy power, it's rancher power, it's Appalachian power. — Van Jones

Government-mandated and -subsidized ethanol from corn will go down in history as the "Iraq War" of environmental solutions: ill-considered, costly, and disastrous. — Van Jones

The bombs the government drops in Iraq are the bombs that blew up in New York City. — Van Jones