For way too long the politicians and people in power have got away with not doing anything at all to fight the climate crisis and ecological crisis.

What I’m asking for is hard. It’s easier to be cynical; to accept that change isn’t possible, and politics is hopeless, and to believe that our voices and actions don’t matter. But if we give up now, then we forsake a better future.

I think there are more politicians in favor of electric cars than against. There are still some that are against, and I think the reasoning for that varies depending on the person, but in some cases, they just don’t believe in climate change – they think oil will last forever.

Even if the politics needed doesn’t exist today, we still need to use our voices to make sure that the people in power are focused on the right things. Because this is a democracy, and in a democracy, people are the ones who run the country.

Unlike some politicians, I can admit to a mistake.

Nowadays, politically, everybody is promising everything. That’s the only way you can get elected.

To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.

To shake your rump is to be environmentally aware.

I don’t like politicians, and I don’t like politics. I definitely don’t want to be associated with any of them.

I don’t care about hate and threats from climate crisis deniers. I just ignore them.

The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be… The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.

During the 60’s, I was, in fact, very concerned about the civil rights movement.

I am such a political person.

If you insist upon fighting to protect me, or ‚our‘ country, let it be understood soberly and rationally between us that you are fighting to gratify a sex instinct which I cannot share; to procure benefits where I have not shared and probably will not share.

When I look back on what I did for the Left, I’m in a small way quite proud of some of it – I only wish I’d done more.

I think the self-burning itself on practice of non-violence. These people, you see, they easily use bomb explosive, more casualty people. But they didn’t do that. Only sacrifice their own life. So this also is part of practice of non-violence.

In the political system, we are a team; politics and bureaucracy, we are a team. The politicians, bureaucrats and the people, we are a team.

Africa is a continent in flames. And deep down, if we really accepted that Africans were equal to us, we would all do more to put the fire out. We’re standing around with watering cans, when what we really need is the fire brigade.

My own feeling is that one should refuse to participate in any activity that implements American aggression – thus tax refusal, draft refusal, avoidance of work that can be used by the agencies of militarism and repression, all seem to me essential.

The people who tend to raise antiwar slogans will do so generally when it’s American or British interests involved.

Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.

I’ve never written a political song. Songs can’t save the world. I’ve gone through all that.

My son Emilio is running for Congress to continue the fight for social justice.

We are at a time in history where everyone with any insight of the climate crisis that threatens our civilisation – and the entire biosphere – must speak out in clear language, no matter how uncomfortable and unprofitable that may be.

I think the American people, with some justification, think that most politicians live in la-la land.

Civil disobedience’s main goal typically is to try to arouse and inspire others to join and do something. Well, sometimes that is a good tactic, sometimes not.

Some of the most moving experiences I’ve had are just in black churches in the South, during the Civil Rights Movement, where people were getting beaten, killed, really struggling for the most elementary rights.

I would like to see a future where artists think that they have a right to contemplate things like global warming.

I am never going to have anything more to do with politics or politicians. When this war is over I shall confine myself entirely to writing and painting.

When I was maybe eight or nine years old, I first learned about the climate crisis in school. My teachers taught me about it and we saw films and pictures of plastic in the ocean and extreme weather events. Those pictures were just stuck in my head; I thought, there is no point in anything.

And so I have studied, I have to tell you, revolutions and uprisings for a long time. They are all slightly different, but what they all look for is some kind of a mechanism to go from an authoritarian system to an open, democratic system.

I thought my life was mapped out. Research, living in the forest, teaching and writing. But in ’86 I went to a conference and realised the chimpanzees were disappearing. I had worldwide recognition and a gift of communication. I had to use them.

I stand for anti-bigotry, anti-Semitism, and anti-racism.

I like to complain and do nothing to make things better.

Most members of Congress are politicians. They’re bores.

I had three points I wanted to make: That not everybody in Hollywood is on the left, that Obama has broken a lot of the promises he made when he took office, and that the people should feel free to get rid of any politician who’s not doing a good job. But I didn’t make up my mind exactly what I was going to say until I said it.

I’ve rarely kept my distance from kind of – I don’t know if we can call it politics, but kind of, civic engagement and that kind of thing, except I tended to think, ‚Well, do it yourself before you start telling other people what they should be doing.‘

Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.

Some say we should not engage in activism. Instead we should leave everything to our politicians and just vote for a change instead. But what do we do when there is no political will? What do we do when the politics needed are nowhere in sight?

Now we’re in the midst of not just advocating for change, not just calling for change – we’re doing the grinding, sometimes frustrating work of delivering change – inch by inch, day by day.

Every reform movement has a lunatic fringe.

We reached a high point in my opinion with the passage of the civil rights legislation and Martin Luther King’s success and the crusade of others. I think we kind of breathed a sigh of relief as if we had achieved the end of racial discrimination or white supremacy.

Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.

I was so upset with what was going on in the world. I just couldn’t stand the idea of being people tortured and that we even had such a thing as war. I hated the older generation, who had not done anything about it. Punk was a call-to-arms for me.

Nothing is being done to stop the climate and ecological emergency from happening and to secure the future wellbeing for future generations.

The real danger is not inaction. The real danger is when politicians and CEOs are making it look like action is happening when in fact nothing is being done.

You can rebel in different ways. Civil disobedience is rebelling. As long as it’s peaceful, of course.

You can jail a Revolutionary, but you can’t jail the Revolution.

We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it.

Solving the climate crisis is the greatest and most complex challenge that homo sapiens have ever faced. The main solution, however, is so simple that even a small child can understand it. We have to stop our emissions of greenhouse gases.

I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

The sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality.

People tell me that they are so hopeful when they see me and other children ‚school-striking,‘ and they say, ‚Oh the children are going to save us.‘ But no, we aren’t. We are too young to be able to do that. We don’t have time to wait for us to grow up and fix this in the future.

Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.

In terms of my involvement in ‚don’t ask, don’t tell‘ and marriage equality and anti-bullying and social emotional learning in schools – these are all things that arise out of my relationship with the world and with my fans.

Everybody’s worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there’s a really easy way: stop participating in it.

This is a wonderful planet, and it is being completely destroyed by people who have too much money and power and no empathy.

Politicians love regulating. That’s part of the whole power structure.

America is the student who defies the odds to become the first in a family to go to college – the citizen who defies the cynics and goes out there and votes – the young person who comes out of the shadows to demand the right to dream. That’s what America is about.

I feel very happy to be living in Berkeley because there are a lot of people who are politically active here.