I mean, people aren’t continuing like this and not doing anything because they are evil, or because they don’t want to. We aren’t destroying the biosphere because we are selfish. We are doing it simply because we are unaware.

Lying is not only saying what isn’t true. It is also, in fact especially, saying more than is true and, in the case of the human heart, saying more than one feels. We all do it, every day, to make life simpler.

All these primary impulses, not easily described in words, are the springs of man’s actions.

Men are rather reasoning than reasonable animals, for the most part governed by the impulse of passion.

Those who are believed to be most abject and humble are usually most ambitious and envious.

We will have to leave this planet, and we’re going to leave it, and it’s going to make this planet better.

I just always wanted to study human behavior because every psychologist that I would talk to would tell me I was bipolar, and I know I’m not bipolar, so I had to perform a psychoanalysis on myself to find out that I have unresolved grief.

Evolution can go to hell as far as I am concerned. What a mistake we are. We have mortally wounded this sweet life-supporting planet – the only one in the whole Milky Way – with a century of transportation whoopee.

In the case of the environment, there’s no one to bail it out.

In California, they don’t throw their garbage away – they make it into TV shows.

Every other civilized nation in the world has been compelled to care for its forests, and so must we if waste and destruction are not to go on to the bitter end, leaving America as barren as Palestine or Spain.

All cruelty springs from weakness.

Mere humans who root through their refrigerators at three o’clock in the morning can only produce writing that matches what they do. And that includes me.

I did this book ‚Harvest for Hope,‘ and I learned so much about food. And one thing I learned is that we have the guts not of a carnivore, but of an herbivore. Herbivore guts are very long because they have to get the last bit of nutrition out of leaves and things.

We do not see people as they are, but as they appear to us. And these appearances are usually misleading.

We’re the only animal that wakes up and doesn’t stretch.

When a hundred men stand together, each of them loses his mind and gets another one.

Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.

It is a big temptation to me, when I create a character for a novel, to say that he is what he is because of faulty wiring, or because of microscopic amounts of chemicals which he ate or failed to eat on that particular day.

If burning fossil fuels was so bad that it threatened our very existence, how could we just continue like before? Why were there no restrictions? Why wasn’t it made illegal? To me, that did not add up.

But does that mean that war and violence are inevitable? I would argue not because we have also evolved this amazingly sophisticated intellect, and we are capable of controlling our innate behavior a lot of the time.

Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.

I think my message to the politicians who have within their power the ability to make change is, ‚Do you really, really not care about the future of your great-grandchildren? Because if we let the world continue to be destroyed the way we are now, what’s the world going to be like for your great-grandchildren?‘

What we call Man’s power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.

I have no human feelings.

Generally speaking, if a human being never shows anger, then I think something’s wrong. He’s not right in the brain.

The Chinese have figured out that they have a giant environmental problem. Folks in Beijing, some days, literally can’t breathe. Over a million Chinese die prematurely every year because of air pollution.

A diplomatic solution that puts significant and verifiable constraints on Iran’s nuclear program represents the best and most sustainable chance to ensure that America, Israel, the entire Middle East will never be menaced by a nuclear-armed Iran.

We cannot command Nature except by obeying her.

The more things are forbidden, the more popular they become.

I just think people should invest in the world. Don’t invest in fashion, but invest in the world.

I’m frugal. I’m not a very acquisitive woman. I never waste food. If you prepare your own food, you engage with the world, it tastes alive. It tastes good.

As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action arise, human science is at a loss.

It’s the poorer people in tropical zones who will get really hit by climate change – as well as some ecosystems, which nobody wants to see disappear.

I’ve grown accustomed to hotels and drastic climate change.

Here at this site, Solyndra expects to make enough solar panels each year to generate 500 megawatts of electricity. And over the lifetime of this expanded facility, that could be like replacing as many as eight coal-fired power plants.

Force always attracts men of low morality.

If you can’t eat it, shoot it, or wear it, don’t bring it.

Two out of every five people on Earth today owe their lives to the higher crop outputs that fertilizer has made possible.

It felt like I was the only one who cared about the climate and the ecological crisis. My parents didn’t care about it, my classmates didn’t care about it, my relatives didn’t care about this. I mean nobody I knew cared about this and I felt like I was the only one.

Today, we’re very dependent on cheap energy. We just take it for granted – all the things you have in the house, the way industry works.

I don’t know what’s the matter with people: they don’t learn by understanding; they learn by some other way – by rote, or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!

Among those who dislike oppression are many who like to oppress.

I believe it is universally understood and acknowledged that all men will ever act correctly, unless they have a motive to do otherwise.

Religions, which condemn the pleasures of sense, drive men to seek the pleasures of power. Throughout history power has been the vice of the ascetic.

The main thing that’s missing in energy is an incentive to create things that are zero-CO2-emitting and that have the right scale and reliability characteristics.

Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers. In the perfect stranger we perceive man himself; the image of a God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of wisdom of a mustache.

War contributes greatly to global warming, which shouldn’t surprise us. All those bombs going off, all those rockets, all those planes and helicopters. All that fuel of various kinds being used. It pollutes the air and water of this very fragile and interconnected planet.

I have seen firsthand that agricultural science has enormous potential to increase the yields of small farmers and lift them out of hunger and poverty.

When we build, let us think that we build for ever.

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

Two things control men’s nature, instinct and experience.

I’m glad to see that BMW is bringing an electric car to market. That’s cool.

In Tanzania, the chimps are isolated in a very tiny patch of forest. I flew over it 13 years ago and realized that, basically, all the trees had gone, that people all around the park are struggling to survive. It became very clear that there was no way to protect the chimps while the people were in this dire circumstance.

The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray.

The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men.

One of the most mawkish of human delusions is the notion that friendship should be eternal, or, at all events, life-long, and that any act which puts a term to it is somehow discreditable.

We must get rid of fossil fuels by developing injection systems for automobiles, which can run on bio-fuel.

If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.

We’re running the most dangerous experiment in history right now, which is to see how much carbon dioxide the atmosphere… can handle before there is an environmental catastrophe.

The symbolism of the climate strike is that if you adults don’t give a damn about my future, I won’t either.