I remember when I was younger, and in school, our teachers showed us films of plastic in the ocean, starving polar bears and so on. I cried through all the movies. My classmates were concerned when they watched the film, but when it stopped, they started thinking about other things. I couldn’t do that. Those pictures were stuck in my head.

The way people look at me these days – that’s the same way I looked at President Obama before I met him. We tend to forget that people who’ve attained a certain position are human.

All the waste in a year from a nuclear power plant can be stored under a desk.

I have no human feelings.

I feel like if you’re a really good human being, you can try to find something beautiful in every single person, no matter what.

What air is to the body, to feel understood is to the heart.

If I feel good about my parenting, I have no interest in judging other people’s choices. If I feel good about my body, I don’t go around making fun of other people’s weight or appearance. We’re hard on each other because we’re using each other as a launching pad out of our own perceived deficiency.

Children wish fathers looked but with their eyes; fathers that children with their judgment looked; and either may be wrong.

Well, capitalism is a big problem, because with capitalism you’re just going to keep buying and selling things until there’s nothing else to buy and sell, which means gobbling up the planet.

When I was 11 I became very depressed. It had a lot to do with the climate and ecological crisis. I thought everything was just so wrong and nothing was happening and there’s no point in anything.

Sometimes it’s a form of love just to talk to somebody that you have nothing in common with and still be fascinated by their presence.

Never find fault with the absent.

A toddling little girl is a centre of common feeling which makes the most dissimilar people understand each other.

Technology is unlocking the innate compassion we have for our fellow human beings.

You should be attacking the carbon emissions, period, and whether it’s cap-and-trade or carbon tax or whatever, that’s the realm in which we should be playing.

We’ve gotta become the Martians. I’m a Martian – I tell you to become Martians. And we’ve gotta go to Mars and civilize Mars and build a whole civilization on Mars and then move out, 300 years from now into the universe. And when we do that, we have a chance of living forever.

I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.

The threat to the planet is us. It’s actually not a threat to the planet – it’s a threat to us.

We have a tendency to condemn people who are different from us, to define their sins as paramount and our own sinfulness as being insignificant.

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.

An eye for an eye only leads to more blindness.

The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.

The poor don’t know that their function in life is to exercise our generosity.

That sort of half sigh, which, accompanied by two or three slight nods of the head, is pity’s small change in general society.

Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire.

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

You pity the fool because you don’t want to beat up a fool! You know, pity is between sorry and mercy. See, if you pity him, you know, you won’t have to beat him up. So that’s why I say fools, you gotta give another chance because they don’t know no better. That’s why I pity them!

It’s a tragedy, in a way, that Americans are brought up to think that they cannot feel for other people and other beings just because they are different. They think they’re different. It’s very limiting.

When we have peace, then we have a chance to save the planet. But if we are not united in peace, if we do not practice mindful consumption, we cannot save our planet.

To add value to others, one must first value others.

We should all grow our own food and do our own waste processing, we really should.

Some people never go crazy, What truly horrible lives they must live.

The environmentalists say capitalism is killing our oceans, air, land, and forests. Capitalists argue that they provide food, fuel, and building materials for a growing world.

Do not do unto others as you expect they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.

I’m a radical environmentalist; I think the sooner we asphyxiate in our own filth, the better. The world will do better without us. Maybe some fuzzy animals will go with us, but there’ll be plenty of other animals, and they’ll be back.

We have to rethink our whole energy approach, which is hard to do because we’re so dependent on oil, not just for fuel but also plastic. If plastic vanished, there would be total chaos. We have to think quite carefully about using oil and its derivatives, because it’s not going to be around forever.

Life is relationship, living is relationship. We cannot live if you and I have built a wall around ourselves and just peep over that wall occasionally. Unconsciously, deeply, under the wall, we are related.

You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.

He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.

The healthy man does not torture others – generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.

I’m actually starting to like more and more people who have convictions that are unpopular.

The main message we want to get out there is that climate change is caused by the rotten economic system.

I think that once you fully understand the climate and ecological emergencies, then you know what you can do as well. And, of course, there’s a lot of things you can do in your everyday life, but we cannot be focusing on these individual things you can do. We have to see the full picture.

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

If you can, help others; if you cannot do that, at least do not harm them.

Taking bold action on climate change simply makes good business sense. It’s also the right thing to do for people and the planet. Setting a net-zero GHG emissions target by 2050 will drive innovation, grow jobs, build prosperity, and secure a better world for what will soon be 9 billion people.

Compassion is the basis of morality.

The future is green energy, sustainability, renewable energy.

I am sometimes sad when I hear the personal stories of Tibetan refugees who have been tortured or beaten. Some irritation, some anger comes. But it never lasts long. I always try to think at a deeper level, to find ways to console.

Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.

You have to see and smell and feel the circumstances of people to really understand them.

You see, I am trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across – not to just depict life – or criticize it – but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me, you actually experience the thing. You can’t do this without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful.

Some people say that the climate crisis is something that we will have created, but that is not true, because if everyone is guilty then no one is to blame. And someone is to blame.

The questions which one asks oneself begin, at least, to illuminate the world, and become one’s key to the experience of others.

A company shouldn’t get addicted to being shiny, because shiny doesn’t last.

It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.

Gain may be temporary and uncertain; but ever while you live, expense is constant and certain: and it is easier to build two chimneys than to keep one in fuel.

The notion that we have even one single veteran living on the streets should be just considered a travesty to all of us.

The effects of climate change are real and must be acted on.

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.

We need to, you know, restore people. We need to show mercy. I mean, because as much mercy as you show people, that’s the mercy you’re going to be receiving.