Van Jones Quotes

It is simply the truth that the political system that I am part of has degenerated to the point that it needs fundamental change.

My whole deal is reforming, changing, shaking up Washington. It sure needs it.

Everyone thinks politics will just go on the way it is. I don't agree.

Nothing is irreparable in politics.

I want to change Scotland, but the only way we can change Scotland is by changing the Scottish Labour Party.

And I think Governor Romney has a shot if the 'R' next to his name doesn't just stand for 'Republican,' it stands for 'reformer.'

Well, let me tell you, any conservative that's unhappy with George Bush warms my heart, in any way that they can wake up and smell the coffee would be really great.

I'm of the establishment but anti-establishment.

We need someone to turn things around in America.

I speak directly to the people, and I know that the people of California want to have better leadership. They want to have great leadership. They want to have somebody that will represent them. And it doesn't matter if you're a Democrat or a Republican, young or old.

Politics is repetition. It is not change. Change is something beyond what we call politics. Change is the essence politics is supposed to be the means to bring into being.

The duration of every political phase is just as long as it takes to unveil its shortcomings and evil. While discovering its defects, it makes way for a new phase, liberated from these failings. Thus, these impairments that appear in a situation and destroy it are the very forces of human evolution, as they raise humanity to a more corrected state.

Change: In politics, the substitution of one disappointment for another.

From the quarrels and seditions which are often stirred up in a commonwealth, it never results that the citizens dissolve it, as often happens in the case of other associations; but only that they change its form into some other

We Republicans came to Washington to change it, and Washington changed us.

You cannot change the psychology of a people by a coup d'etat, or by some quick process of political chemistry convert an idle nobleman into a serious worker, or a medical student into a full-blown statesman.

Nothing is so common as to see a political upheaval pass practically unnoticed merely because the names of the leaders and their parties remain the same.

… our representative system has failed.

Because I really believe that Russia needs a fresh face, a new generation, to be seen on the political stage.

In politics, reform never comes before crisis.

People are genuinely excited about taking the country in another direction.

We absolutely have to change the status quo in Washington.

I don't even think the biggest divide is between Republicans and Democrats. I think it's between institutionalists and reformers.

This is what a crisis does: It makes you question the status quo. That doesn't mean that after a crisis we move into some kind of utopia. But it is an opportunity for political change.

Britain's great postwar meritocratic experiment was broad-based, but it was in politics that the change was most dramatic.