Cory Booker Quotes

Native communities are focal points for the excrement of industrial society.

What happened in Flint is immoral. The children of Flint are just as precious as the children of any other part of America.

I mean, think of Flint. I mean, think of the lead poisoning of thousands of poor and black children across the United States.

The environmental crisis arises from a fundamental fault: our systems of production - in industry, agriculture, energy and transportation - essential as they are, make people sick and die.

In every case, the environmental hazards were made known only by independent scientists, who were often bitterly opposed by the corporations responsible for the hazards.

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.

If we talk about the environment, for example, we have to talk about environmental racism - about the fact that kids in South Central Los Angeles have a third of the lung capacity of kids in Santa Monica.

Clean water is not an expenditure of Federal funds; clean water is an investment in the future of our country.

Climate change is an economic, public health, and environmental issue that we have a moral responsibility to address.

This is America, but the way that the people of Flint are being treated with this water crisis is like a third-world country.

There's no doubt that corporations have been getting away with dumping their pollution into our environment for decades and that they're especially emboldened to pollute in low-income communities and, typically, low-income communities of color.

I just heard that some lead was coming into Newark into schools, and I asked the question, "Whose schools?" They said, "The Black and the Brown." Is that an accident? I don't think so. We are being designed to be destroyed - and unless we see that, and come together as a people under vicious attack we will suffer the consequences of evil that's in high places.

A country in which the people are not healthy physically and psychologically, are poorly educated and illiterate, will never rise to the peaks of world civilization.

I think the scientists have really caught the attention of the people of this country, and of course, they elected representatives by their very clear pronouncement that if we don't do something, we'll be in a lot of trouble.

Just between you and me, shouldn’t the World Bank be encouraging MORE migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs [Less Developed Countries]?... I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that... I’ve always though that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly UNDER-polluted, their air quality is probably vastly inefficiently low compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City.

The country can't get well if the people are sick. And the people are sick.

I wanna end the international embarrassment of the United States of America being the only major country on earth that doesn't guarantee health care to all people as a right, not a privilege.

People talk about apathy, especially in developed countries. We're kind of lulled into these tranquil lives, and we are pursuing our own thing and there is so much suffering on a mass scale around the world that you kind of become fatalistic. You might think suffering is inevitable, you kind of lose your sense of moral urgency. But there is always something you can do for someone in the world.

We had lead emitted in gasoline and in paint, painting generations of housing for an entire century, practically, before it was regulated. That's what I'm talking about, is that we have a regulatory system that is biased to protect profit and not to protect people. We need a much more precautionary and proactive regulatory system that is not influenced by the revolving door.

It's absurd we remain the only major country on earth not to guarantee health care to all people and paid family and medical leave.

Every major country on earth, whether it's the U.K., whether it's France, whether it's Canada, has managed to provide healthcare to all people as a right and they are spending significantly less per capita on health care than we are. So I do not accept the belief that the United States of America can't do that.

Addiction should never be treated as a crime. It has to be treated as a health problem. We do not send alcoholics to jail in this country. Over 500,000 people are in our jails who are nonviolent drug users.

The pet food recall, which was after all just about pets, and treated as if it were an inconsequential matter, was an absolute forerunner of what's going on in China, where 50,000 infants have been sickened because of a contaminated infant formula. So these things are all closely related. You cannot separate the food supply for pets, farm animals, and people, and you cannot separate problems in one area of a country from problems in another area.

The American people in Congress have got to ask themselves a very simple question. Why are we the only major country on earth not to guarantee health care to all people as a right?

I think that the environment is very a complicated question. I am very sympathetic to people who support the environment who live in the United States. I am very sympathetic to people who don't support the environment who live in a very poor country.