Bill McKibben Quotes

There's something really happening and really moving, and it's exciting and it makes me very optimistic because it is going to be the engine for how we really combat climate change. Which is strong communities.

It's absolutely not acceptable for people to argue that, if we are going to do anything about climate change at all, well, the responsibility lies solely with the individual.

Looking back on humanity's battle with pollution, history has been made by thousands of ordinary people who one day say, 'No. I'm not satisfied. I don't want to wait, and I don't want to pass the buck. I want to stand up and do something. I want to do it here, and I want do to it now.'

It's important the sheriff and the D.A. work with the community to realize real-world solutions. If they make decisions in silos, it will fall short.

A social movement that only moves people is merely a revolt. A movement that changes both people and institutions is a revolution.

Movements of people create change - not just any one person or organization, but when lots of people are in motion around a shared vision.

The great news is that that sort of group of people and that sort of sensibility is beginning to become more active again. And I think partly it just has to do with the time. It has to do with the culture of resistance. The necessity is for us to pull together and to speak up and to make work and be visible.

If you go to one demonstration and then go home, that's something, but the people in power can live with that. What they can't live with is sustained pressure that keeps building, organisations that keep doing things, people that keep learning lessons from the last time and doing it better the next time.

Ordinary people can bring about change.

Nothing of any consequence happens unless people get behind an idea. It begins with an individual and they share the idea with more individuals-and eventually it becomes a movement.

Acting alone, minorities can never achieve the majorities necessary for political change.

One day very soon, we'll be asked: what did we do. And we will say: we did everything we could... we have to... because if we don't there won't be anyone left to ask. We have never faced a crisis this big, that we have never had better ideas to solve. This is our only home. We can choose today to make a world of difference.

If we all got angry together something might be done.

When you have people together who believe in something very strongly - whether it's religion or politics or unions - things happen.

I'm not sure if my involvement in causes, benefits, marches, and demonstrations has made a huge difference, but I know one thing: that involvement has connected me with the good people: people with the live hearts, the live eyes, the live heads.

The enthusiastic uprising of the people in our cause, is our great reliance; and we can not safely give it any check, even thoughit overflows, and runs in channels not laid down in any chart.

People may say 'What can I do? I'm only one person.' But we've proven that when we come together demonstrate, and speak our piece, there is no way the power structure can avoid being attentive.

As an activist, you do find yourself directed more toward public action. But I've always tried to use stories from my own life in my writing for instance. It has always been clear to me that the stories of each other's lives are our best textbooks. Every social justice movement that I know of has come out of people sitting in small groups, telling their life stories, and discovering that other people have shared similar experiences. So, if we've shared many experiences, then it probably has something to do with power or politics, and if we unify and act together, then we can make a change.

Most people are not for or against anything; the first object of getting people together is to make them respond somehow, to overcome inertia.

We want people to feel with us more than to act for us.

There's a reason people pause their lives to engage in political activism and pressure their local political leaders. Because as a whole, even if you can't identify any one instance, as a whole pressure works and sometimes it starts with something as simple as pushing the button on the intercom.

every individual can make a difference ... if we continue to leave decision making to the so-called decision makers, things will never change.

Each of us has a responsibility for the sustainability of our planet and each of us can make a difference if we choose to do so.

We are the people and America is really nothing without the people. We have to take control and we have realize as young people that this is our future. We have to live here and this where we'll one day raise our own children.