Van Jones Quotes

What I say is join me and be part of the army and find ways that maybe even I haven't thought of I haven't even thought of to help spread this message and inspire people to do what inspires them. That's what I need you to do.

Your cities can be saved or squandered in one generation. So let's agree to set aside our philosophical disagreements and focus on those aspirations that unite us. Let's grasp the opportunity that is presented by innovation to build better communities for our neighbors. Let's replace a focus on partisan division with a focus on results. That is the path to a better future for us all.

One guy cannot create a field, but one person can get others thinking.

What excites me is that, when things are tough, people become resourceful, and now with the Internet, social networking and the ability for people who in the past had been relatively powerless, they have tools to be able to spread ideas and organize. The urgency is there and the tools are there and I think that the possibility for really, really powerful results is there. I think it's all brewing, it's all bubbling up right now.

If you look at the world today, there are as many solutions as there are problems. I think that is a big part of creativity. That's why I started Urban Zen. Because I wanted to dress and address people.

I always say to people, "If you share my dream, why don't we walk together?" And that's my only organizing tool.

You don't want to be the smartest person in the room; you want to be the dumbest in the room. You want to be surrounded by other thinking people who are going to say something that makes you think, "Oh, my God, that's an amazing idea. Why didn't I think of that."

Kickstarter was already up and going when I got the Fellowship. Spending time with the other Fellows was about camaraderie, and I talked to a lot of amazing and creative people.

I've seen the power of the community. A young person can stand up, talk about his dream, and someone from the audience will come forth to help him make that dream come true. Great things can happen when you place the right ideas before the right audience!

To rebuild confidence in the power of people working together to create something better, we must give people the power to do precisely that for themselves.

We want to inspire people to work together, giving them hope that we can do something even if we cannot do everything.

Invariably, collaboration leads to new forms of self-expression and to the things that move you.

Big ideas come from forward thinking people who challenge the norm, think outside the box, and invent the world they see inside rather than submitting to the limitations of current dilemmas

It's fun because you can escape and learn about what other people's minds have created. It inspires you to think maybe you could come up with a creature yourself. I like that.

I think that other people covering my work is really exciting... Im really open to that kind of thing because I think interpretation is an art form.

We shouldn't be looking for heroes, we should be looking for good ideas.

We all borrow and steal and copy from each other, and that's the way I think people get inspired.

Despair shows us the limit of our imagination. Imaginations shared create collaboration, collaboration creates community, and community inspires social change.

Artists are in the imagining/ prototyping business. Society needs people to be out there thinking of what might be. That cannot be something we just delegate to politicians or technologists.

I think the Macintosh was created by a group of people who felt that ah there wasn't a strict vision between sort of science and art.

Nobody has a monopoly on good ideas

The most radical thing we can do is connect people to one another. That starts conversations toward a vision for change.

A popular author is one who writes what the people think. Genius invites them to think something else.

The few have not strength to achieve great changes unaided; the many have not wisdom to be moved by truth unmixed.

I think something happens only when people find that they are moved with others, find themselves linked or allied in new ways, showing up or speaking out in ways that resonate with one another. That resonating can be very compelling and lead to moving and speaking more emphatically and with sharper focus.