Van Jones Quotes

The cooperation of government at its different levels is important and can only be achieved as long as the people of Chicago are directly involved in our efforts and supportive of our goals.

You know, President Obama feels very strongly that the government has a responsibility to engage with the American people, as well as with the world community.

As more and more women, men and young people raise their voices and become active in local government, and more local leaders take action for the safety of women and girls, change happens.

Changes to parliamentary procedure won't transform the lives of the people whom I represent. Decentralising, devolving decision-making and renewing civil society will.

But when others suggested that the poor should not simply be the objects of these programs but also the subjects - that they should be actively involved in shaping the programs, making decisions about how to spend the money etc. - some of the previous supporters reconsidered.

You can't run a city by people who do not live there.

The center of gravity has shifted from the courts to community action.

Trying to learn from communities and engage with policy makers and community organizers all across the country is really important to me.

Be informed, ask questions, band together with your community, and fight at the local level. And make sure you take your local elections as seriously as the national ones.

Spend a while listening to people in your district to make sure you understand how they are served well in government and how they could be served better.

One of my philosophies is that citizens are the mayor... so we have citizens play an integral role in making policies and implementing them.

I take a very different approach to public service. I'm a person that always takes it out in the streets and in the courts... the tool box that is attached to me is very diverse.

Local politics is just as important as national - and often easier to influence.

The thing about local government is they want to hear what local people think, but for the most part, their systems are so long, dull and bureaucratic that people only get involved when there's an issue they really care about.

Not just for the U.S. Senate but it also means for school board and city council. We need to revitalize American democracy. We need to have people at all - all over this country, having the courage to take on big money and demand a set of policies that work for all of us and not just for the few.

Most of us think of government as them. Yet government isn't Them: It's us.

Health care got done because there were a lot of people out there who aren't professional politicians, but are citizens, who pushed for it even when the politics was hard.

Ordinary people - churches, too - have a role to force politicians to respond. Governments are not impressed with theories, but governments are impressed with people who change their minds about things.

If governments do not ensure that, the peoples through their own efforts will ensure these changes, what we call communitarian socialism.

The scope of modern government in what it can and ought to accomplish for its people has been widened far beyond the principles laid down by the old "laissez faire" school of political rights, and the widening has met popular approval.

The future lies with those wise political leaders who realize that the great public is interested more in government than in politics.

There's no expert on this planet who says that the government telling people what to do actually does any good with this issue, this is going to require an effort on everyone's part.

[Political actions] has to happen on the local and state level; we have to convince our cities to join the growing number of more than 200 American cities who have signed on to the mayor's climate campaign.

The government is us; WE are the government, you and I."- Theodore Roosevelt

I'm a Democrat, and there are an important group of things only the government can do. But let us be clear that for most of the world, what they most need is less government.