“Colonialism of one kind or another, imperialism of one kind or another, and slavery, and on and on and on.”

What makes us different? We’re the creature that can decide not to do something that we are capable of doing.

Probably more than anything else, the place that we really see the effects of the power of even the relatively mild temperature increases so far is in the melting of everything frozen on the planet.

The movers and shakers on our planet, aren’t the billionaires and generals, they are the incredible numbers of people around the world filled with love for neighbor and for the earth who are resisting, remaking, restoring, renewing and revitalising.

If you were running a solar company you may be okay – you may be able to keep growing. The question for physics is: Can you grow fast enough to begin to catch up with the damage?

I think we need to think of lots of ways to communicate. And we tried some at 350. We organised what they called the largest art project in the planet’s history. We do a lot with art and music and things.

We’ve been in lots of places that I suppose, by Oxford standards, would be considered illiterate, but everyone’s completely conversant with the idea that here is a number, and that number is above it, and that’s too high. It’s not a very complicated idea.

In the States, I think, the syllogism goes like this: ‘free markets solve all problems. Free markets aren’t solving global warming, QED global warming is not a problem’. It’s not a very good syllogism but it’s emotionally comforting if you’re in that world.

The ability to write compelling emails may be the single most useful talent an organizer can possess.

The world is on fire, and I’m doing my best to help steer the firetruck.

There is a tendency at every important but difficult crossroad to pretend that it’s not really there.

We spend a lot of time playing defence against bad things. So, in the US, one of the focusses has been this huge Keystone Pipeline project, another has been the coal ports on the Pacific Ocean.

Look – every time is the wrong time and the perfect time to have a kid, and you just do it when you can.

The laws of Congress and the laws of physics have grown increasingly divergent, and the laws of physics are not likely to yield.

I don’t spend a huge amount of time fixated on climate denial because I don’t think that their objections, though sometimes couched in science, are based in science. I think they’re based in ideology. And I don’t think there’s anything you can do.

We’d like to get the fossil fuel industry on the back foot for a while, having to deal with us.

The idea that China and India will just abandon climate action is not true, because they’re doing it for more reasons than we are.

Africa is a paradox which illustrates and highlights neo-colonialism .

The result of neo-colonialism is that foreign capital is used for the exploitation rather than for the development of the less developed parts of the world.

It is only the ending of capitalism, colonialism, imperialism and neocolonialism and the attainment of world communism that can provide the conditions under which the RACE question can finally be abolished and eliminated.

The essence of neo-colonialism is that the State which is subject to it is, in theory, independent and has all the outward trappings of international sovereignty.

Investment under neo-colonialism increases rather than decreases the gap between the rich and poor countries of the world.

A State in the grip of neo-colonialism is not master of its own destiny. It is this factor which makes neo-colonialism such a serious threat to world peace.

Colonialism bred an innate arrogance, but when you undertake that sort of imperial adventure, that arrogance gives way to a feeling of accommodativeness. You take pride in your openness.

That has a particular history and I think we rather lost it in the 19th Century, we became so much part of empire and colonialism.