Bob Brown Quotes

#1. Wilderness has become one of the world's fastest disappearing resources, and it is non-renewable. Yet unlike oil, gold or woodchips, it is essential to the wellbeing of humanity. We are made of it and fashioned by it ... our psychological beings resonate with it.

Bob Brown

#2. I have seen such an immense change from the total repression and criminality of homosexuality in my lifetime. It does make me much more buoyant and optimistic about the future. If that change can occur in that time there's hope for many other changes.

Bob Brown

#3. I am an optimist.

Bob Brown

#4. Behind every successful man there's a lot of unsuccessful years.

Bob Brown

#5. Seeing the whales off James Price Point, mothers, babies, bull whales, seeing the count, going up into the thousands of these whales, the assurance that they will be ok with a mega port, mega ships and a huge factory ashore, is now clearly proven wrong.

Bob Brown

#6. The government's living in its own cloud cuckoo land and it's a cloud of greenhouse gases.

Bob Brown

#7. I didn't want to be a shock absorber; I wanted to deliver the shock.

Bob Brown

#8. I'm worried about the traditional media, but I think the new media is a plus for democracy.

Bob Brown

#9. We calculate the amount spent [by Brethren and other anti- Green groups] was between $500,000 and $1 million - that's a huge amount for a state election campaign in Tasmania.

Bob Brown

#10. We must have an expansionary vision, one that captures the imagination and diversity of the whole community, one which benefits a nation which has moved beyond the basics of literacy and numeracy and which wants to develop a learning culture.

Bob Brown

#11. One-time Guinness World Record holder for Yo-Yo endurance.

Bob Brown

#12. There are better alternatives ... Australia should be exporting its solar technology, not its uranium.

Bob Brown

#13. The overarching factor to me is if we can't be kind to each other, we won't be kind to the planet.

Bob Brown

#14. Globally the Greens have arisen like a spontaneous combustion, a reaction to the narrow-minded state-backed exploitation of resources and wealth for a few at the expense of the many.

Bob Brown

#15. I have never met a person in whom I did not see myself reflected.

Bob Brown

#16. Real life security and contentment come not from putting a gun in the cupboard, but from taking a role in the world's future.

Bob Brown

#17. For comprehensive Earth action, an all-of-the-Earth representative democracy is required. That is, a global parliament.

Bob Brown

#18. Renewable energy is proven technology, the price is dropping, the rest of the world is going that way, that's where our investment should be going as well.

Bob Brown

#19. I'm a very great non-violent character. I would never resort to violence to change anything.

Bob Brown

#20. There's a presumption that somehow you calculate beforehand whether something is going to be good politically or not. I simply don't.

Bob Brown

#21. We are all born bonded to nature; that's why we put depictions of flowers and forests, rather than bulldozers or log piles, on our walls.

Bob Brown

#22. In securing the future of the planet, we secure happiness for ourselves. One of the aims of the Greens is to turn around the tide of pessimism amongst the young people of the world.

Bob Brown

#23. Every time I get a bit worried about having made some second rate choices in life I go back and read about the Suffragettes or William Wilberforce, people who were 'wrong' in their own time, and think, 'Ah well.'

Bob Brown

#24. Exxon, Coca-Cola, BHP Billiton and News Corporation have much more say in organising the global agenda than the planet's 5 billion mature-age voters without a ballot box.

Bob Brown

#25. I will be Green until the day I die, if not for a long time after.

Bob Brown

#26. With a small fraction of the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on the Iraq war, the US and Australia could ensure every starving, sunken-eyed child on the planet could be well fed, have clean water and sanitation and a local school to go to.

Bob Brown

#27. I think I could have been quite difficult to fathom as a youngster, this kid who didn't talk about himself very much.

Bob Brown

#28. The future will either be green or not at all.

Bob Brown

#29. The Greens will continue to champion a fairer society rather than simply the economy and to champion the parliament rather than simply the stock exchange .

Bob Brown

#30. We people of the Earth exist because our potential was there in the Big Bang, 13.7 billion years ago, as the universe exploded into being.

Bob Brown

#31. I am aware that one should always make room for renewal in politics. A democracy is the healthier for the turnover of the depth of talent there is in its community.

Bob Brown

#32. As a Green, my goal is to put a smile on the face of the coming generations.

Bob Brown

#33. The pursuit of eternity is no longer the prerogative of the gods - it is the business of us all, here and now.

Bob Brown

#34. I am not a conventionally religious man, but in the wilderness I have come closest to finding myself and knowing the universe and accepting God - by which I mean accepting all that I don't know.

Bob Brown

#35. I've always thought, and it gets tested at times, that I have a great faith in the fundamental goodness of human beings.

Bob Brown

#36. The reality is that if we in this rich, lucky quarter of the planet cannot make a stand for the 30 million other species we share this planet with, let alone our own species, then who can?

Bob Brown

#37. Australia must prioritise education spending. It is not a question of whether or not we have the money, it is a question of how we choose to spend it.

Bob Brown