Al Gore > Quotes

“Here is the truth: The Earth is round; Saddam Hussein did not attack us on 9/11; Elvis is dead; Obama was born in the United States; and the climate crisis is real.”
― Al Gore

“The planet is in distress and all of the attention is on Paris Hilton.”
― Al Gore

“In a time of social fragmentation, vulgarity becomes a way of life. To be shocking becomes more important - and often more profitable - than to be civil or creative or truly original.”
― Al Gore

“Global warming, along with the cutting and burning of forests and other critical habitats, is causing the loss of living species at a level comparable to the extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. That event was believed to have been caused by a giant asteroid. This time it is not an asteroid colliding with the Earth and wreaking havoc: it is us.”
― Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It

“you can't be value free when it comes to marriage”
― Al Gore

“As many know, the Chinese expression for "crisis" consists of two characters side by side. The first is the symbol for "danger," the second the symbol for "opportunity."
”
― Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It

“We have to abandon the conceit that isolated personal actions are going to solve this crisis. Our policies have to shift.”
― Al Gore

“The global environment crisis is, as we say in Tennessee, real as rain, and I cannot stand the thought of leaving my children with a degraded earth and a diminished future.”
― Al Gore

“تشبه العلاقة بين الإيمان والعقل والخوف أحيانا لعبة الأطفال التي تسمى الحجر والورقة والمقص، فالخوف يزيح العقل، والعقل يتحدى الإيمان، والإيمان يغلب الخوف.”
― Al Gore, The Assault on Reason

“I was recently on a tour of Latin America, and the only regret I have was that I didn't study Latin harder in school so I could converse with those people.”
― Dan Quayle

“Air travel is nature's way of making you look like your passport photo.”
― Al Gore

“We can believe in the future and work to achieve it and preserve it, or we can whirl blindly on, behaving as if one day there will be no children to inherit our legacy. The choice is ours; the earth is in balance.”
― Al Gore, Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit

“Most people in politics draw energy from backslapping and shaking hands and all that. I draw energy from discussing ideas.”
― Al Gore

“No matter how hard the loss, defeat might serve as well as victory to shake the soul and let the glory out.”
― Al Gore

“بمجرد أن أمكن نقل الأفكار المعقدة بسهولة من فرد إلى جموع الآخرين - وما أن تمكّن الآخرون من تلقيها بسهولة، وأصبح بوسعهم الموافقة عليها - صار لكل فرد فجأة قوة السلطة السياسية الشاملة.
لذلك أعطى تدفق المعلومات الحر كل فرد منزلة أكبر في المجتمع - بغض النظر عن انتمائه الطبقي أو ثروته - ليطالب بقدر من الكرامة يتساوى مع الآخرين جميعا، وتمنح الأفراد القدرة على فحص استخدام السلطة من قبل من يعملون في الحكومة.”
― Al Gore, The Assault on Reason

“The 'well-informed citizenry is in danger of becoming the 'well-amused audience'.”
― Al Gore

“The rule of reason is the true sovereign in the American system.”
― Al Gore, The Assault on Reason

“I actually thought and believed that the story would be compelling enough to cause a real sea change in the way Congress reacted to that issue. I thought they would be startled, too. And they weren't.”
― Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth: The Crisis of Global Warming: Teen Edition

“في السنوات الأولى من القرن الحادي والعشرين كان هنالك دوماً زعماء يرغبون في إثارة قلق الناس ,بغية تقديم أنفسهم بوصفهم حماة الخائفين. فالزعماء الغوغائيين يَعِدون دوماً بالأمن مقابل التنازل عن الحرية.”
― Al Gore, The Assault on Reason

“إن حكام الغوغائية الجدد لا يوفرون أمناً أكثر من الأخطار ,لكن آراءهم وعباراتهم الساذجة ألاذعة المتكررة يمكن أن توفر الارتياح لمجتمع خائف”
― Al Gore, The Assault on Reason

“الخوف أقوى أعداء العقل، والخوف والعقل جوهريان لحياة الإنسان، لكن العلاقة بينهما غير متوازنة. فقد يبدد العقل الخوف أحيانا، لكن الخوف يغلق العقل دوما.
وكما كتب إدموند بيرك في إنكلترا قبل عشرين عاما من الثورة الأمريكية: "ليس هناك شعور يسلب العقل كل قوى التصرف والتفكير بصورة مؤثرة مثل الخوف" .”
― Al Gore, The Assault on Reason

“عندما يكون ما تقوم به الحكومة متاحا بالكامل لفحص مواطنيها وخاضعا للمناقشة والجدال الفعال، يصبح من الصعب إخفاء الاستخدام الفاسد للسلطة العامة من أجل مكاسب شخصية، وإذا كان حكم العقل هو المعيار الذي يقوّم به كل استخدام للسلطة الرسمية، يمكن عندئذ لجماعة المواطنين الواعية الكشف عن أشد خطط خرق الثقة العامة تعقيدا وضبطها، إضافة إلى ذلك فإنه عندما تصعد الأفكار أو تهبط حسب جدارتها، يميل العقل إلى دفعنا في اتجاه قرارات تعكس أفضل المتاح من حكمة الجماعة كلها.”
― Al Gore, The Assault on Reason

“Having a TV—which gives you the ability to receive information—fails to establish any capacity for sending information in the opposite direction. And the odd one-way nature of the primary connection Americans now have to our national conversation has a profound impact on their basic attitude toward democracy itself. If you can receive but not send, what does that do to your basic feelings about the nature of your connection to American self-government? “Attachment theory” is an interesting new branch of developmental psychology that sheds light on the importance of consistent, appropriate, and responsive two-way communication—and why it is essential for an individual’s feeling empowered. First developed by John Bowlby, a British psychiatrist, in 1958, attachment theory was further developed by his protégée Mary Ainsworth and other experts studying the psychological development of infants. Although it applies to individuals, attachment theory is, in my view, a metaphor that illuminates the significance of authentic free-flowing communication in any relationship that requires trust. By using this new approach, psychologists were able to discover that every infant learns a crucial and existential lesson during the first year of life about his or her fundamental relationship to the rest of the world. An infant develops an attachment pathway based on different patterns of care and, according to this theory, learns to adopt one of three basic postures toward the universe: In the best case, the infant learns that he or she has the inherent ability to exert a powerful influence on the world and evoke consistent, appropriate responses by communicating signals of hunger or discomfort, happiness or distress. If the caregiver—more often than not the mother—responds to most signals from the infant consistently and appropriately, the infant begins to assume that he or she has inherent power to affect the world. If the primary caregiver responds inappropriately and/or inconsistently, the infant learns to assume that he or she is powerless to affect the larger world and that his or her signals have no intrinsic significance where the universe is concerned. A child who receives really erratic and inconsistent responses from a primary caregiver, even if those responses are occasionally warm and sensitive, develops “anxious resistant attachment.” This pathway creates children who feature anxiety, dependence, and easy victimization. They are easily manipulated and exploited later in life. In the worst case, infants who receive no emotional response from the person or persons responsible for them are at high risk of learning a deep existential rage that makes them prone to violence and antisocial behavior as they grow up. Chronic unresponsiveness leads to what is called “anxious avoidance attachment,” a life pattern that features unquenchable anger, frustration, and aggressive, violent behavior.”
― Al Gore, The Assault on Reason

“عندما اكتسب البشر تدريجياً مستوى أعلى من التفكير ,فإننا اكتسبنا ميزة القدرة على توقع التهديدات الناشئة ,واكتسبنا القدرة على تصور التهديدات بدلاً من إدراكها فقط .لكننا أيضاً اكتسبنا القدرة على تصور التهديدات (المتخيلة). وعندما تقتنع مجموعة من الناس بتصور هذه التهديدات (المتخيلة ),يمكنهم تنشيط استجابة الخوف لتصير بقوة الاستجابة نفسها للتهديدات الحقيقة .”
― Al Gore, The Assault on Reason

“The flight insurance example highlights another psychological phenomenon that is important to understanding how fear influences our thinking: “probability neglect.” Social scientists have found that when confronted with either an enormous threat or a huge reward, people tend to focus on the magnitude of the consequence and ignore the probability. Consider how the Bush administration has used some of the techniques identified by Professor Glassner. Repeating the same threat over and over again, misdirecting attention (from al-Qaeda to Saddam Hussein), and using vivid imagery (a “mushroom cloud over an American city”). September 11 had a profound impact on all of us. But after initially responding in an entirely appropriate way, the administration began to heighten and distort public fear of terrorism to create a political case for attacking Iraq. Despite the absence of proof, Iraq was said to be working hand in hand with al-Qaeda and to be on the verge of a nuclear weapons capability. Defeating Saddam was conflated with bringing war to the terrorists, even though it really meant diverting attention and resources from those who actually attacked us.”
― Al Gore, The Assault on Reason

“The remedy for what ails our democracy is not simply better education (as important as that is) or civic education (as important as that can be), but the reestablishment of a genuine democratic discourse in which individuals can participate in a meaningful way—a conversation of democracy in which meritorious ideas and opinions from individuals do, in fact, evoke a meaningful response. And in today’s world, that means recognizing that it’s impossible to have a well-informed citizenry without having a well-connected citizenry. While education remains important, it is now connection that is the key. A well-connected citizenry is made up of men and women who discuss and debate ideas and issues among themselves and who constantly test the validity of the information and impressions they receive from one another—as well as the ones they receive from their government. No citizenry can be well informed without a constant flow of honest information about contemporary events and without a full opportunity to participate in a discussion of the choices that the society must make. Moreover, if citizens feel deprived of a meaningful opportunity to participate in the national conversation, they can scarcely be blamed for developing a lack of interest in the process. And sure enough, numerous surveys and studies have documented the erosion of public knowledge of basic facts about our democracy. For example, from the data compiled by the National Election Studies on one recent election, only 15 percent of respondents could recall the name of even one of the candidates in the election in their district. Less than 4 percent could name two candidates. When there are so few competitive races, it’s hard to blame them. Two professors, James Snyder and David Stromberg, found that knowledge of candidates increased in media markets where the local newspaper covered the congressional representative more. Very few respondents claimed to learn anything at all about their congressional elections from television news.”
― Al Gore, The Assault on Reason

“The subjugation of news by entertainment seriously harms our democracy: It leads to dysfunctional journalism that fails to inform the people. And when the people are not informed, they cannot hold government accountable when it is incompetent, corrupt, or both.”
― Al Gore, The Assault on Reason

“if consumption by the one billion people in the developed countries declined, it is certainly nowhere close to doing so where the other six billion of us are concerned. If the rest of the world bought cars and trucks at the same per capita rate as in the United States, the world’s population of cars and trucks would be 5.5 billion. The production of global warming pollution and the consumption of oil would increase dramatically over and above today’s unsustainable levels. With the increasing population and rising living standards in developing countries, the pressure on resource constraints will continue, even as robosourcing and outsourcing reduce macroeconomic demand in developed countries. Around the same time that The Limits to Growth was published, peak oil production was passed in the United States. Years earlier, a respected geologist named M. King Hubbert collected voluminous data on oil production in the United States and calculated that an immutable peak would be reached shortly after 1970. Although his predictions were widely dismissed, peak production did occur exactly when he predicted it would. Exploration, drilling, and recovery technologies have since advanced significantly and U.S. oil production may soon edge back slightly above the 1970 peak, but the new supplies are far more expensive. The balance of geopolitical power shifted slightly after the 1970 milestone. Less than a year after peak oil production in the U.S., the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) began to flex its muscles, and two years later, in the fall of 1973, the Arab members of OPEC implemented the first oil embargo. Since those tumultuous years when peak oil was reached in the United States, energy consumption worldwide has doubled, and the growth rates in China and other emerging markets portend further significant increases. Although the use of coal is declining in the U.S., and coal-fired generating plants are being phased out in many other developed countries as well, China’s coal imports have already increased 60-fold over the past decade—and will double again by 2015. The burning of coal in much of the rest of the developing world has also continued to increase significantly. According to the International Energy Agency, developing and emerging markets will account for all of the net global increase in both coal and oil consumption through the next two decades. The prediction of global peak oil is fraught with”
― Al Gore, The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change

“The planet has a fever. If your baby has a fever you go to the doctor. If the doctor says you need to intervene here, you don't say, 'Well, I read a science fiction novel that told me it's not a problem.' If the crib's on fire, you don't speculate that the baby is flame retardant. You take action.”
― Al Gore

“HUNGER AND OBESITY The change in diets around the world is also creating a global obesity epidemic—and in its wake a global diabetes epidemic—even as more than 900 million people in the world still suffer from chronic hunger. In the United States, where many global trends begin, the weight of the average American has increased by approximately twenty pounds in the last forty years. A recent study projects that half the adult population of the United States will be obese by 2030, with one quarter of them “severely obese.” At a time when hunger and malnutrition are continuing at still grossly unacceptable levels in poor countries around the world (and in some pockets within developed countries), few have missed the irony that simultaneously obesity is at record levels in developed countries and growing in many developing countries. How could this be? Well, first of all, it is encouraging to note that the world community has been slowly but steadily decreasing the number of people suffering from chronic hunger. Secondly, on a global basis, obesity has more than doubled in the last thirty years. According to the World Health Organization, almost 1.5 billion adults above the age of twenty are overweight, and more than a third of them are classified as obese. Two thirds of the world’s population now live in countries where more people die from conditions related to being obese and overweight than from conditions related to being underweight. Obesity represents a major risk factor for the world’s leading cause of death—cardiovascular diseases, principally heart disease and stroke—and is the major risk factor for diabetes, which has now become the first global pandemic involving a noncommunicable disease.* Adults with diabetes are two to four times more likely to suffer heart disease or a stroke, and approximately two thirds of those suffering from diabetes die from either stroke or heart disease.† The tragic increase in obesity among children is particularly troubling; almost 17 percent of U.S. children are obese today, as are almost 7 percent of all children in the world. One respected study indicates that 77 percent of obese children will suffer from obesity as adults. If there is any good news in the latest statistics, it is that the prevalence of obesity in the U.S. appears to be reaching a plateau, though the increases in childhood obesity ensure that the epidemic will continue to grow in the future, both in the U.S. and globally. The causes of this surge in obesity are both simple—in that people are eating too much and exercising”
― Al Gore, The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change