Not Too Late Quotes

“To hope is to accept despair as an emotion but not as an analysis. To recognize that what is unlikely is possible, just as what is likely is not inevitable. To understand that difficult is not the same as impossible.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility

“I think that when we are present—when we bear witness, when we do not divert our gaze—something is revealed—the very marrow of life.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility

“Hope is not optimism. Optimism assumes the best, and assumes its inevitability, which leads to passivity, as do the pessimism and cynicism that assume the worst. Hope, like love, means taking risks and being vulnerable to the effects of loss. It means recognizing the uncertainty of the future and making a commitment to try to participate in shaping”
― Rebecca Solnit, Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility

“Twenty years ago, I began to speak directly about hope and to what impeded it for so many people: “I say all this to you because hope is not like a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. I say this because hope is an ax you break down doors with in an emergency.” I wrote during a surge of neoliberal attacks on indigenous people, nature, small farmers, and labor, during the so-called Global War on Terror”
― Rebecca Solnit, Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility

“It is late. We are deep in an emergency. But it is not too late, because the emergency is not over. The outcome is not decided. We1 are deciding it now. The longer we wait to act, the more limited the options, but scientists tell us there are good options and great urgency to embrace them while we can. An emergency is when a stable situation destabilizes, when the house catches fire or the dam breaks or institution implodes, when the failure or sudden change or crisis calls for urgent response.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility

“With red-rimmed eyes and a wavering voice, he said, “I want you to know that I am sorry. I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to understand this.” I held the gaze of a man softened by humility, and gently said, “It’s all right. You are here now. It’s not too late.” Change happens gradually, then suddenly. It’s never too late to be part of the social movement that will help heal our world.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility

“As a scientist, I don’t believe that our messages are ignored by the public because people don’t care. Many people don’t have a science background or find it challenging to stay engaged in a technical debate that can be really alienating”
― Rebecca Solnit, Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility

“The IPCC report explains that every single metric ton of carbon dioxide we prevent from entering the atmosphere lessens the severity of the impacts we bake into the system. Our assessment meticulously describes how every fraction of a degree of warming matters—the scale and severity of impacts begin to compound and cascade with higher levels of warming.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility

“What gives me hope is that human history is full of examples of people across the ages who have risen to face the great challenges of their time and have succeeded. Victory is not the arrival in some promised land; it is the series of imperfect victories along the way that edge us closer to building the critical mass that eventually shifts the status quo.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility

“These are among the many foundation stones of this new world we have built, and the work continues. I know all this seemed impossible a decade ago, when it felt as if everything was falling apart and our climate might be doomed. But everything we did mattered. All of it.

We now know that we're going to keep global temperature rise below the most dangerous tipping points that climate scientists warned us about a decade ago. We can look our kids in the eye and tell them we didn't let them down. Now we can watch their dreams unfold."

— Mary Anne Hitt, "A Love Letter from the Clean Energy Future”
― Rebecca Solnit, Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility