Greta Thunberg is a teen that grew up in Stockholm, Sweden and has devoted her time to being a climate change activist. She is a descendant of Svante Arrhenius, who won the Nobel Prize when he came up with his greenhouse effect model in the year 1903. In 2018, Greta won a competition in a local newspaper with a climate change essay she had written. In 2019, Greta was named person of the year in Time Magazine.
Greta has traveled to other countries to continue her work on climate change and stand with other young people all over the world to make a difference. Although she suffers from Asperger’s Syndrome, she embraces her condition and describes it as a gift she has used on her journey to changing the world.
You asked us if we could put some quotes together about Greta, and here are the best ones we found
Greta Thunberg Quotes
- “My message is that we’ll be watching you. This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you. You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. Yet I am one of the lucky ones. People are suffering.” -Greta Thunberg at UN Summit in New York
- “At first when I heard about climate change, I was a climate denier. I didn’t think it was happening. Because if there really was an existential crisis like that, that would threaten our civilisation, we wouldn’t be focusing on anything else.” – Greta Thunberg
- “We must change almost everything in our current societies. The bigger your carbon footprint – the bigger your moral duty. The bigger your platform – the bigger your responsibility. Adults keep saying: ‘We owe it to the young people to given them hope.’ But I don’t want your hope. I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act. I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if our house is on fire. Because it is.” – Greta Thunberg
- “Right here, right now is where we draw the line. The world is waking up. And change is coming whether you like it or not.” – Greta Thunberg
- “If people knew what a nightmare scenario we will face if we don’t keep global warming below 2 °C, they wouldn’t need to ask me why I’m on school strike outside parliament. If everyone knew how serious the situation is and how little is actually being done, everyone would come and sit down beside us.” – Greta Thunberg in her speech ‘Our Lives are in Your Hands’.
- “It is still not too late to act. It will take a far-reaching vision, it will take courage, it will take fierce, fierce determination to act now, to lay the foundations where we may not know all the details about how to shape the ceiling. In other words, it will take cathedral thinking. I ask you to please wake up and make changes required possible.” – Greta Thunberg
- “Since our leaders are behaving like children, we will have to take the responsibility they should have taken long ago.” – Greta Thunberg
- “I don’t really like being in the centre of attention. I’m not used to that. All my life I have been like the invisible girl at the back that no one sees or listens to.” – Greta Thunberg
- “Homo Sapiens have not yet failed. Yes, we are failing, but there is still time to turn everything around. We can still fix this. We still have everything in our own hands.” – Greta Thunberg
- “I have a dream that the people in power, as well as the media, start treating this crisis like the existential emergency it is.” – Greta Thunberg
- “Time is much shorter than we think. Failure means disaster. The changes required are enormous and we must all contribute in every part of our daily life. Especially us in the rich countries where no nation is doing nearly enough.” – Greta Thunberg in her ‘The Grown-Ups Have Failed Us’ speech
- “We cannot solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis. And if solutions within the system are so impossible to find, then maybe we should change the system itself.” – Greta Thunberg
- “When haters go after your looks and differences, it means they have nowhere left to go. And then you know you’re winning!” – Greta Thunberg
- “For way too long, the politicians and the people in power have gotten away with not doing anything to fight the climate crisis, but we will make sure that they will not get away with it any longer. We are striking because we have done our homework and they have not.” – Greta Thunberg
- “I have the Asperger’s syndrome and that means I’m sometimes a bit different from the norm. And – given the right circumstances – being different is a superpower. It makes you think differently. And especially in such a big crisis like this one we need to think outside the box. We need to think outside our current system, that we need people that think outside the box and who aren’t like everyone else.” – Greta Thunberg
- “Together and united, we are unstoppable.” -Greta Thunberg
- “Why are we not reducing our emissions? Why are they, in fact, still increasing? Are we knowingly causing a mass extinction? Are we evil? No, of course not. People keep doing what they do because the vast majority doesn’t have a clue about the consequences of our everyday life. And they don’t know the rapid changes required.” – Greta Thunberg in ‘Almost Everything is Black and White’ speech
- “Humanity is now standing at a crossroads. We must now decide which path we want to take. How do we want the future living conditions for all living species to be like?” – Greta Thunberg
- “The moment we decide to fulfil something, we can do anything.” – Greta Thunberg
- “I often talk to people who say, ‘No, we have to be hopeful and to inspire each other, and we can’t tell people too many negative things’ . . . But, no we have to tell it like it is. Because if there are no positive things to tell, then what should we do, should we spread false hope? We can’t do that, we have to tell the truth.” – Greta Thunberg
- “Some people say that the climate crisis is something we have all created. But that is just another convenient lie. Because if everyone is guilty then no one is to blame.” – Greta Thunberg in ‘No One is too Small to Make a Difference’ speech
- “You must take action. You must do the impossible. Because giving up is never an option.” – Greta Thunberg
- “When you think about “the future”, you don’t think beyond the year 2050. By then I will not even have lived half of my life. What happens next? The year 2078 I will celebrate my 75th birthday. What we do or don’t do, right now, will affect my entire life, and the lives of my children and grandchildren.” – Greta Thunberg ‘Almost Everything is Black and White’ speech
- “We aren’t destroying the biosphere because we are selfish. We are doing it simply because we are unaware.” – Greta Thunberg
- “Why should I be studying for a future that soon may be no more, when no one is doing anything to save that future?” – Greta Thunberg
- “Some people, some companies, some decision-makers in particular, have known exactly what priceless values they have been sacrificing to continue making unimaginable amounts of money. And I think many of you here today belong to that group of people” – Greta Thunberg
- “You lied to us. You gave us false hope. You told us that the future was something to look forward to. And the saddest thing is that most children are not even aware of the fate that awaits us. We will not understand it until it’s too late. And yet we are the lucky ones. Those who will be affected the hardest are already suffering the consequences. But their voices are not heard. Is my microphone on? Can you hear me?” – Greta Thunberg
- “For those of us who are on the spectrum, almost everything is black or white. When it comes to the sustainability crisis, everyone keeps saying that climate change is an existential threat and the most important issue of all. And yet they just carry on like before. I don’t understand that, because if the emissions have to stop, then we must stop the emissions. To me that is black or white. There are no grey areas when it comes to survival.” – Greta Thunberg in ‘Save the World by Changing the Rules’ speech
- “We deserve a safe future. And we demand a safe future. Is that really too much to ask?” – Greta Thunberg
- “Sometimes we just simply have to find a way. The moment we decide to fulfill something, we can do anything. And I’m sure the moment we start behaving as if we were in an emergency, we can avoid climate and ecological catastrophe. Humans are very adaptable: we can still fix this. But the opportunity to do so will not last for long. We must start today. We have no more excuses.” – Greta Thunberg
Greta Thunberg Interview Video
In a recent appearance on the Daily Show with Trevor Noah, 16 year old climate activist Greta Thunberg explains why she traveled to America in a zero emissions boat. And she lays out the direct impact climate change has on the planet.
Related: Quotes to Celebrate Earth Day
Summary
Greta Thunberg was focused on making the Swedish government make a change by protesting, she urged other young people around the world to do the same in their countries. Since then she has inspired many other teenagers, children and even adults around the world in climate change petitions and protests.
Greta may only be a teenager, but she is a strong and brilliant mind that aims to change the world we live in. With each of her quotes she makes good points and speaks with wisdom to her fellow human beings, not bad for a teenager. She is an inspiration to many around the world, especially the youth.
Image Credit: Anders Hellberg, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
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