Greta Thunburg

“My message to all the activists is to just keep going, and I know it really may seem impossible and hopeless sometimes - it always does - so you just have to keep going because if you try hard enough and long enough you will make a difference.”

“When I was maybe eight or nine years old, I first learned about the climate crisis in school. My teachers taught me about it and we saw films and pictures of plastic in the ocean and extreme weather events. Those pictures were just stuck in my head; I thought, there is no point in anything.”

“Avoiding climate breakdown will require cathedral thinking. We must lay the foundation while we may not know exactly how to build the ceiling.”

“I mean, people aren't continuing like this and not doing anything because they are evil, or because they don't want to. We aren't destroying the biosphere because we are selfish. We are doing it simply because we are unaware.”

“We have to understand what the older generation has dealt to us, what mess they have created that we have to clean up and live with.”

“The symbolism of the climate strike is that if you adults don't give a damn about my future, I won't either.”

“I know so many people who feel hopeless, and they ask me, 'What should I do?' And I say: 'Act. Do something.' Because that is the best medicine against sadness and depression.”

“Some people say that I should study to become a climate scientist so that I can 'solve the climate crisis.' But the climate crisis has already been solved. We already have all the facts and solutions. All we have to do is to wake up and change.”

“People are underestimating the force of angry kids.”

“Not having hope is not an excuse for not doing something.”

“I just know what is right and I want to do what is right.”

“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. That would be our first priority. So I didn't understand how that added up.”

“I'm on the autism spectrum. I don't usually follow social coding and so therefore I go my own way.”

“I have been on the road and visited numerous places and met people from all over the globe. I can say that it looks nearly the same everywhere I have been: The climate crisis is ignored by people in charge, despite the science being crystal clear.”

“The real danger is not inaction. The real danger is when politicians and CEOs are making it look like action is happening when in fact nothing is being done.”

“I see the world in black and white, and I don't like compromising.”

“I have Asperger's, I'm on the autism spectrum, so I don't really care about social codes. It makes you think differently.”

“Some people say that the climate crisis is something that we will have created, but that is not true, because if everyone is guilty then no one is to blame. And someone is to blame.”

“Before I started school striking I had no energy, no friends and I didn't speak to anyone. I just sat alone at home, with an eating disorder. All of that is gone now, since I have found a meaning, in a world that sometimes seems shallow and meaningless to so many people.”

“Sweden is not a green paradise, it has one of the biggest carbon footprints.”