Gail Bradbrook Quotes

"When you say 'no' and you get on the streets and you do an act of civil disobedience, it changes your psychology."

"Change comes when people are willing to commit acts of peaceful civil disobedience."

"The absolute key issue is: how do you create enough political pressure? It's up to us to create that political will and there are tried and tested techniques for doing that. So we're talking about the need for civil disobedience that escalates into a rebellion and uprising."

"We need a grownup conversation about why our political economy is killing life on Earth."

"Some people see protesting as a bit of a dirty thing, and certainly the idea of getting arrested was not on people's radar."

"You have to keep building. Movements have to move forward."

"We've been at war with nature. Now we need to apologize and clean up."

"I planted trees but the idea that you can offset carbon is nonsense - planting trees is more a way of acknowledging harm and apologising."

"My dad was a miner at South Kirkby colliery. He went on strike but he didn't go to the picket line, he just put his feet up and got in my mum's way."

"I do have a rebellious spirit."

"I always had a desire to see change and be part of it."

"What I would say is that in its first iteration, Extinction Rebellion is really about democracy, by calling in for these new democratic forms for people to have their power. And frankly, in many countries of the world, democracy is in just absolute shambles."

"We need to have a grown-up conversation about what kind of system do we need, both politically and legally and culturally and economically, that will stop this ridiculous, outrageous harming that we're doing to ourselves and the planet."

"What happens if you stand passively by the side of the road with a placard saying, you know, 'Stop climate change' is you just get ignored. When you get on the street and block it, people start to have a conversation about this existential situation that we're in."

"Love has a cost, and it's grief. Because we will always be separated from things we love. That's the nature and price of life, right? But, when you love something deeply, then you're courageous."

"I want to live in a beautiful, nature-filled world, and, if we get shot on the streets fighting for it, so be it."

"I just like swearing and being cheeky."

"So many of us who've been thinking about the ecological crisis have had this horrible creeping feeling, like nothing was getting done and it was getting worse."

"I would support a mass civil disobedience where we take medicine to tell the state that they have absolutely no right to control our consciousness and to define our spiritual practice."

"Whilst I'm all for psychedelic science - I think it's fantastic - I don't think we necessarily have time to wait for the science to tell us these medicines are useful. The indigenous cultures have already shown us the ways."

"I've always been interested in how things change, in social change. I was involved in the animal rights movement as a young woman, I've been involved in thinking about gender and issues around racism and so on."

"We are killing life on Earth, we're in the sixth mass extinction event and it's possible that human beings will go extinct. We're in a culture that doesn't want you to think about that."

"I am no longer a scientist as I stopped in 2000. Science was quite a testing place to be as a working-class woman."

"I have a humble background. My dad was a coal miner. My mum worked a receptionist. I was one of the first people in my family to go to university."

"I did a PhD in molecular bio-physics."

"I was in India as scientist doing post-doctoral research for about four months. I fell in love with India."

"I'm horrified to have been alerted to anti-Semitism showing up in a Facebook group I'm associated with. As a busy mum I don't have time to monitor everything."

"Human extinction in our children's lifetime, it should be your top news item every single day, what's happening, you should be holding politicians to account."

"Economic growth tends to require the taking of resources from the Earth. So something has to change on a debt-based economy."

"I want the system to change so I think you could call that a revolution."