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Quotes, Takeaways from CNN Political Contributor Van Jones


“I’ve never seen a bird fly with only a left wing,” said Van Jones as he talked about the differences between the country’s two major political parties. “Never seen a bird fly only with a right wing. We need each other. It takes two wings to fly.”

Jones used that metaphor first with a roomful of students, many of them interested in journalism, and then in front of nearly 600 people in the Grand Theatre at Salt Lake Community College’s South City Campus. The Dream Corps founder and CNN political commentator was the featured speaker at the 2018 Tanner Forum on Social Ethics.


During the Oct. 9 forum, Jones choked up when talking about trying to live up to the legacy of his late father, Willie Jones, who was passionate about helping others. “How can I, his son, with a Yale law degree, do less than my dad,” Jones said. “I’m never going to live up to Willie Jones, but I’m going to keep trying.”

Below are photos and quotes from the evening, during which Jones mixed humor with hope amid a country he described as being politically polarized and divisive.



“If you don’t eat kale, you might not be invited back to whatever Democrats are doing.”

“Right now, both political parties suck. … They are both hypocritical, and they are both failing the country. And it means that you don’t have a home that works for you, most of you.”

“We’re a messed up, terrible country, but we’re still the best country in the world.”

“It’s the disrespect – that’s the problem.”

“We’ve got a lot of dumb, mean people in both parties doing dumb stuff. The main problem is not the dumb, mean people. The main problem is that we have got a bunch of good people in both parties in all races who just don’t know what to do yet and haven’t found a way to help each other yet. And that’s a problem we can solve.”


“It’s hard to vote for people who disrespect you – simple as that.”

“I think the next great leaders will be women.”

“If you’re a working-class kid here at a community college, doing the best you can and you got these dreams inside of you that just seem so big they hurt, and you’re writing stuff down in your journal and you’re scared to show somebody because they seem so grandiose and so crazy – good. Good. Because that little dream is going to bug you and bug you and bug you and keep you going and keep you striving and keep you trying and keep you learning. And then what you do is, you try to find people who are ahead of you in line and see if you can get them to give you a little bit of their time and attention.”

“You need your setbacks. Your successes give you confidence. But your setbacks give you your character – and your character is the most important thing.”

“I try to be as helpful as I can be.”


“I fundamentally feel that we spend a lot of time in mainstream media setting our hair on fire about what Trump just did.”

“I think mainstream media is going through a midlife crisis of epic proportions.”

“This is a tough journey we are on as a country. We have every kind of human being ever born in one country at the same time, and frankly we mostly get along. ... In the history of humanity, if you have that much difference, you have wars. We have tweets. This is tough, but it’s an improvement.”





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