If you fall behind, run faster. Never give up, never surrender, and rise up against the odds.
Jesse Jackson
Never look down on anybody unless you're helping him up.
At the end of the day, we must go forward with hope and not backward by fear and division.
Both tears and sweat are salty, but they render a different result. Tears will get you sympathy; sweat will get you change.
Keep hope alive!
What is the American dream? The American dream is one big tent. One big tent. And on that big tent you have four basic promises: equal protection under the law, equal opportunity, equal access, and fair share.
Your children need your presence more than your presents.
I was born in a slum, but the slum wasn't born in me.
In politics, an organized minority is a political majority.
Today's students can put dope in their veins or hope in their brains. If they can conceive it and believe it, they can achieve it. They must know it is not their aptitude but their attitude that will determine their altitude.
If my mind can conceive it, and my heart can believe it, I know I can achieve it.
I am not a perfect servant. I am a public servant doing my best against the odds. As I develop and serve, be patient. God is not finished with me yet.
Time is neutral and does not change things. With courage and initiative, leaders change things.
If there are occasions when my grape turned into a raisin and my joy bell lost its resonance, please forgive me. Charge it to my head and not to my heart.
If you don't know what tomorrow holds, you need to know who holds tomorrow!
Leadership cannot just go along to get along. Leadership must meet the moral challenge of the day.
Deliberation and debate is the way you stir the soul of our democracy.
America is not a blanket woven from one thread, one color, one cloth.
No one should negotiate their dreams. Dreams must be free to fly high. No government, no legislature, has a right to limit your dreams. You should never agree to surrender your dreams.
If you run, you might lose. If you don't run, you're guaranteed to lose.
It is time for us to turn to each other, not on each other.
I hear that melting-pot stuff a lot, and all I can say is that we haven't melted.
In many ways, history is marked as 'before' and 'after' Rosa Parks. She sat down in order that we all might stand up, and the walls of segregation came down.
Leadership has a harder job to do than just choose sides. It must bring sides together.
When we're unemployed, we're called lazy; when the whites are unemployed it's called a depression.
Success needs no explanation. Failure does not have one that matters.
Our dreams must be stronger than our memories. We must be pulled by our dreams, rater than pushed by our memories.
While I've spent a lot of quality time with my children, perhaps it's not been enough.
To allow injustice and inequality invites a Ferguson to your community. We must stand together, black, white, brown, red, and yellow and fight for justice and equality for all. It's the only way to avoid more Fergusons.
We reveal our joys and successes, we conceal our pain.
If you don't feel apologetic for slavery, if you don't feel apologetic for colonialism, if you feel proud of it then say that.
You can be out of slavery and have the right to vote, but unless you have access to capital, industry and technology, you can't fulfill your dreams.
I came to the conclusion that in order to end racial barriers, I needed to run for the office of the president and put forth an agenda of social justice and world peace. In addition, I concluded that someone needed to run and challenge the liberal orthodoxy.
The coffers are full of money and equipment for the Ferguson Police and the Missouri National Guard to put down a potential uprising, but no money for actually uplifting the people of Ferguson, St. Louis, Missouri and around the nation.
Life has its dimensions in the mysterious.
We must not measure greatness from the mansion down, but from the manger up.
When they wrote the Constitution, only white male landowners had the right to vote.
A check or credit card, a Gucci bag strap, anything of value will do. Give as you live.
If the states had to vote on slavery, we would have lost the vote.
We've removed the ceiling above our dreams. There are no more impossible dreams.
If you think black people have a motivation problem, open up a Wal-Mart and advertise a thousand jobs. Watch 5,000 people show up.
A man must be willing to die for justice. Death is an inescapable reality and men die daily, but good deeds live forever.
In tough economic times, desperate people do desperate things, and the abortion rate goes up.
I think reconciliation is Obama's goal - but the fight with the Republicans is like a fight with pit bulls, they never let go. Even worse, now the Republicans feel they can keep pushing and he will keep giving. They have not seen a stiff resistance on his part.
I'm too mature to be angry.
When journalists and politicians speak of a dwindling middle class that's under economic assault and a poor community that's getting bigger, they're talking about Ferguson. Independent of the racial demographics and dynamics of Ferguson, Missouri, there's a 'Ferguson' near you.
Conservatives and liberals can find common ground.
Those who have the most wealth and the most property, their children have the first, the best, and the most.
Urban America has been redlined. Government has not offered tax incentives for investment, as it has in a dozen foreign markets. Banks have redlined it. Industries have moved out, they've redlined it. Clearly, to break up the redlining process, there must be incentives to green-line with hedges against risk.
There is no power in cynicism. There is no forward thrust in cynicism.
