Jesse Jackson Quotes

You can't plant a seed and pick the fruit the next morning.

If whites would vote their economic interests, not their racial fears, we the people who have the most need for change have the power to bring about that change nonviolently.

The American people on the ground need a clearer, stronger, Lyndon B. Johnson-type voice from their president.

Those who write the editorials and those who write the columns, they simply are unaccountable. They're free to impose their cultural politics in the name of freedom of the press.

When everyone is included, everyone wins.

Humanitarian appeals always help. They penetrate deeper than political tradeoffs.

For me, Barack Obama's election was a milestone of the most extraordinary kind. On the day he was elected I felt such hope in my heart. I thought we were seeing the beginning of a new era of equal opportunity across race and gender such as America had never known before.

You can't vote against healthcare and call yourself a black man.

I'm a Third World person. I grew up in an occupied zone [Greenville, South Carolina] and had to negotiate with the superpower, really the colonial power.

It is in struggle and service with our brothers and sisters, individually and collectively, that we find the meaning of life.

Workers, black and white, need some kind of international affirmative action to protect them from unfair competition with unorganized or slave labor abroad and unfair competition with robots at home.

When you create more small businesses, you create small entrepreneurship. Out of that comes self-determination and employment.

I know they are all environmentalists. I heard a lot of my speeches recycled.

It'll be a great day when the seniors have all the baseball caps they need and the Pentagon bombs Gilligan's Island.

Black men of integrity cannot make a deal with a politician and leave out the poor of the nation, all God's children.

Hold your head high, stick your chest out. It gets dark sometimes, but morning comes. Keep hope alive.

I want to make America better!

We must give the American worker the first option of ownership.

The law protects you from being abused. It doesn't threaten your lifestyle for someone else to have the right to exhibit their lifestyle.

Most blacks will argue that they excel because of hard work, because of intellect, determination, sweat, blood, tears and risk.

When I came here, I put my hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution. I didn't put my hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible.

In tough economic times, desperate people do desperate things, and the abortion rate goes up.

If I were a white candidate, I'd have won the Democratic nomination.

Choose the human race over the nuclear race. Bury the weapons and don't burn the people.

If a black doctor discovers a cure for cancer, ain't no hospital going to lock him out.

The crisis is not an opportunity to change the character of Louisiana's political order. We must not use the crisis to turn Louisiana into a red state
this is a rainbow state.

[I]t's an honor to be a food stamp president. Food stamps feed the hungry. Food stamps save the children. Food stamps help the farmer. Food stamps help the truck driver. Food stamps help the warehouse. Food stamps help the store. Food stamps hire people and feed people. Food stamps save people from starvation and malnutrition ... Give President Barack Obama a big hand. Show your love. Show your appreciation.

When blacks are unemployed, they are considered lazy and apathetic. When whites are unemployed, it's considered a depression.

Our flag is red, white and blue, but our nation is a rainbow
red, yellow, brown, black and white
and we're all precious in God's sight.

Has done a great job walking a thin line between revenge and remedy.

Most poor people are not on welfare ... I know they work. I'm a witness. They catch the early bus. They work every day. They raise other people's children. They work every day. They clean the streets. They work every day. They drive vans with cabs. They work every day. They change beds you slept in these hotels last night and can't get a union contract. They work every day ...

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.

We must know the difference between sweat and tears. Sweat is wet. Tears are wet. Sweat is salty. Tears are salty. But progress comes through sweat. Progress never came through tears.

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.

Obama used to be a community organizer. He knows how to build communities.

We picked their cotton. We cooked their food. We nursed their babies. Now we can run their cities. We can run their states. We will run the country.

It's not enough to be quiet. Quietness is the absence of noise. We need peace, the presence of justice and to be - and so people here can coexist and live together.

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.

Many kids come out of college, they have a credit card and a diploma. They don't know how to buy a house or a car or health insurance or life insurance. They do not know basic microeconomics.

America is not like a blanket- one piece of unbroken cloth. America is more like a quilt- many patches, many pieces, many colors, many sizes, all woven together by a common thread.

Deliberation and debate is the way you stir the soul of our democracy.

Iraq will drive American agenda for a long time because Iraq policy has so damaged America in the Middle East region, left us isolated. We are there now by brute strength, we are not there because we are desired.

If I can make it, you can make it.

A check or credit card, a Gucci bag strap, anything of value will do. Give as you live.

Leadership cannot just go along to get along. Leadership must meet the moral challenge of the day.

Gangs are a group reaction to helplessness.

When I was a boy we were poor and we had to make do with what we had. So my grandma used to make us quits that we used for blankets. She couldn't afford to go to the store and buy a blanket
so she'd take scraps of cloth and sew them together. there'd be different colors and different patterns and different types of cloth
but they all went together to make that big quilt to keep us warm.

There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps ... then turn around and see somebody white and feel relieved.

We went across the South on Super Tuesday without a single catcall or boo, without a single ugly sign. Not until we got to New York and the North did the litmus test of race and religion spout from the mouths of public officials.

Watch the walls come down, whether it's in the South or on Wall Street. When the walls come down, what do we find? More markets, more talent, more capital and growth. Which means that the race and sex discrimination stunt economic growth. It's not good for capitalism. It's not good for America's growth. And it's not morally right.

Republicans are the party of 'no,' and Democrats are the party of 'don't know' because it hasn't fought for bold ideas, policies, or plans to turn us in a new direction.

Both tears and sweat are salty, but they render a different result. Tears will get you sympathy; sweat will get you change.

We reveal our joys and successes, we conceal our pain.

Hymies." And "Hymietown.

See, Barack been, um, talking down to black people on this faith-based ... I want to cut his nuts off. Barack, he's talking down to black people.

My constituency is the desperate, the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected and the despised.

I know how to run a nationally paced campaign.

Many have fought for and even lost their lives to end segregation, to win the right to vote. It disappoints me to now have to cajole people to register and to vote.

On the political front, of course it's a zero-sum game. If it's all white males holding positions, you bring 10 women in, then it's, 'Women are coming!' Get 10 blacks and it's, 'Blacks are coming!' 'Hispanics are coming!' Zero-sum game. The seatmates might change but the chairs don't move. In the economy, the number of chairs can actually increase.

God doesn't make orange juice, God makes oranges.

Our dreams must be stronger than our memories. We must be pulled by our dreams, rater than pushed by our memories.

Abortion is black genocide ... What happens to the mind of a person and the moral fabric of a nation that accepts the aborting of the life of a baby without a pang of conscience?

If my mind can conceive it,
My heart can believe it,
I know I can achieve it!

When God rang the bell that ended the fight, the world cried out for one more round.

The more you focus on sex without love, and drugs and violence, lifestyle of intimidation and recycling, the less energy you spend on opening up the big tent.

We made this inexplicable turn into Iraq, where we've lost lives, money, honour and the coalition on [George] Bush's watch. Surely he's not suggesting that if the Democrats win, things can get worse. I mean, all we can do now is to look at our field policy and change the course. We need more diplomatic outreach toward Iran, Syria and Middle Eastern allies, and less bluster and less threats, and fewer troops.

Don't look down on somebody unless you are helping them up.

A man who cannot be enticed by money or intimidated by the threat of jail or death has two of the strongest weapons that anyone has to offer.

You know, people'd always ask 'Why is Jesse Jackson running for the White House?' They never seen the house I'm running from.

When we were hit on 9/11 it took us a few weeks to get the coalition together because [George] Bush had come in with a kind of narrow ideology, looking at the world, I'd say, through a keyhole and not through a door.

We've removed the ceiling above our dreams. There are no more impossible dreams.

I'm not wasting my time with any more non-straight-talking candidates.

When we do in Grenada what the Soviet Union did in Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan, we lose moral authority and credibility.

Fighting disparities is very significant.

You cannot teach what you don't know. You cannot give energy if you're not on fire on the inside.

The trouble is that nonviolence is so often defined as refusal to fight, and that is the American definition of cowardice. In fact, marching unarmed against the guns and dogs of the police requires more courage than does aggression. The perverted idea of manhood coming from the barrel of a gun is what keeps people from understanding nonviolence.

When they wrote the Constitution, only white male landowners had the right to vote.

The ground is no place for a champion. The ground is no place that I will wallow on.

If you try you may fail, if you don't try you're guaranteed to fail.

Peace is the alternative to war, and nonviolence should be seen as the antidote to violence, not simply as its opposite. Nonviolence is more concerned with saving life than with saving face.

Nobody will save us from us but us.

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.

The charges that I am anti-Semitic are simply erroneous, felonious, and unceremonious. In fact, when I need a doctor, I always look for one with a Jewish name.

I am a journalist.

Many are observing Ferguson and witnessing the anger, demonstrations, looting and vandalism and calling for quiet. But quiet isn't enough. The absence of noise isn't the presence of justice - and we must demand justice in Ferguson and the other 'Fergusons' around America.

If you fall behind, run faster. Never give up, never surrender, and rise up against the odds.

Any attempt to dilute my support for Sen. Obama will not succeed.

We must all learn a good lesson - how to live together. That is the new challenge of the new world ... learning to co-exist and not co-annihilate.

In order for an ideal to become a reality, there must be a person, a personality to translate it.

Ronald Reagan was older than I was when he ran for president.

Great things happen in small places. Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Jesse Jackson was born in Greenville.

That's just like America. It's made up of lots of different people. We're all different colors, different ages, we do different jobs
but it takes all of us black people, white people, brown people, men and women, young and old, working in the factories, working in the fields, working in offices, working in stores
it takes a lot of different kinds of people to get the job done for America.

America needs young people to be inspired to choose sacrifice over greed.

What happens to the mind of a person, and the moral fabric of a nation, that accepts the aborting of the life of a baby without a pang of conscience? What kind of a person and what kind of a society will we have twenty years hence if life can be taken so casually? It is that question, the question of our attitude, our value system, and our mind-set with regard to the nature and worth of life itself that is the central question confronting mankind. Failure to answer that question affirmatively may leave us with a hell right here on earth.

Sometimes arrogance makes us overreach. George Bush Jr. often tries to suggest the leaders of other countries, and it is just not good diplomacy.

Those who have the most wealth and the most property, their children have the first, the best, and the most.

Few would deny that blacks have become very dominant in athletics: football, basketball, track, now dominant in tennis and dominant in golf.

You must never stop dreaming. Face reality, yes. But don't stop with the way things are; dream of things as they ought to be. Dream of peace. Peace is rational and reasonable. War is irrational in this age and unwinnable.

Negroes' problem is that they do not have their egos. That's why our churches end up having a white service, because our preacher is not arrogant enough to take God's word, so he have to go and get some white fellow's agenda and put it in his church.

We live on the dash between our birth date and our death date.