John Lewis Quotes

Who gets the bird, the hunter or the dog? ~ John Lewis

Historians must not confuse the passage of time with the accumulation of intelligence," John Lewis Gaddis has cautioned. ~ Douglas Boin

The events in Prague, together with the Berlin blockade, convinced the European recipients of American economic assistance that they needed military protection as well: that led them to request the creation of a North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which committed the United States for the first time ever to the peacetime defense of Western Europe. ~ John Lewis

His months of teaching experience were now a lost age of youth and innocence. He could no longer sit in his office at Fort McNair, look out over the elm trees and the golf course, and encompass the world within "neat, geometric patterns" that fit within equally precise lectures. Policy planning was a very different responsibility, but explaining just how was "like trying to describe the mysteries of love to a person who has never experienced it."

There was, however, an analogy that might help. "I have a largish farm in Pennsylvania."...it had 235 acres, on each of which things were happening. Weekends, in theory, were days of rest. But farms defied theory:

Here a bridge is collapsing. No sooner do you start to repair it than a neighbor comes to complain about a hedge row which you haven't kept up half a mile away on the other side of the farm. At that very moment your daughter arrives to tell you that someone left the gate to the hog pasture open and the hogs are out. On the way to the hog pasture, you discover that the beagle hound is happily liquidating one of the children's pet kittens. In burying the kitten you look up and notice a whole section of the barn roof has been blown off and needs instant repair. Somebody shouts from the bathroom window that the pump has stopped working, and there's no water in the house. At that moment, a truck arrives with five tons of stone for the lane. And as you stand there hopelessly, wondering which of these crises ~ John Lewis Gaddis

I'm benefitting from the sacrifices and seeds sown by Shirley Chisholm, John Lewis, and so many others. Those of us who are beneficiaries owe it to have a season of service in which we try to give back. ~ Terri Sewell

This nation is still a place of cheap political leaders who build their careers on immoral compromises and ally themselves with open forms of political, economic, and social exploitation. ~ John Robert Lewis

My narrative style centers around intimate, highly subjective depictions of personal experience and internal landscapes. In 'March,' everything fell into place as soon as I began identifying strongly with John Lewis as a young boy and saw how we shared the same kind of gravity and intensity as youngsters. ~ Nate Powell

The victim had been John Lewis, the theology student. He had been attacked by thugs in a white restroom in Rock Hill, South Carolina. ~ Ken Follett

I always understood the idea of the ultimate redeemer, Christ on the cross. But now I was beginning to see that this is something that is carried out in every one of us, that the purity of unearned suffering is a holy and affective thing It affects not only ourselves, but it touches and changes those around us as well. It opens us and those around us to a force beyond ourselves, a force that is right and moral, the force of righteous truth that is at the basis of human conscience. Suffering puts us and those around us in touch with our consciences. It opens and touches our hearts. It makes us feel compassion when we need to and guilt if we must. ~ John Lewis

Both the United States and the Soviet Union had been born in revolution. Both embraced ideologies with global aspirations: what worked at home, their leaders assumed, would also do so for the rest of the world. ~ John Lewis Gaddis

Love is a better way. ~ John Lewis

I have fought too hard and for too long against discrimination based on race and color not to stand up against discrimination based on sexual orientation. I've heard the reasons for opposing civil marriage for same-sex couples. Cut through the distractions, and they stink of the same fear, hatred and intolerance I have known in racism and in bigotry. ~ John Lewis

But you have to have hope. You have to be optimistic in order to continue to move forward. ~ John Lewis

It is important for upcoming activists to study American history, as well as political and philosophical thought. It is unlikely that what you hope to accomplish is new. Current activism is almost always linked to the history of revolution worldwide, and Americans have a special connection to this legacy because our nation was born out of the struggle against tyranny. ~ John Lewis

I was so inspired by Dr. King that in 1956, with some of my brothers and sisters and first cousins - I was only 16 years old - we went down to the public library trying to check out some books, and we were told by the librarian that the library was for whites only and not for colors. It was a public library. ~ John Lewis

. . .biographers tend to regard as character those elements of personality that remain constant, or nearly so, throughout. . .Like practitioners of fractal geometry, biographers seek patterns that persist as one moves from micro- to macro-levels of analysis, and back again.
. . .
It follows from this that the scale across which we seek similarity need not be chronological. Consider the following incidents in the life of Stalin between 1929 and 1940, arranged not by dates but in terms of ascending horror. Start with the parrot he kept in a cage in his Kremlin apartment. The dictator had the habit of pacing up and down for long periods of time, smoking his pipe, brooding, and occasionally spitting on the floor. One day the parrot tried to mimic Stalin's spitting. He immediately reached into the cage with his pipe and crushed the parrot's head. A very micro-level event, you might well say, so what?

But then you learn that Stalin, while on vacation in the Crimea, was once kept awake by a barking dog. It turned out to be a seeing-eye dog that belonged to a blind peasant. The dog wound up being shot, and the peasant wound up in the Gulag. And then you learn that Stalin drove his independently minded second wife, who tried to talk back to him, into committing suicide. And that he arranged for Trotsky, who also talked back, to be assassinated halfway around the world. And that he arranged as well the deaths of as many of Trotsky's associates that he could reach, ~ John Lewis Gaddis

I say to people today, 'You must be prepared if you believe in something. If you believe in something, you have to go for it. As individuals, we may not live to see the end.' ~ John Lewis

John Lewis is such a remarkable human being. Literally, such a beautiful human being. I remember the first time I met him. We were in the middle of a scene and [Selma director] Ava DuVernay calls, "Cut," and then he literally just came in. He just came walking in.I just froze. I can't explain the feeling. Seeing somebody who was literally a living hero. He was a hero. ~ Stephan James

To reconcile ourselves with one another, we must release our judgments and make peace with the fact that we are one. This country was founded on the ideal that we are all created equal. If we truly believe in the equality of all humankind, how can we put down and belittle one another? How can we disrespect and prejudge one another? How can we come to the point where we malign and hate one another? ~ John Lewis

The book Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story, I read it when I was about 17-and-a-half or 18. It changed my life. ~ John Lewis

We have come a long way in America because of Martin Luther King, Jr. He led a disciplined, nonviolent revolution under the rule of law, a revolution of values, a revolution of ideas. We've come a long way, but we still have a distance to go before all of our citizens embrace the idea of a truly interracial democracy, what I like to call the Beloved Community, a nation at peace with itself. ~ John Lewis

It is the responsibility, yet the individual choice, of each of us to use the light we have to dispel the work of darkness, because if we do not, the power of falsehood rises. Through our inaction it becomes stronger, and a more potent force. It can even lead to the dimming of the light of all humanity born on this planet. That is why we struggle. That is why we fight to contribute to the confirmation of what is good, to seal our compact with love within our own lives and within our world. ~ John Lewis

In terms of our elected officials, I think we need to ask...: How far should we go with our need to know before we completely veer off into the personal and the private and leave behind any chance of having a legitimate debate or discussion or discourse about the issues at hand? ~ John Lewis

Malcolm (X) talked about the need to shift our focus from race to class, both among one another and between ourselves and the white community. He said he believed that was the root of our problems, not just in America, but all over the world. Malcolm was saying, in effect, that it is a struggle for the poor -- for those who have been left out and left behind -- and that it transcends race. ~ John Lewis

It was not enough to come and listen to a great sermon or message every Sunday morning and be confined to those four walls and those four corners. You had to get out and do something. ~ John Lewis

I don't have any extraordinary gifts. I'm just an average Joe who grew up very poor in rural Alabama. ~ John Lewis

As citizens, we knew we had ceded some of our individual rights to society in order to live together as a community. But we did not believe this social contract included support for an immoral system. Since the people invested government with its authority, we understood that we had to obey the law. But when law became suppressive and tyrannical, when human law violated divine principles, we felt it was not only our right, but our duty to disobey. As Henry Thoreau strongly believed, to comply with an unjust system is to accept abuse. It is not the role of the citizen to follow the government down a path that violates his or her own conscience. ~ John Lewis

[People] are beginning to awaken to an idea we gave meaning to in the sixties: We are one people, one family, the human family, and what affects one of us affects us all. ~ John Lewis

When growing up, I saw segregation. I saw racial discrimination. I saw those signs that said white men, colored men. White women, colored women. White waiting. And I didn't like it. ~ John Lewis

...They went from regarding these compromises as regrettable to considering them necessary, then normal, then even desirable. ~ John Lewis Gaddis

You are a light. You are the light. Never let anyone - any person or any force - dampen, dim or diminish your light. Study the path of others to make your way easier and more abundant. Lean toward the whispers of your own heart, discover the universal truth, and follow its dictates. […] Release the need to hate, to harbor division, and the enticement of revenge. Release all bitterness. Hold only love, only peace in your heart, knowing that the battle of good to overcome evil is already won. Choose confrontation wisely, but when it is your time don't be afraid to stand up, speak up, and speak out against injustice. And if you follow your truth down the road to peace and the affirmation of love, if you shine like a beacon for all to see, then the poetry of all the great dreamers and philosophers is yours to manifest in a nation, a world community, and a Beloved Community that is finally at peace with itself. ~ John Lewis

Nothing can stop the power of a committed and determined people to make a difference in our society. Why? Because human beings are the most dynamic link to the divine on this planet. ~ John Lewis

Rep. John Lewis, Georgia Democrat and a civil rights leader during the 1960s, was one of those calling on the president for a more robust federal response, such as President Dwight D. Eisenhower did against Jim Crow-defending Southern governors. ~ Anonymous

And there were no signs whatever of the disagreements among capitalists - or of the Anglo-American war - that Stalin's ideological illusions had led him to expect. ~ John Lewis Gaddis

If you're not hopeful and optimistic, then you just give up. You have to take the long hard look and just believe that if you're consistent, you will succeed. ~ John Lewis

Our opponent [ Representative John Lewis] is someone who sees America as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists who targeted their own country. ~ Sarah Palin

Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse. ~ John Lewis

John Lewis Gaddis had come to visit shortly before the election and over lunch said something that resonated with me. "Never forget how really dependent the world is on America. And they know it. ~ Condoleezza Rice

Janey was planning a short engagement, she'd simpered, and so, of course, the inevitable collection for the wedding present would soon follow. Of all the compulsory financial contributions, that is the one that irks me most. Two people wander around John Lewis picking out lovely items for themselves, and then they make other people pay for them. It's bare-faced effrontery. They choose things like plates, bowls and cutlery-I mean, what are they doing at the moment: shoveling food from packets into their mouths with their bare hands? I simply fail to see how the act of legally formalizing a human relationship necessitates friends, family and coworkers upgrading the contents of their kitchen for them. ~ Gail Honeyman

Fury spends itself pretty quickly when there's no fury facing it. ~ John Lewis

But we must accept one central truth and responsibility as participants in a democracy: Freedom is not a state; it is an act. It is not some enchanted garden perched high on a distant plateau where we can finally sit down and rest. Freedom is the continuous action we all must take, and each generation must do its part to create an even more fair, more just society. ~ John Lewis

If you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have a moral obligation to do something about it. ~ John Lewis

After all, how many of our todays and of our tomorrows do we want to give our yesterdays? It is one thing to be victimized by another. It is quite another to victimize ourselves because we cannot learn from the past or forgive. Those who choose to live in the past, to live in the land of regret and complaint, do so at the sacrifice of their todays and their tomorrows. ~ John Lewis Lund

My parents told me in the very beginning as a young child when I raised the question about segregation and racial discrimination, they told me not to get in the way, not to get in trouble, not to make any noise. ~ John Lewis

By the force of our demands, our determination and our numbers, we shall splinter the segregated South into a thousand pieces and put them back together in the image of God and democracy. ~ John Lewis

Has he paid his dues? Is he black enough? ... John Lewis and I were out there marching and organizing sit-ins back in the '60s so that his children and my children would not have to do it ... We would have been failures if had to do the same things we did. ~ Jim Clyburn

When I was a student, I studied philosophy and religion. I talked about being patient. Some people say I was too hopeful, too optimistic, but you have to be optimistic just in keeping with the philosophy of non-violence. ~ John Lewis

I have decided to sleep under the stars... Tonight heaven is my roof, and the hedges my walls... The field folds me in soft wings. ~ John Lewis-Stempel

you rise at dawn in May you can savour the world before the pandemonium din of the Industrial Revolution and 24/7 shopping. ~ John Lewis-Stempel

I think all Americans should be hopeful, and try to be optimistic. ~ John Lewis

Whenever I see John Lewis, I invariably say, 'Thank you.' And I will never stop. I don't know how he's still standing, because what he endured took courage and strength that I don't know that I have. ~ Don Lemon

We are involved now in a serious revolution. This nation is still a place of cheap political leaders who build their careers on immoral compromises and ally themselves with open forms of political, economic and social exploitation. What political leader here can stand up and say, "My party is the party of principles? ~ John Lewis

Even if toxic people are right about what is "good," they are wrong if the approach is not healthy. ~ John Lewis Lund

The government, both state and federal, has a duty to be reasonable and accommodating. ~ John Lewis

I believe in freedom of speech, but I also believe that we have an obligation to condemn speech that is racist, bigoted, anti-Semitic, or hateful. ~ John Lewis

Political parties are on the hunt to search and destroy each other, as though we were involved in some kind of enemy combat, rather than the work of statesmanship. ~ John Lewis

I loved going to the library. It was the first time I ever saw Black newspapers and magazines like JET, Ebony, the Baltimore Afro-American, or the Chicago Defender. And I'll never forget my librarian. ~ John Lewis

George Kennan and Paul Nitze were the Adams and Jefferson of the Cold War. They were there for the beginning, they witnessed its course over almost half a century, and they argued with each other constantly while it was going on. But they maintained throughout a remarkable friendship, demonstrating-as few others in our time have-that it is possible to differ with civility. Nicholas Thompson's is a fine account of that relationship, carefully researched, beautifully written, and evocatively suggestive of how much we have lost because such civility has become so rare. ~ John Lewis Gaddis

Races don't fall in love, genders don't fall in love: Individuals fall in love. We all should be free to marry the person that we love. ~ John Lewis

Despite the legacy of slavery, the near extermination of native Americans, and persistent racial, sexual, and social discrimination, the citizens of the United States could plausibly claim, in 1945, to live in the freest society on the face of the earth. ~ John Lewis Gaddis

The doctrine of preemption has a long and distinguished history in the history of American foreign policy. ~ John Lewis Gaddis

To make it hard, to make it difficult almost impossible for people to cast a vote is not in keeping with the democratic process. ~ John Lewis

The United States came out of the 1990s, if anything, in an even greater position of hegemony and preeminence than it was at the beginning of the 1990s. ~ John Lewis Gaddis

We may not have chosen the time, but the time has chosen us. ~ John Lewis

The documented incidences of voter fraud are very rare, yet throughout the country, forces have mobilized in over 30 states to stop it. These efforts are very partisan. ~ John Lewis

The most important one was the belief, which went back to Lenin, that capitalists would never be able to cooperate with one another for very long. Their inherent greediness - the irresistible urge to place profits above politics - would sooner or later prevail, leaving communists with the need only for patience as they awaited their adversaries' self-destruction. ~ John Lewis Gaddis

One thing 'not right' on the 50th anniversary of the Selma marches is the sad fact that the Edmund Pettus Bridge hasn't been renamed the John Lewis Bridge. ~ Douglas Brinkley

When you see something that is not right, not just, not fair, you have a moral obligation to say something, to do something. ~ John Lewis

We built a coalition of conscience, and that we can do it again, and we can go forward, and help redeem the soul of America. ~ John Lewis

Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and help redeem the soul of America. ~ John Lewis

John Lewis said, You have to be taught the way of peace, the way of love, the way of nonviolence. In the religious sense, in the moral sense, you can say that in the bosom of every human being, there is a spark of the divine. So you don't have a right as a human to abuse that spark of the divine in your fellow human being. From time to time, we would discuss that, if you have someone attacking you, beating you, spitting on you, you have to think of that person. Years ago that person was an innocent child, an innocent little baby. What happened? Did something go wrong? Did someone teach that person to hate, to abuse others? You try to appeal to the goodness of every human being and you don't give up. You never give up on anyone. ~ Krista Tippett

Faith, to me, is knowing in the solid core of your soul that the work is already done, even as the idea is being conceived in your mind. It is being as sure as you are about your dreams as you are about anything you know as a hard fact."

Rep. John Lewis, D-GA ~ T.D. Davis

First time I got arrested, I knew somehow and some way, we would succeed. To go on the Freedom Ride to be beaten and left bloody and unconscious, to be beaten on that bridge in Selma, have a concussion - I thought that I was going to die on that bridge. But somehow and some way, I lived to tell about what happened, and I've seen some of the fruits of the labor of so many people, and people must understand that. ~ John Lewis

There's nothing entertaining about watching goons hurl venomous slurs at congressmen like the civil rights hero John Lewis and the openly gay Barney Frank How curious that a mob fond of likening President Obama to Hitler knows so little about history that it doesn't recognize its own small-scale mimicry of Kristallnacht. ~ Frank Rich

I would say the country is a different country. It is a better country. The signs I saw when I was growing up are gone and they will not return. In many ways the walls of segregation have been torn down. ~ John Lewis

I expressed skepticism, in the first chapter, about the utility of time machines in historical research. I especially advised against graduate students relying on them, because of the limited perspective you tend to get from being plunked down in some particular part of the past, and the danger of not getting back in time for your orals. ~ John Lewis Gaddis

Second terms in the White House open the way for second thoughts. ~ John Lewis Gaddis

And I wonder, is it really so difficult to enter, in some slight degree, into the mind-frame of an animal? Are we not all beasts? ~ John Lewis-Stempel

Hear my wife speak of John Lewis and you might picture a stately pleasure dome of ornamental cascades and hanging gardens, staffed by muscular Centaurs who know all there is to know about kitchenware and soft furnishings. But really it's just a big hall full of wanky chrome fridges. ~ Tim Moore

Suffering, though, can be nothing more than a sad and sorry thing without the presence on the part of the sufferer of a graceful heart, an accepting and open heart, a heart that holds no malice toward the inflictors of his or suffering This is a difficult concept to understand, and it is even more difficult to internalize, but it has everything to do with the way of nonviolence. We are talking about love here....This is a broader, deeper, more all-encompassing love. It is a love that acepts and embraces the hateful and the hurtful. It is a love that recognizes the spark of the divine in each of us, even in those who would raise their hand against us, those we might call our enemy. ~ John Lewis

My dad came over from Ireland when he was 13 and lived on the streets, working on building sites, and has just retired from his job delivering furniture for John Lewis. My mum has had the same job for 30 years as a sales assistant at Marks and Spencer. They've always been really great; they just want me to be happy. ~ Amanda Hale

I thought I was going to die a few times. On the Freedom Ride in the year 1961, when I was beaten at the Greyhound bus station in Montgomery, I thought I was going to die. On March 7th, 1965, when I was hit in the head with a night stick by a State Trooper at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, I thought I was going to die. I thought I saw death, but nothing can make me question the philosophy of nonviolence. ~ John Lewis

Young people can understand, and must understand, that we had success, we had failures, but we never gave up. We never gave in. We never became bitter. We didn't hate. We continued to press on. And that's what we're saying: There are some ups, there are some downs, and when you're not down, you must have the capacity and the ability to get up and keep going. ~ John Lewis

Stalin's postwar goals were security for himself, his regime, his country, and his ideology, in precisely that order. ~ John Lewis Gaddis

A man I admire and respect - Congressman John Lewis, an American hero, made allegations that Sarah Palin and I were somehow associated with the worst chapter in American history, segregation, deaths of children in church bombings, George Wallace. That, to me, was so hurtful. ~ John McCain

Rioting is not a movement. It is not an act of civil disobedience. I think it is a mistake for people to consider disorganized action, mayhem, and attacks on other people and property as an extension of any kind of movement. It is not. It is simply an explosion of emotion. That's all. There is nothing constructive about it. It is destructive. ~ John Lewis

When people tell me nothing has changed, I say come walk in my shoes and I will show you change. ~ John Lewis

George W. Bush has much to evaluate: he has presided over the most sweeping redesign of U.S. grand strategy since the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt. ~ John Lewis Gaddis

The alternative Kennan described as the "particularized" approach. It was "skeptical of any scheme for compressing international affairs into legalist concepts. It holds that the content is more important than the form, and will force its way through any formal structure which is placed upon it. It considers that the thirst for power is still dominant among so many peoples that it cannot be assuaged or controlled by anything but counter-force." Particularism would not reject the idea of joining with other governments to preserve world order, but to be effective such alliances would have to be based "upon real community of interest and outlook, which is to be found only among limited groups of governments, and not upon the abstract formalism of universal international law or international organization. ~ John Lewis Gaddis

My mother and father and many of my relatives had been sharecroppers. ~ John Lewis

So scared of getting older
I'm only good at being young
So I play the numbers game to find a way to say that life has just begun. ~ John Mayer

Why does one never hear of government funding for the preservation and encouragement of comic strips, girlie magazines and TV soap operas? Because these genres still hold the audience they were created to amuse and instruct. ~ John Updike

Free trade with Colombia is something that's a no-brainer. ~ John McCain

One of the hardest lessons we have to learn in this life, and one that many persons never learn, is to see the divine, the celestial, the pure, in the common, the near at hand-to see that heaven lies about us here in this world. ~ John Burroughs

Hollywood has lost touch with their audience a long time ago. ~ John Ratzenberger

Gone! And you and I quite crestfallen. It's always like that, you can't keep him; it's not as if he were a tame lion. ~ C.S. Lewis

The first line grabs me by the throat. "Therefore we do not lose heart." Somebody knows how not to lose heart? I'm all ears. For we are losing heart. All of us. Daily. It is the single most unifying quality shared by the human race on the planet at this time. We are losing - or we have already lost - heart. ~ John Eldredge

God forbid you got seasick because there was no option to go back. So that really did force us to be a group. ~ John C. Reilly

People who are servants-humbly, honestly, and joyfully-keep getting revealed as the biggest winners. People who recognize and embrace their smallness keep getting bigger and bigger in God's eyes. It's the oddest scoring system. ~ John Ortberg

Fost. So (said he), I understand: but well, if you will promise to call the people no more together, you shall have your liberty to go home; for my brother is very loath to send you to prison, if you will be but ruled. Bun. Sir (said I), pray what do you mean by calling the people together? my business is not anything among them, when they are come together, but to exhort them to look after the salvation of their souls, that they may be saved, etc. Fost. Saith he, We must not enter into explication, or dispute now; but if you will say you will call the people no more together, you may have your liberty; if not, you must be sent away to prison. Bun. Sir, said I, I shall not force or compel any man to hear me; but yet, if I come into any place where there is a people met together, I should, according to the best of my skill and wisdom, exhort and counsel them to seek out after the Lord Jesus Christ, for the salvation of their souls. ~ John Bunyan