Jesse Jackson Quotes

What we have to be judged by is the work we try to do. It's public service, not perfect service.

Inclusion is not a matter of political correctness. It is the key to growth.

Hymies." And "Hymietown.

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

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

If you run, you might lose. If you don't run, you're guaranteed to lose.

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

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

Just because a chicken was born in the oven doesn't make it a biscuit.

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

There's a full-court press to put down an uprising around Ferguson, but no preparation for lifting up the people there.

Nobody will save us from us but us.

Statehood for the District of Columbia is the most important civil rights and social justice issue in America today.

Pictures can live in one's memory. That's why they are important.

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

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

At the end of the day, we're defined by our predicament, not by the sides of town.

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

You may choose your mate, but you cannot deny someone else the right to choose their mate.

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.

I know how to run a nationally paced campaign.

At least the politicians are accountable to the voters.

I take my role seriously as a pastor.

I have worked hard to build relationships between Jewish people and black people.

I've paid my dues. I've earned your votes. Send me.

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

We must not measure greatness from the mansion down, but from the manger up.

Fighting disparities is very significant.

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

Success needs no explanation. Failure does not have one that matters.

Let nothing and nobody break your spirit. Let the unity in the community remain intact.

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

I was extended secret service protection during my presidential run in 1984, when I received the most death threats ever made toward a candidate.

People like to say don't abort, adopt. But I'm saying don't strip, scholarship.

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

Time is neutral and does not change things. With courage and initiative, leaders change things.

Surrender had played out for good with me.

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

In many ways Africa subsidised America and Europe's development.

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

The white Christian church never raised to the heights of Christ. It stayed within the limit of culture.

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

Never look down on anybody unless you're helping them up.

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

I preach nonviolence because it's the better alternative.

I am a journalist.

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

Conservatives and liberals can find common ground.

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.

The great responsibility that we have today is to put the poor and the near poor back on front of the American agenda.

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

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

A man must be willing to die for justice. Death is an inescapable reality and men die daily, but good deeds live forever.

Life has its dimensions in the mysterious.

The only justification for ever looking down on somebody is to pick them up.

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

The laws are stacked for the wealthy.

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

Unfortunate. Unfortunate. Sometimes people struggling for freedom lose their way.

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

America is not a blanket woven from one thread, one color, one cloth.

I must oppose the use of federal funds for a policy of killing infants.

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

Our goal was not freedom. Freedom was the necessary prerequisite to get to equality.

If you don't know what tomorrow holds, you need to know who holds tomorrow!

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

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

George Bush has met more foreign heads of state than I have. But a substantial number of them were dead.

You may not be responsible for being down, but you must be responsible for getting up.

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

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.

That Obama I would like to cut his nuts off.

The solution [to a crisis pregnancy] is not to kill the innocent baby but to deal with the mother's values and her attitudes toward life.

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.

Your children need your presence more than your presents.

You can't teach what you don't know. And you can't lead where you don't go.

In politics, an organized minority is a political majority.

When the doors of opportunity swing open, we must make sure that we are not too drunk or too indifferent to walk through.

I cast my bread on the waters long ago. Now it's time for you to send it back to me - toasted and buttered on both sides.

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

I want to cut his nuts off.

Capital punishment turns the state into a murderer. But imprisonment turns the state into a gay dungeon-master.

I want to make America better!

Leadership has a harder job to do than just choose sides. It must bring sides together.

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

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

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

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

There have been more people disenfranchised in Washington than there have been in Kuwait.

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

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

When everyone is included, everyone wins.

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

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

Gangs are a group reaction to helplessness.

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

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

I had to steal to survive.

Each time a barrier falls for one person, the doors of opportunity open wider for every other American.

If I can make it, you can make it.