Andrew Young Quotes

In a world where change is inevitable and continuous, the need to achieve that change without violence is essential for survival.

I tried. But not everybody thought so.

The Soviet Union is going to have a human-rights explosion. You'll have hundreds of thousands of dissidents.

Can wealth give happiness? look around and see, what gay distress! what splendid misery! Whatever fortunes lavishly can pour, the mind annihilates and calls for more.

No nation as rich as ours should have so many people isolated on islands of poverty in such a sea of material wealth.

There's no problem on the planet that can't be solved without violence. That's the lesson of the civil rights movement.

I call upon both Republicans and Democrats to work with us to have a national ID card that is free and accessible. President Lyndon Johnson and Martin Luther King recognized was the greatest step for society was that short step into the voting booth. If we are to be true to their courage and conviction, we must make that short step as easy as possible. Surely, if we can land a spaceship on Mars, we can certainly put a voter ID card in the hand of every eligible voter.

We think it is complicated to change the world. Change comes little by little. Nothing worthwhile can happen in one generation.

In a sane, civil, intelligent and moral society, you don't blame poor people for being poor.

Nothing is illegal if one hundred businessmen decide to do it.

Both the brightness and the spectrum of the X-rays are very different from what theory predicts.

Everybody is determined by his own experience.

Any racial reconciliation we've had in this country has come not out of confrontation but out of a spirit of reconciliation. If we continue to practice an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, we'll eventually end up with a land of people who are blind and toothless.

We were trying to transform America, not triumph over white folk.

More and more I find I'm really impressed with how much my son knows and how much he thinks like me. But he never would agree with me and he never would listen to me on anything.

He [Martin Luther King Jr.] always used to say you have no choice about being born or dying. The only thing you have a choice about is what you die for.

If you're a preacher, you talk for a living, so even if you don't make sense, you learn to make nonsense eloquently.

President Jimmy Carter was a citizen soldier. Ironically, he was considered weak because he didn't kill anybody and he didn't get anyone killed.

I wasn't predicted to be anything. I just followed an inner spirit, and it put me in the right place and the right time. I didn't want to be the mayor of Atlanta. I didn't want to run for Congress. I didn't want to work for Martin Luther King Jr. I wanted to work close to him and be a writer and write about the movement.

Bill [Clinton] is every bit as black as Barack. He's probably gone with more black women than Barack.

Look at those they call unfortunate and at a closer view, you'll find many of them are unwise.

Once the Xerox copier was invented, diplomacy died.

On the soft bed of luxury many kingdoms have expired.

Violence is not more efficient than non-violence.

Wishing of all strategies, is the worst.

There is a sense in which the United States Ambassador speaks to the United States, as well as for the United States. I have always seen my role as a thermostat, rather than a thermometer. So I'm going to be actively working... for my own concerns. I have always had people advise me on what to say, but never on what not to say.

My solutions are to include Africa in the global economy, and not African charity, AIDS research, but African infrastructure development. And I think that Africa can import and needs everything the whole world can manufacture. And they have got enough money to pay for it. It's just that the money is in the ground.

The two are not mutually exclusive, but we think we can have wealth without good ideas and without values and without a clear vision. Wealth without vision is insanity.