Jesse Jackson Quotes

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

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.

Politicians argue for abortion largely because they do not want to spend the necessary money to feed, clothe and educate more people... There are those who argue that the right to privacy is of higher order than the right to life. I do not share that view... That was the premise of slavery. You could not protest the existence or treatment of slaves on the plantation because that was private and therefore outside of your right to concerned.

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

So here we are today with a new conversation. When University of Georgia plays Georgia Tech, it's uniform color versus skin color. We have - we've overcome that level of racial fear.

While I've spent a lot of quality time with my children, perhaps it's not been enough.

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

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

So many bright stars, bright in life, burn out quickly.

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

A new leadership. A choice. A chance. Don't cry about what you don't have. Use what you got.

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.

There is fear, police in fear, people if are in fear, children are fear, but fear and hate must not drive our agenda, love and hope and healing must drive the agenda.

Fighting disparities is very significant.

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

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

When it came to the division of power, we did not get from the Jews the slice of cake we deserved... the Jews do not share with us control of wealth, broadcasting stations and other centers of power.

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

We must face the No. 1 critical issue of our day. It is youth crime in general and black-on-black crime in particular. There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery. Then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved. After all we have been through, just to think we can't walk down our own streets, how humiliating.

I was blessed to go abroad and bring Americans home from jail in Syria, and Iraq, and Cuba, and Yugoslavia, and Liberia, those are high moments of my life.

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

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

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

The Black public sector middle class teachers, policeman, firemen, and post office workers, those jobs have been on the decline but there hasn't been a corresponding increase in the private sector. What is especially painful is government policy bailed out the banks without making them make reinvestments for rebuilding. The result is 53-million Americans are food insecure, 50-million Americans are in poverty, 44 million are on food stamps, 26 million are looking for a job.

Capitalism without capital is just an ism.

To bring up a child in the way he should go, travel that way yourself once in a while. Your children need your presence more than your presents.

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

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.

Politicians refuse to modernize schools, they cut out midnight basketball, but build all these new jails. First class jails, second class schools. This is zero tolerance.

The liberation of Blacks is not for Blacks only.

Those powers that control the tent are not threatened at all by any activity that you engage in, in the shadows, that's not moving toward the tent. And I am rather convinced that we have a generation that is so preoccupied with life in the shadows, they never even focus on getting to the sunlight where you open up the big tent.

It does not stand to give banks millions of dollars at an interest rate of one percent, when banks charge students an interest rate of 6 percent. Why should the banks be scalping students?

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

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.

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

When everyone is included, everyone wins.

No one should negotiate their dreams. Dreams must be free to fly high.

If you wear a hoodie but aren't registered to vote, you got the symbolism but missed the substance.

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.

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

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.

Surrender had played out for good with me.

[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.

People internalize, from the jail to student loan debt, to credit card debt, to unemployment to the whole collective. It manifests itself in many ways, in people's home lives, domestic stuff.

There are clear patterns of discrimination against Blacks and Latinos. The big banks targeted Blacks and Latinos with toxic packages of subprime predatory lending.

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.

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

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