John Lewis Quotes

To question the legitimacy of the next United States president, you know, and you're worried about a tweet that says, hey, why don't you get back to work instead of questioning my legitimacy? Too bad.

Ornette Coleman is doing the only really new thing in jazz since the innovations in the mid-forties of Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and those of Thelonious Monk

I think it is a must for young people and generations yet to come, to understand, to feel, to touch, to almost smell the drama of what happened a few short years ago [the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s]. So maybe, just maybe, we will never ever repeat this unbelievable time in our history. We have to tell it all, and make it plain, and make it clear, so people will never ever forget the distance we have come, and the progress we have yet to make.

Do we do away with protecting of the American people with pre - to make sure that if you have an illness you can get insurance? Do we make sure that young people stay on their parents' health insurance? Do we make sure that there are no caps if you're dealing with cancer and you deal with preexisting conditions? It goes without saying that those patient protections have got to stay in place.

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.

I think, in fact, I think President [Barack] Obama could step up.

Nonviolence is one of those immutable principles that we cannot and must not deviate from.

I think [James Comey] should take a hard look at what he has done. And I think it would not be a bad thing for the American people if he did step down.

No one can say that this was the decisive and [Russians hacking ] was what elected [Donald] Trump, but clearly his behavior during the campaign in terms of what he said in the week or two before the election was unacceptable.

Right now what my job is, and I think the job of Democrats and Republicans, is to protect the middle class and working families of this country from some devastating ideas that [Donald] Trump has proposed.

I think putting the United States down across the world is not something that a responsible person does.

Maybe, just maybe, there should be a graphic novel dealing with the contribution of the women of the civil rights movement, to tell their story. The pain, the hurt. They raised their children. Some were working as maids, but when they left those kitchens, those homes, they made it to the mass meetings. And they put their bodies on the lines, also.

When I was 15 years old in the tenth grade, I heard Martin Luther King, Jr. Three years later, when I was 18, I met Dr. King and we became friends. Two years after that I became very involved in the civil rights movement. I was in college at the time. As I got more and more involved, I saw politics as a means of bringing about change

Our struggle is a struggle to redeem the soul of America. It's not a struggle that lasts for a few days, a few weeks, a few months, or a few years. It is the struggle of a lifetime, more than one lifetime.

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

We all remember that [Donald] Trump was one of the leaders of the so-called birther movement trying to delegitimize the presidency of our first African-American president Barack Obama, which is an outrage.

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

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.

The reward for playing jazz is playing jazz.

Many of us in Nashville accepted nonviolence as a way of life, a way of living, not simply as a technique or a tactic.

That issue has been resolved for years now, and it's been resolved for at least two years in Donald Trump's mind. And to bring that up as justification for John Lewis questioning the legitimacy of a democratic activity that is - has been around since the beginning of our country is wrong.

We're not questioning the legitimacy of the outcome of the election. You didn't have Republicans questioning whether or not [Barack] Obama legitimately beat John McCain in 2008.

DNI director [James] Clapper said as much many, many times, that there is no evidence that any outcome of the election was changed.

I can tell just from working closely for the last year an half with president-elect [Donald Trump] and even over the course of the last six weeks, he has no problem with differing opinions in a room.

That's where the outrage should be, not old news, but the fact that we are preparing for the transfer of power. and we have been working with President [Barack] Obama, hand in glove, and I think that they - including the president - should step up and get his people in line and tell them to grow up and accept the fact that they lost the election.

You have to have the capacity and the ability to take what people did, and how they did it, and forgive them and move on.

When I speak to students about the Civil Rights Movement, I say that it is impossible to stop a determined movement that is captivating the American consciousness. I think the candidacy of Sen. Obama represents the beginning of a new movement in American political history that began in the hearts and minds of the people of this nation. And I want to be on the side of the people, on the side of the spirit of history.

The point is not where Barack Obama was born, the point is is that we've got congressmen on the Democratic side of the aisle that are questioning the legitimacy of President-elect [Donald] Trump who won in an electoral landslide.

What sensible people have got to do is not simply repeal the Affordable Care Act without any alternative, but you've got to sit down and say it's OK, what are the problems. How do we address it? How do we move to universal health care? How do we lower prescription drug costs? How do we make sure that people don't have outrageous deductibles? You just don't throw 20 million people off of health insurance. You don't privatize Medicare.

I think right now, the focus has got to be on how we hold [Donald] Trump accountable.

Well, what Cory Booker and John Lewis are right about is to talk about the racist past of Donald Trump.

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.

I believe that teachers - whether in elementary schools, at the secondary level, or at colleges and universities - every teacher deserves the Nobel Peace Prize just for maintaining order in our schools!

I truly believe that one day we will get there, we will arrive. And if we do it right in America, maybe, just maybe, we can serve as a model for the rest of the world.

What has been doing in the last week, attacking Hollywood actresses [Meryl Streep] for criticizing him, I mean what would is this guy [Donald Trump] living in?

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.

I think [Donald Trump] is going to be inaugurated this week. I have great concerns, and apparently Republicans do as well, and there's going to be an investigation about the role that Russian hacking played in getting him elected.

As a young child, it became crystal clear to me that there were certain rights and privileges that other people had that my mother, my father, my grandparents, my great grandparents didn't have - that it was an ongoing struggle to realize the dream of the 14th and 15th Amendment.

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

Be prepared to organize nonviolent workshops - a teach-in around what is happening in America today. Organize your teachers and schoolmates, and be prepared to engage in some action.

The vast majority of the American people agree with me and many others. You don't simply repeal the Affordable Care Act without a replacement. Republicans have had six years to come up with a replacement. They got nothing.

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

Medgar Evers was assassinated in his driveway retuning from an NAACP meeting in downtown Jackson. And then you go back there years later, and the blood is still on the driveway. They cannot wash it away.

President-elect [Donald] Trump won 30 of 50 states, more counties since Ronald Reagan.

I would like to think that we have made much more progress, that we've come much further, to have someone like a Donald Trump to emerge as the nominee of a major political party.

The last thing we want is a monolithic viewpoint where six people are standing before a president saying the same thing over and over again.

There are hundreds and thousands of young Americans who cannot or will not receive an education, because in order to get an education, you have to spend money. Students come out of college and universities with unbelievable debt. It's not right, it's not fair, and it's not just, in a society such as ours. And those dollars are not going to the teachers.

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.