Words matter. These are the best Jesse Jackson Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
Black and Jewish leaders have been a coalition of conscience.
Both tears and sweat are salty, but they render a different result. Tears will get you sympathy; sweat will get you change.
When we’re unemployed, we’re called lazy; when the whites are unemployed it’s called a depression.
We must all learn a good lesson – how to live together.
There have been more people disenfranchised in Washington than there have been in Kuwait.
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.
We’ve removed the ceiling above our dreams. There are no more impossible dreams.
I had gained a greater appreciation of hearing the concerns of woman, doctors, and so many others.
Republicans are the party of ‘no,’ and Democrats are the party of ‘don’t know’ because it hasn’t fought for bold ideas, policies, or plans to turn us in a new direction.
You may choose your mate, but you cannot deny someone else the right to choose their mate.
The relationship between the prophet and the President, the priest and the President, is a sacred one.
When journalists and politicians speak of a dwindling middle class that’s under economic assault and a poor community that’s getting bigger, they’re talking about Ferguson. Independent of the racial demographics and dynamics of Ferguson, Missouri, there’s a ‘Ferguson’ near you.
Those who have the most wealth and the most property, their children have the first, the best, and the most.
Time is neutral and does not change things. With courage and initiative, leaders change things.
The great responsibility that we have today is to put the poor and the near poor back on front of the American agenda.
Keep hope alive!
If the states had to vote on slavery, we would have lost the vote.
A man must be willing to die for justice. Death is an inescapable reality and men die daily, but good deeds live forever.
Those companies that don’t see the black and brown communities are missing, out of their closed eye, talent, which leads to money and growth. When baseball, football and basketball couldn’t see the field, they missed talent and growth. The same is true in the tech industry.
You know, people’d always ask ‘Why is Jesse Jackson running for the White House?’ They never seen the house I’m running from.
In Afghanistan, there is a plan to build democracy; hundreds of thousands of troops are protecting it. There is a plan to rebuild and reconstruct there. But many thousands of Americans die from violence and poverty every year and we don’t have a plan for reconstruction at home.
We reveal our joys and successes, we conceal our pain.
I am a journalist.
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.
I know they are all environmentalists. I heard a lot of my speeches recycled.
My very first recollection of life on earth was waking up in bed with my mother, and she was showing me a picture of my father, Charles Jackson, with a group of soldiers.
You can be out of slavery and have the right to vote, but unless you have access to capital, industry and technology, you can’t fulfill your dreams.
We blacks were the first people embracing Obama, long before the people at expensive fundraisers were supporting him. We gave him his first love, 96 percent of blacks voted for him in 2008. Yet today we are the number one in unemployment, with 16 percent of American blacks out of work.
If you fall behind, run faster. Never give up, never surrender, and rise up against the odds.
I know how to run a nationally paced campaign.
If my mind can conceive it, and my heart can believe it, I know I can achieve it.
The law protects you from being abused. It doesn’t threaten your lifestyle for someone else to have the right to exhibit their lifestyle.
Any attempt to dilute my support for Sen. Obama will not succeed.
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.
To allow injustice and inequality invites a Ferguson to your community. We must stand together, black, white, brown, red, and yellow and fight for justice and equality for all. It’s the only way to avoid more Fergusons.
I think reconciliation is Obama’s goal – but the fight with the Republicans is like a fight with pit bulls, they never let go. Even worse, now the Republicans feel they can keep pushing and he will keep giving. They have not seen a stiff resistance on his part.
I was born in a slum, but the slum wasn’t born in me.
A check or credit card, a Gucci bag strap, anything of value will do. Give as you live.
When you create more small businesses, you create small entrepreneurship. Out of that comes self-determination and employment.
I am not a perfect servant. I am a public servant doing my best against the odds. As I develop and serve, be patient. God is not finished with me yet.
Most blacks will argue that they excel because of hard work, because of intellect, determination, sweat, blood, tears and risk.
America is not a blanket woven from one thread, one color, one cloth.
Never look down on anybody unless you’re helping him up.
The coffers are full of money and equipment for the Ferguson Police and the Missouri National Guard to put down a potential uprising, but no money for actually uplifting the people of Ferguson, St. Louis, Missouri and around the nation.
Many have fought for and even lost their lives to end segregation, to win the right to vote. It disappoints me to now have to cajole people to register and to vote.
In many ways Africa subsidised America and Europe’s development.
Fighting disparities is very significant.
Life has its dimensions in the mysterious.
Those who write the editorials and those who write the columns, they simply are unaccountable. They’re free to impose their cultural politics in the name of freedom of the press.
Black men of integrity cannot make a deal with a politician and leave out the poor of the nation, all God’s children.
America needs young people to be inspired to choose sacrifice over greed.
Leadership has a harder job to do than just choose sides. It must bring sides together.
If a black doctor discovers a cure for cancer, ain’t no hospital going to lock him out.
If there are occasions when my grape turned into a raisin and my joy bell lost its resonance, please forgive me. Charge it to my head and not to my heart.
I have worked hard to build relationships between Jewish people and black people.
At least the politicians are accountable to the voters.
Today’s students can put dope in their veins or hope in their brains. If they can conceive it and believe it, they can achieve it. They must know it is not their aptitude but their attitude that will determine their altitude.
While I’ve spent a lot of quality time with my children, perhaps it’s not been enough.
I’m not wasting my time with any more non-straight-talking candidates.
We have to judge politicians by their cumulative score. In one innings they make a great catch, in another they drop the ball. In one they score a home run, in another they strike out. But it is their cumulative batting average that we are interested in.
Humanitarian appeals always help. They penetrate deeper than political tradeoffs.
We must not measure greatness from the mansion down, but from the manger up.
Few would deny that blacks have become very dominant in athletics: football, basketball, track, now dominant in tennis and dominant in golf.
It is a historical error for those who were not there to just refer to August 28th as ‘I Have a Dream’ speech day. That is a real disservice to those who were there. It was a sad day. It was not a celebration environment.
Obama used to be a community organizer. He knows how to build communities.
If you think black people have a motivation problem, open up a Wal-Mart and advertise a thousand jobs. Watch 5,000 people show up.
The American people on the ground need a clearer, stronger, Lyndon B. Johnson-type voice from their president.
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 take my role seriously as a pastor.
If the American people in a matter of months can love the people of Kuwait, whom they have not seen, they can love the people of our nation’s capital just as well.
