Top 184 Quotes & Sayings by Al Sharpton
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American activist Al Sharpton.
Last updated on September 17, 2024.
Civilians are arrested every single day - including innocent ones - and they must wait until their day in court in order to argue their side of the story. Police officers must be subjected to the same rules.
Throughout my years championing for civil rights, analyzing politics and advocating on behalf of the voiceless, I am disturbed the most when harmless children suffer because of politics or detrimental policies.
The dream was not to put one black family in the White House, the dream was to make everything equal in everybody's house.
I've seen enough things to know that if you just keep on going, if you turn the corner, the sun will be shining.
When you loot or behave violently, you give grounds to those that try to justify illegal police abuse. You become the poster child for them to say, 'See, we have no choice but to shoot and kill, or use a chokehold, because just look at the way they behave.'
I always beat the sun up in the morning. It's the secret to why I'm double trouble.
James Brown became my father. He would talk to me the way a father talked to a son. He became the father I never had.
I've seen too much in life to give up.
I was the first candidate to come out against this war, spoke at every anti-war march.
I very rarely read any fiction. I love biographies; I read about all kinds of people. I love theology and some philosophy.
Either we need to redefine what probable cause means and say that police are not subject to it, or we arrest officers right away just as we would with any other person accused of committing a crime. Either we write new laws or enforce existing ones; we cannot have it both ways.
My message to everyone: the next time you hear about migrant children near the border, just picture them as your own. Then think what you would want our government to do.
Dr. King's general principles are universal. But the things he confronted took place in another era.
The right wing always mobilizes around constitutional amendments: the right to bear arms, school prayer.
I'm a patriot in the truest sense of the word.
From racial profiling and being pulled over just for 'driving while black' to this new phenomenon of killing unarmed people out of some preconceived idea of fear, our lives and our children's lives are not being valued.
During my 2004 presidential campaign, I was fond of saying that it was high time for the Christian right to meet the right Christians.
I grew up in the 1950s and '60s, when it was almost a holiday when a black act would go on Ed Sullivan.
We're not willing to give black leaders second chances because, in most cases, we're not willing to give them first chances.
We cannot reform institutional racism or systemic policies if we are not actively engaged. It's not enough to simply complain about injustice; the only way to prevent future injustice is to create the society we would like to see, one where we are all equal under the law.
In every era going back to Lincoln with Frederick Douglass, presidents talk to those that were leading at that time.
The resignation of Attorney General Eric Holder is met with both pride and disappointment by the Civil Rights community. We are proud that he has been the best Attorney General on Civil Rights in U.S. history and disappointed because he leaves at a critical time when we need his continued diligence most.
If you can get the proper definition of trouble, then we can find out who the real troublemakers are.
As I stood and gave the eulogy for young Michael Brown last week, I kept thinking about the fact that this child should have been in college instead of laying in a coffin.
We have defeated Jim Crow, but now we have to deal with his son, James Crow Jr., esquire.
There's no reason why children in inner cities or rural areas do not receive the same quality education or opportunities as those in suburbs or wealthy neighborhoods. If we truly believe in giving all citizens a chance to pursue happiness and pursue their goals, then we cannot continue to marginalize entire groups of people.
If you play the theatrics too much, you get in the way of your own cause.
I was there during the first elections in South Africa. I watched them take down the apartheid flag and raise the new flag.
As a preacher who has spent significant time in churches and houses of worship all across the country, I can tell you firsthand that religious liberty and freedom are principles that can never be infringed upon.
I've learned how to measure what I say. Al Sharpton in 1986 was trying to be heard. I was a local guy and was like, 'Y'all are ignoring us.'
My ministry's always been one of social activism. I think a responsible minister must be at some levels involved in the social order.
As I often say, we have come a long way from the days of slavery, but in 2014, discrimination and inequality still saturate our society in modern ways. Though racism may be less blatant now in many cases, its existence is undeniable.
Evangelicals catapulted George W. Bush back to the White House.
I won vice president of my student body in high school. That doesn't mean anything.
I could have easily been a statistic. Growing up in Brooklyn, N.Y., it was easy - a little too easy - to get into trouble. Surrounded by poor schools, lack of resources, high unemployment rates, poverty, gangs and more, I watched as many of my peers fell victim to a vicious cycle of diminished opportunities and imprisonment.
We need an amendment that gives us the right to vote protected by the federal government and the Constitution.
I've never done anything else in my life other than preach and be an activist. Way before I was known.
Who defines terrorists? Today's terrorist is tomorrow's friend.
If O.J. had been accused of killing his black wife, you would not have seen the same passion stirred up.
Bill Clinton strikes me as the kind of guy who goes wherever the polls lead him, rather than leading the polls.
The United States government has the obligation to educate all young people in this country.
We are engaged in immediate conversations with the White House on deliberations over a successor whom we hope will continue in the general direction of Attorney General Holder.
The United States has got to adopt a policy of befriending and creating allies around the world.
In order to establish peace, you must have fair justice for everyone.
I was raised by a single mother who made a way for me. She used to scrub floors as a domestic worker, put a cleaning rag in her pocketbook and ride the subways in Brooklyn so I would have food on the table. But she taught me as I walked her to the subway that life is about not where you start, but where you're going. That's family values.
My ordination in the Church of God in Christ was at age 9, and I later became a Baptist minister, which I am today.
I do believe the Democratic party has moved far to the right. I do believe that the party has a bunch of elephants running around in donkey clothes.
How do you make things fair?
It seems some have chosen to ignore or have simply forgotten the big-picture vision promoted by Dr. King and his kin.
Countries around the world have their own immigration laws and methods of dealing with a recurring theme: desperate people searching for peace from volatile parts of the world. And nations everywhere thrive and prosper from the contributions of immigrants and the children of immigrants - including right here in the U.S.
National Action Network, the group I founded, has affiliates or chapters in over 40 cities around the country.
Dr. King used Gandhi's commitment to non-violence and to passive resistance.
In 1999, I was in St. Louis with Martin Luther King III as we led protests against the state's failure to hire minority contractors for highway construction projects. We went at dawn on a summer day with over a thousand people and performed acts of civil disobedience.
When the culture of police departments is sometimes infused with bias or preconceived ideas against certain groups, there needs to be reform and retraining throughout. And unfortunately, we cannot rely on local departments to police themselves; we need intervention from the top.
One of the reasons I get so much joy out of my own children's childhoods is that I'm having my first childhood myself.
We're not anti-police... we're anti-police brutality.
As a kid who grew up chubby, I just marveled at the fact that I could be thin.
The boxing world is full of all kinds of corruption.
Local prosecutors work alongside local police officers on a regular basis and are therefore conflicted when it comes to prosecuting those same officers. They are under extreme pressure from local police unions and from rank-and-file cops.
If Charlton Heston can have a constitutional right carry a rifle, why can't grandma have a constitutional right to health care?
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