Top 277 Quotes & Sayings by Jesse Jackson - Page 2

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

Few would deny that blacks have become very dominant in athletics: football, basketball, track, now dominant in tennis and dominant in golf.

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. Obama has that voice. It has to be used.

I cast my bread on the waters long ago. Now it's time for you to send it back to me - toasted and buttered on both sides.

Who lives long and who dies prematurely, is the defining issue of our time. And I submit to you, there's a significant race dimension, it is basically class-driven.

I remember being taught my place.

Most blacks will argue that they excel because of hard work, because of intellect, determination, sweat, blood, tears and risk.

The great responsibility that we have today is to put the poor and the near poor back on front of the American agenda.

Black men of integrity cannot make a deal with a politician and leave out the poor of the nation, all God's children.

I know how to run a nationally paced campaign.

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.

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

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.

I'm not wasting my time with any more non-straight-talking candidates.

There's great disparity between who goes to college and who goes to jail. Who lives long and who dies prematurely, is the defining issue of our time. And I submit to you, there's a significant race dimension, it is basically class-driven.

If a black doctor discovers a cure for cancer, ain't no hospital going to lock him out.

Negroes' problem is that they do not have their egos. That's why our churches end up having a white service, because our preacher is not arrogant enough to take God's word, so he have to go and get some white fellow's agenda and put it in his church.

Music of all arts should be expansive and inclusive.

Urban America has been redlined. Government has not offered tax incentives for investment, as it has in a dozen foreign markets. Banks have redlined it. Industries have moved out, they've redlined it. Clearly, to break up the redlining process, there must be incentives to green-line with hedges against risk.

Statehood for the District of Columbia is the most important civil rights and social justice issue in America today.

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

Those who have the most wealth and the most property, their children have the first, the best, and the most.

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.

At the end of the day, we're defined by our predicament, not by the sides of town.

Ronald Reagan was older than I was when he ran for president.

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.

Any attempt to dilute my support for Sen. Obama will not succeed.

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

So much talent comes from the base of poverty and those in the margins. You limit the base, you miss too much talent.

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.

George Bush has met more foreign heads of state than I have. But a substantial number of them were dead.

In many ways Africa subsidised America and Europe's development.

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.

I know they are all environmentalists. I heard a lot of my speeches recycled.

Humanitarian appeals always help. They penetrate deeper than political tradeoffs.

I take my role seriously as a pastor.

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

I was extended secret service protection during my presidential run in 1984, when I received the most death threats ever made toward a candidate.

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.

You know, people'd always ask 'Why is Jesse Jackson running for the White House?' They never seen the house I'm running from.

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

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

When we're unemployed, we're called lazy; when the whites are unemployed it's called a depression.

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.

From seeds of his body blossomed the flower that liberated a people and touched the soul of a nation.

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 want to make America better!

America needs young people to be inspired to choose sacrifice over greed.

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.

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.

People always grow and mature.

We've been so preoccupied with getting the government to behave in a fair and democratic way, we were not able to focus on the private sector where most of the jobs are, where most of the wealth and opportunities are.

I mean, the fight for a health care bill to cover all Americans and leave none behind is attacked as being a race appeal, which is not true, but then it's put out in the media as true.

Fighting disparities is very significant.

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.

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

I am a journalist.

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.

Black and Jewish leaders have been a coalition of conscience.