Top 37 Trayvon Quotes & Sayings

You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot I said that this could have been my son. Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago. And when you think about why, in the African American community at least, there's a lot of pain around what happened here, I think it's important to recognize that the African American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that doesn't go away.

As African-Americans, that's what's being played fast and loose with, our citizenship. When you have the Trayvon Martins and the Michael Browns being shot and killed, it's because, on a certain level, there is a kind of mutability in the understanding of citizenship around the black body.

Trayvon Martin could have been any of our sons, so I was not especially moved by that remark of President [Barack] Obama's.

Mike Brown wasn't about race relations, nor Trayvon Martin or even Hurricane Katrina for that matter. It's about trust.

Trayvon exposed a lot of things. I think something positive will come out of it. It's a blessing in disguise. And he will never be forgotten.

The fact is, in the minds of many, Trayvon Martin received the appropriate punishment for a true crime: He was black, male and dared to walk outside. In life, young Trayvon was just a teenager; in death, he has been transformed into a scary, lurking, suspicious, prone-to-violence spook.

The cure for the Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice and Eric Garner tragedies is not education or exposure. It's the Gospel. So, finally, I'M ENCOURAGED because the Gospel gives mankind hope.

I think the hoodie is as much responsible for Trayvon Martin's death as George Zimmerman was.

Michael Brown happened to be black. Trayvon Martin happened to be black. Eric Garner was a black man. So this pattern continues over and over.

We have two boys. After George Zimmerman was found not guilty of killing Trayvon Martin, we had to explain to our older son, who was 12 at the time, how that could happen. Instead of hugging and consoling him, my husband pulled out a documentary about Emmett Till and showed it to him and started to talk about how the justice system works in this country - and how it often doesn't. From that conversation, our son wrote a short story about Trayvon Martin going to heaven to meet Emmett Till.

The appalling racial injustice inherent in the Trayvon Martin tragedy reminds us that there is still much to do.

I was reading the paper and saw a cartoon with Ray Kelly frisking Obama, and I was like "Wait, what's happening?" so I Googled it. For everything Obama stands for and the things he's said in the past in his books, especially with the Trayvon Martin thing - and I'm not sure if he [made his comments on Trayvon] because he was asked a question and he was trying to be diplomatic and neutral - that can't happen.

Trayvon Martin, at the most, seems only to have been guilty of being himself.

Trayvon Martin was 17, Mike Brown was young, Tamir Rice was 12. And so young people are affected by it, possibly the most affected, because they're seeing themselves.

Despite the fact that there was not one shred of evidence that George Zimmerman 'racially profiled' Trayvon Martin, America's liberals have literally taken to the streets to denounce a verdict that was, by all accounts, a just one.

If [George] Zimmerman had been arrested for domestic violence, Trayvon Martin might still be alive.

You may change your profile picture to Trayvon Martin or Eric Garner, but you will never actually walk the streets the way they have, or systematically had your vertebrae stunted. So you will not walk that shrouded walk unless you're on the inside and you can occasionally nod at another on the inside and that acknowledgement can carry you for a while as it won't come from the outside.

I believe that Trayvon Martin's life might well have been spared if many of us who care about racial justice had raised our voices much, much sooner and much, much more loudly about the routine stereotyping and profiling of young black men and boys.

We have been shaken by the deaths of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, and Tamir Rice - shaken, but not sufficiently unsettled. We must contextualize those losses, force our neighbors to become so deeply disturbed by what has occurred that they, too, are inspired to act to change the system.

[Barack Obama] intended, I think, to say that he took Trayvon's [ Martin] death somewhat personally.

The same kinds of stereotypes and hunches that George Zimmerman used when deciding that, you know, Trayvon Martin seemed like a threat in his neighborhood, law enforcement officers employ all the time.

I don't like what George Zimmerman did, and I hate that Trayvon Martin is dead. But I also can understand why Zimmerman was suspicious and why he thought Martin was wearing a uniform we all recognize.

Trayvon Martin did not need to die.

The vision preached by my father a half-century ago was that his four little children would no longer live in a nation where they would judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. However, sadly, the tears of Trayvon Martin's mother and father remind us that, far too frequently, the color of one's skin remains a license to profile, to arrest and to even murder with no regard for the content of one's character.

My main message is to the parents of Trayvon Martin. You know, if I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon.

Over the course of the years, I've learned [that] fashion is a fascinating business about selling magic. It is done on the backs of our optimism and our insecurity. It is as much psychology as commerce. But I've also learned that every day we make split second decisions about people based on their attire and those decisions can have powerful implications - see the story of Trayvon Martin and his hoodie. It's important for us to understand how fashion works and how we connect to it.

When you have incidences like the Trayvon Martin verdict, the erosion of certain fundamental rights like voting, it just reminds us that we're always one Supreme Court justice vote away from losing the progress that has been made.

If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon.

As a historian of American and African-American religion, I know that the Trayvon Martin moment is just one moment in a history of racism in America that, in large part, has its underpinnings in Christianity and its history. Those of us who teach American Religion have a responsibility to tell all of the story, not just the nice touchy-feely parts.

Trayvon Martin broke my heart.

Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.

May God bless Trayvon Martin's soul, his family.

What fixes your spirit when Ferguson happens? When Trayvon Martin and those kind of things happen, they hurt your spirit; it hurts your heart and your soul. You need something to fix it.

You'll always see me at a political rally and the black strip club; I'm gonna represent smoking weed and supporting Trayvon Martin on my record, because I'm a whole man.

The cure for the Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice and Eric Garner tragedies is not education or exposure. It's the gospel.

I do not believe that Darren Wilson should've been charged, but Brown should not have lost his life. Brown and Trayvon Martin should've gotten their butts kicked badly. They should've been handled physically, but they should not have been killed.

The George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin affair is one of the most important and clarifying moments in American history.