Jesse Jackson
(1941-)

African-American Civil Rights Leader
2000 Presidential Medal of Freedom

birthdate: October 8
birthplace:
Greenville, South Carolina

QUOTES

America is not like a blanket-one piece of unbroken cloth, the same color, the same texture, the same size. America is more like a quilt-many patches, many pieces, many colors, many sizes, all woven and held together by a common thread.

Both tears and sweat are salty, but they render a different result. Tears will get you sympathy; sweat will get you change.

Deliberation and debate is the way you stir the soul of our democracy.

Hold your head high, stick your chest out. You can make it. It gets dark sometimes, but morning comes. Keep hope alive.

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.

In politics, an organized minority is a political majority.

Leadership has a harder job to do than just choose sides. It must bring sides together.

Never look down on anybody unless you're helping them up.

No one should negotiate their dreams. Dreams must be free to fly high. No government, no legislature, has a right to limit your dreams. You should never agree to surrender your dreams.

Our dreams must be stronger than our memories. We must be pulled by our dreams, rater than pushed by our memories.

Our flag is red, white and blue, but our nation is a rainbow-red, yellow, brown, black and white-and we're all precious in God's sight.

Time is neutral and does not change things. With courage and initiative, leaders change things.

We've removed the ceiling above our dreams. There are no more impossible dreams.

Your children need your presence more than your presents.

“If my mind can conceive it, and my heart can believe it, I know I can achieve it.”

“Leadership cannot just go along to get along. Leadership must meet the moral challenge of the day.”

“It is time for us to turn to each other, not on each other”

“The burden of being black is that you have to be superior just to be equal. But the glory of it is that, once you achieve, you have achieved, indeed.”

“At the end of the day, we must go forward with hope and not backward by fear and division.”

if whites would vote their economic interests, not their racial fears, we the people who have the most need for change have the power to bring about that change nonviolently.

Peace is the alternative to war, and nonviolence should be seen as the antidote to violence, not simply as its opposite. Nonviolence is more concerned with saving life than with saving face.

I preach nonviolence because it's the better alternative.

The trouble is that nonviolence is so often defined as refusal to fight, and that is the American definition of cowardice. In fact, marching unarmed against the guns and dogs of the police requires more courage than does aggression. The perverted idea of manhood coming from the barrel of a gun is what keeps people from understanding nonviolence.

 

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