Top 100 Al Sharpton Quotes
#1. I could take all the cartoons in the tabloid newspapers, but I couldn't take my daughter punching me in the belly and asking why I was so fat. That was my inspiration to lose the weight. And probably the last time anyone hurt my feelings.
Al Sharpton
#2. But resist we much. We must, and we will much- about that- be committed.
Al Sharpton
#3. I've never done anything else in my life other than preach and be an activist. Way before I was known.
Al Sharpton
#4. We're not anti-police ... we're anti-police brutality.
Al Sharpton
#5. I haven't done the things I've done to be in a sitcom.
Al Sharpton
#6. I've never seen an effective boycott that didn't work.
Al Sharpton
#7. I can't see how an unarmed man rejecting a drug deal ended up dead.
Al Sharpton
#9. In every era going back to Lincoln with Frederick Douglass, presidents talk to those that were leading at that time.
Al Sharpton
#10. While the rest of the country waves the flag of Americana, we understand we are not part of that. We don't owe America anything - America owes us.
Al Sharpton
#11. The United States government has the obligation to educate all young people in this country.
Al Sharpton
#12. We have defeated Jim Crow, but now we have to deal with his son, James Crow Jr., esquire.
Al Sharpton
#13. I've gone from, you know, being too close to politicians, to being too close to entertainers, and people's father that I'm not.
Al Sharpton
#14. I grew up in the 1950s and '60s, when it was almost a holiday when a black act would go on Ed Sullivan.
Al Sharpton
#15. President Obama telling Americans not to panic in the wake of the Paris terror attacks.
Al Sharpton
#16. I cannot imagine where we would have been without BET. Many like me who operate in black America can only get our balanced story told nationally on BET talk shows.
Al Sharpton
#17. This is not about what party you're part of. This is about right and wrong, ... the conscience of this nation.
Al Sharpton
#18. 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.
Al Sharpton
#19. I actually lost more weight than I am!
Al Sharpton
#20. I'm a patriot in the truest sense of the word.
Al Sharpton
#21. It is up to us to change laws on the books like 'Stand Your Ground' laws and push elected officials to enact regulations that hold police officers to the same standards as the rest of society. This is why we vote.
Al Sharpton
#22. I think drugs affect poor people and people of color more than anyone.
Al Sharpton
#23. 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.
Al Sharpton
#24. 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.
Al Sharpton
#25. Dr. King's general principles are universal. But the things he confronted took place in another era.
Al Sharpton
#26. If I use the media, even with tricks, to publicize a black youth being shot in the back in Teaneck, New Jersey ... then I should be praised for it, and it's more of a comment on them than me that it would take tricks to make them cover the loss of life.
Al Sharpton
#27. You can't get a solution if you won't talk to the people that have the problem. You can't ever have healing if the patient is left out of the operation room.
Al Sharpton
#28. 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.
Al Sharpton
#29. They tried to say that being gay is a sin, and I said that adultery is a sin. Adultery is responsible for breaking up more marriages, but do we put that in the Constitution? It's absurd.
Al Sharpton
#30. Let me be clear: as I have said repeatedly, I do not believe that all police officers are bad, nor do I believe that most are bad. But there must be a transparent, impartial and fair system to judge those that engage in criminal or unethical acts.
Al Sharpton
#31. Somebody had to bring the truth to the doorstep of this president.
Al Sharpton
#32. As a Baptist minister, I don't have the right to impose my views on anyone else. If committed gay and lesbian couples want to marry, that is their business; none of us should stand in their way
Al Sharpton
#33. It was better walk with dignity than ride in shame. A lot of people in Cincinnati are saying, "Rather than have the continual problems of police brutality and economic disparity, I'm willing to make some sacrifices." And I think that they ought to be respected for doing that.
Al Sharpton
#34. I've been able to reach from the streets to the suites.
Al Sharpton
#35. 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.
Al Sharpton
#36. The United States has got to adopt a policy of befriending and creating allies around the world.
Al Sharpton
#37. If you play the theatrics too much, you get in the way of your own cause.
Al Sharpton
#38. 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.
Al Sharpton
#39. As a kid who grew up chubby, I just marveled at the fact that I could be thin.
Al Sharpton
#40. The boxing world is full of all kinds of corruption.
Al Sharpton
#41. So (if) some cracker come and tell you 'Well, my mother and father blood go back to the Mayflower,' you better hold your pocket. That ain't nothing to be proud of. That means their forefathers was crooks.
Al Sharpton
#42. I have the right to express myself. Once we get through expressing, do we really move forward in society.
Al Sharpton
#43. White folks was in the caves while we [blacks] was building empires ... We built pyramids before Donald Trump ever knew what architecture was ... we taught philosophy and astrology and mathematics before Socrates and them Greek homos ever got around to it.
Al Sharpton
#44. 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.
Al Sharpton
#45. Getting Democrats organized is like herding cats.
Al Sharpton
#46. Bill Clinton strikes me as the kind of guy who goes wherever the polls lead him, rather than leading the polls.
Al Sharpton
#47. People in the age of [President] Obama don't dress like they did in the age of [Lyndon] Johnson. That's for sure.
Al Sharpton
#48. People working at the arenas are not just depending on one or two concerts. I think it gives a symbolic boost, as well as those shows do bring down some monetary investments in the city.
Al Sharpton
#49. Crime is going down everywhere but in the New York City Police Department.
Al Sharpton
#50. The dream was not to put one black family in the White House, the dream was to make everything equal in everybody's house.
Al Sharpton
#51. If O.J. had been accused of killing his black wife, you would not have seen the same passion stirred up.
Al Sharpton
#52. The Democratic Party hasn't whipped anybody into a frenzy. The assumption is that the people that are marching and protesting and standing up against this don't have enough sense to stand up for their own interests.
Al Sharpton
#53. We need to make some real fundamental change from the Constitution down in this country.
Al Sharpton
#54. When we look at the situation in Ferguson, Missouri and the tragic death of Michael Brown, we are reminded of the importance of who we elect to our city councils, who sits on our local board of education committees, who we pick to represent us in Congress, in the Senate and more.
Al Sharpton
#55. During my 2004 presidential campaign, I was fond of saying that it was high time for the Christian right to meet the right Christians.
Al Sharpton
#56. 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.
Al Sharpton
#57. Dr. King used Gandhi's commitment to non-violence and to passive resistance.
Al Sharpton
#58. I'm never going to be fat - never again. I'm going to make it easy on my pallbearers.
Al Sharpton
#59. In order to establish peace, you must have fair justice for everyone.
Al Sharpton
#60. I can call a march, and thousands come out, and I happen to have access to the White House at the same time.
Al Sharpton
#61. James Brown lives, as long as someone steps out of their body and dances uncontrollably.
Al Sharpton
#62. Not graduating high school on time leads to fewer chances of attending college and obtaining good paying jobs, and creates instead higher chances of incarceration and unemployment.
Al Sharpton
#63. Like myself, President Obama is the father of two daughters. He understands the obstacles that they face as women, but he also understands the emergency of the state of young black men in America.
Al Sharpton
#64. All women, regardless of her economic status or racial background, have a right to vote, and no politician or regressive law should prevent her from doing so.
Al Sharpton
#65. It is time to bring down the volume and bring up the program.
Al Sharpton
#66. My ordination in the Church of God in Christ was at age 9, and I later became a Baptist minister, which I am today.
Al Sharpton
#67. I was the first candidate to come out against this war, spoke at every anti-war march.
Al Sharpton
#68. Following Michael Brown's death, I went to Ferguson and met with his parents. I stood with them as they tried to hold their heads high and deal with both their immense loss and the larger issues of police-community relations.
Al Sharpton
#69. We need an amendment that gives us the right to vote protected by the federal government and the Constitution.
Al Sharpton
#70. 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.
Al Sharpton
#71. What do we want? Dead cops. When do we want it? Now.
Al Sharpton
#72. We blacks had problems in the '60s and we solved them by marching. We've still got problems - let's march.
Al Sharpton
#73. I always go by instinct and then wrestle with where by instinct brought me.
Al Sharpton
#74. Better to die of something than to die in old age of nothing.
Al Sharpton
#75. 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.
Al Sharpton
#76. Evangelicals catapulted George W. Bush back to the White House.
Al Sharpton
#77. I very rarely read any fiction. I love biographies; I read about all kinds of people. I love theology and some philosophy.
Al Sharpton
#78. You don't need any indictment in order to arrest someone; probable cause is sufficient to arrest civilians, so it must be enough to arrest police.
Al Sharpton
#79. There are white n*ggers. I've seen a lot of white n*ggers in my time.
Al Sharpton
#80. 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.
Al Sharpton
#81. The United States isn't a dictatorship ruling with a brutal army and an iron fist, so our police departments must understand that they are there to serve and protect us - all of us. And when they do commit crimes, they must be arrested and prosecuted like anyone else, bottom line.
Al Sharpton
#82. I wanted to say to Governor Dean, don't be hard on yourself about hooting and hollering. If I had spent the money you did and got 18 percent, I'd still be in Iowa hooting and hollering.
Al Sharpton
#83. I understand deficit spending. I was born in deficit spending.
Al Sharpton
#84. What's wrong with denouncing white interlopers?
Al Sharpton
#85. I knew from the age of four that I wanted to preach. I didn't even consider it strange that grown people were listening to this kid preaching until I was around thirteen. I have never believed in limitations.
Al Sharpton
#86. If Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house.
Al Sharpton
#87. 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.'
Al Sharpton
#89. I won vice president of my student body in high school. That doesn't mean anything.
Al Sharpton
#90. If the black vote does not come out in big numbers in the age of Ferguson and voter ID, it will empower our adversaries and enhance our marginalization.
Al Sharpton
#91. Everything from who sits on your local board of education to the prosecutors and judicial appointments in your area and much more are all impacted by who holds political office.
Al Sharpton
#92. Who defines terrorists? Today's terrorist is tomorrow's friend.
Al Sharpton
#93. My ministry's always been one of social activism. I think a responsible minister must be at some levels involved in the social order.
Al Sharpton
#94. In Staten Island, when you have video showing the alleged chokehold used on Eric Garner, why not go to trial and have the officer(s) explain the tape, and then this jury can determine guilt or innocence? The tape should guarantee that there should be a trial.
Al Sharpton
#95. It seems some have chosen to ignore or have simply forgotten the big-picture vision promoted by Dr. King and his kin.
Al Sharpton
#97. 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.
Al Sharpton
#98. 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.
Al Sharpton
#99. I think that you can't choose leadership. You have to deal with the leadership that the people respond to.
Al Sharpton
#100. I feel that it is our moral obligation to stand and to be courageous with these families, and particularly Cindy, that have become the conscience of this nation.
Al Sharpton
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