Top 100 Jesse Jackson Quotes
#1. Workers, black and white, need some kind of international affirmative action to protect them from unfair competition with unorganized or slave labor abroad and unfair competition with robots at home.
Jesse Jackson
#2. We picked their cotton. We cooked their food. We nursed their babies. Now we can run their cities. We can run their states. We will run the country.
Jesse Jackson
#3. I must oppose the use of federal funds for a policy of killing infants.
Jesse Jackson
#4. Today's students can put dope in their veins or hope in their brains. If they can conceive it and believe it, they can achieve it. They must know it is not their aptitude but their attitude that will determine their altitude.
Jesse Jackson
#5. We went across the South on Super Tuesday without a single catcall or boo, without a single ugly sign. Not until we got to New York and the North did the litmus test of race and religion spout from the mouths of public officials.
Jesse Jackson
#6. In order for an ideal to become a reality, there must be a person, a personality to translate it.
Jesse Jackson
#8. Abortion is black genocide ... What happens to the mind of a person and the moral fabric of a nation that accepts the aborting of the life of a baby without a pang of conscience?
Jesse Jackson
#10. If my mind can conceive it,
My heart can believe it,
I know I can achieve it!
Jesse Jackson
#12. We must never surrender. America will get better and better. Keep hope alive. Keep hope alive.
Jesse Jackson
#13. We must give the American worker the first option of ownership.
Jesse Jackson
#14. It is time for us to turn to each other, not on each other.
Jesse Jackson
#15. 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.
Jesse Jackson
#16. The solution [to a crisis pregnancy] is not to kill the innocent baby but to deal with the mother's values and her attitudes toward life.
Jesse Jackson
#17. The invasion only made matters worse. The occupation will not work, Iraq is unoccupiable, that will not work.
Jesse Jackson
#18. I had gained a greater appreciation of hearing the concerns of woman, doctors, and so many others.
Jesse Jackson
#19. God doesn't make orange juice, God makes oranges.
Jesse Jackson
#20. Leaders must be tough enough to fight, tender enough to cry, human enough to make mistakes, humble enough to admit them, strong enough to absorb the pain, and resilient enough to bounce back and keep on moving.
Jesse Jackson
#21. Unfortunate. Unfortunate. Sometimes people struggling for freedom lose their way.
Jesse Jackson
#22. Your children need your presence more than your presents.
Jesse Jackson
#23. Success needs no explanation. Failure does not have one that matters.
Jesse Jackson
#24. If you don't feel apologetic for slavery, if you don't feel apologetic for colonialism, if you feel proud of it then say that.
Jesse Jackson
#25. When God rang the bell that ended the fight, the world cried out for one more round.
Jesse Jackson
#26. For me, Barack Obama's election was a milestone of the most extraordinary kind. On the day he was elected I felt such hope in my heart. I thought we were seeing the beginning of a new era of equal opportunity across race and gender such as America had never known before.
Jesse Jackson
#27. If you don't know what tomorrow holds, you need to know who holds tomorrow!
Jesse Jackson
#28. I am - Somebody. I may be poor, but I am - Somebody! I may be on welfare, but I am - Somebody! I may be uneducated, but I am - Somebody! I must be, I'm God's child. I must be respected and protected. I am black and I am beautiful! I am - Somebody! Soul Power!
Jesse Jackson
#29. When it came to the division of power, we did not get from the Jews the slice of cake we deserved ... the Jews do not share with us control of wealth, broadcasting stations and other centers of power.
Jesse Jackson
#30. When journalists and politicians speak of a dwindling middle class that's under economic assault and a poor community that's getting bigger, they're talking about Ferguson. Independent of the racial demographics and dynamics of Ferguson, Missouri, there's a 'Ferguson' near you.
Jesse Jackson
#31. Each time a barrier falls for one person, the doors of opportunity open wider for every other American.
Jesse Jackson
#32. Our goal was not freedom. Freedom was the necessary prerequisite to get to equality.
Jesse Jackson
#33. 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.
Jesse Jackson
#34. I know they are all environmentalists. I heard a lot of my speeches recycled.
Jesse Jackson
#35. 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.
Jesse Jackson
#36. You cannot teach what you don't know. You cannot give energy if you're not on fire on the inside.
Jesse Jackson
#37. At least the politicians are accountable to the voters.
Jesse Jackson
#38. The only justification for ever looking down on somebody is to pick them up.
Jesse Jackson
#39. In many ways Africa subsidised America and Europe's development.
Jesse Jackson
#40. Choose the human race over the nuclear race. Bury the weapons and don't burn the people.
Jesse Jackson
#41. At the end of the day, we must go forward with hope and not backward by fear and division.
Jesse Jackson
#42. 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.
Jesse Jackson
#43. You can be out of slavery and have the right to vote, but unless you have access to capital, industry and technology, you can't fulfill your dreams.
Jesse Jackson
#44. The relationship between the prophet and the President, the priest and the President, is a sacred one.
Jesse Jackson
#45. To allow injustice and inequality invites a Ferguson to your community. We must stand together, black, white, brown, red, and yellow and fight for justice and equality for all. It's the only way to avoid more Fergusons.
Jesse Jackson
#46. The law protects you from being abused. It doesn't threaten your lifestyle for someone else to have the right to exhibit their lifestyle.
Jesse Jackson
#47. No one should negotiate their dreams. Dreams must be free to flee and fly high. No government, no legislature, has a right to limit your dreams. You should never agree to surrender your dreams.
Jesse Jackson
#49. Those in blue suits who use thinly veiled race symbols
when they say welfare and crime and three strikes and anti- affirmative action
they are sending messages more profound their language.
Jesse Jackson
#50. I have worked hard to build relationships between Jewish people and black people.
Jesse Jackson
#51. I know how to run a nationally paced campaign.
Jesse Jackson
#52. You can't teach what you don't know. And you can't lead where you don't go.
Jesse Jackson
#53. What we have to be judged by is the work we try to do. It's public service, not perfect service.
Jesse Jackson
#54. Any attempt to dilute my support for Sen. Obama will not succeed.
Jesse Jackson
#56. Our premise is that inclusion leads to growth. So for those who are locked out, they lose development, and those who are in power lose market and growth.
Jesse Jackson
#57. Few would deny that blacks have become very dominant in athletics: football, basketball, track, now dominant in tennis and dominant in golf.
Jesse Jackson
#58. In many ways, history is marked as 'before' and 'after' Rosa Parks. She sat down in order that we all might stand up, and the walls of segregation came down.
Jesse Jackson
#59. I was born in a slum, but the slum wasn't born in me.
Jesse Jackson
#61. 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.
Jesse Jackson
#62. Black men of integrity cannot make a deal with a politician and leave out the poor of the nation, all God's children.
Jesse Jackson
#63. So much talent comes from the base of poverty and those in the margins. You limit the base, you miss too much talent.
Jesse Jackson
#64. You can't vote against healthcare and call yourself a black man.
Jesse Jackson
#65. A check or credit card, a Gucci bag strap, anything of value will do. Give as you live.
Jesse Jackson
#66. Inclusion is not a matter of political correctness. It is the key to growth.
Jesse Jackson
#67. 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.
Jesse Jackson
#69. If you fall behind, run faster. Never give up, never surrender, and rise up against the odds.
Jesse Jackson
#70. 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.
Jesse Jackson
#71. It'll be a great day when the seniors have all the baseball caps they need and the Pentagon bombs Gilligan's Island.
Jesse Jackson
#72. Black and Jewish leaders have been a coalition of conscience.
Jesse Jackson
#73. The white Christian church never raised to the heights of Christ. It stayed within the limit of culture.
Jesse Jackson
#74. I'm not wasting my time with any more non-straight-talking candidates.
Jesse Jackson
#75. Both tears and sweat are salty, but they render a different result. Tears will get you sympathy; sweat will get you change.
Jesse Jackson
#76. What is the American dream? The American dream is one big tent. One big tent. And on that big tent you have four basic promises: equal protection under the law, equal opportunity, equal access, and fair share.
Jesse Jackson
#77. It's not enough to be quiet. Quietness is the absence of noise. We need peace, the presence of justice and to be - and so people here can coexist and live together.
Jesse Jackson
#78. We must know the difference between sweat and tears. Sweat is wet. Tears are wet. Sweat is salty. Tears are salty. But progress comes through sweat. Progress never came through tears.
Jesse Jackson
#79. Semi-automatic weapons are not just about gun control, they're about national security. You know that these weapons can shoot down airplanes, they can blow up railroads. This is really a whole national security issue.
Jesse Jackson
#80. America is not a blanket woven from one thread, one color, one cloth.
Jesse Jackson
#81. Obama used to be a community organizer. He knows how to build communities.
Jesse Jackson
#82. Never look down on people unless you are helping them up.
Jesse Jackson
#83. 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.
Jesse Jackson
#84. His foreparents came to America in immigrant ships. My foreparents came to America in slave ships. But whatever the original ships, we are both in the same boat tonight.
Jesse Jackson
#85. 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.
Jesse Jackson
#87. When we were hit on 9/11 it took us a few weeks to get the coalition together because [George] Bush had come in with a kind of narrow ideology, looking at the world, I'd say, through a keyhole and not through a door.
Jesse Jackson
#88. Pictures can live in one's memory. That's why they are important.
Jesse Jackson
#89. I'm a Third World person. I grew up in an occupied zone [Greenville, South Carolina] and had to negotiate with the superpower, really the colonial power.
Jesse Jackson
#90. The only justification we have to look down on someone is because we are about to pick him up.
Jesse Jackson
#91. 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.
Jesse Jackson
#92. America is not like a blanket- one piece of unbroken cloth. America is more like a quilt- many patches, many pieces, many colors, many sizes, all woven together by a common thread.
Jesse Jackson
#93. 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.
Jesse Jackson
#94. People like to say don't abort, adopt. But I'm saying don't strip, scholarship.
Jesse Jackson
#96. If you try you may fail, if you don't try you're guaranteed to fail.
Jesse Jackson
#97. There is no power in cynicism. There is no forward thrust in cynicism.
Jesse Jackson
#98. When they wrote the Constitution, only white male landowners had the right to vote.
Jesse Jackson
#99. In politics, an organized minority is a political majority.
Jesse Jackson
#100. The charges that I am anti-Semitic are simply erroneous, felonious, and unceremonious. In fact, when I need a doctor, I always look for one with a Jewish name.
Jesse Jackson
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