Andrew Young Quotes

Influence is like a savings account, the less you use it, the more you've got

I'm against voter fraud in any form, and I have long supported a national voter ID card. But ID cards need not - and must not - restrict voting rights in any way, shape or form.

My hope for my children must be that they respond to the still, small voice of God in their own hearts.

In a world where change is inevitable and continuous, the need to achieve that change without violence is essential for survival.

Any racial reconciliation we've had in this country has come not out of confrontation but out of a spirit of reconciliation. If we continue to practice an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, we'll eventually end up with a land of people who are blind and toothless.

Beauty and love are all my dream; They change not with the changing day; Love stays forever like a stream That flows but never flows away.

He [Martin Luther King Jr.] always used to say you have no choice about being born or dying. The only thing you have a choice about is what you die for.

It is a blessing to die for a cause, because you can so easily die for nothing.

Surely, if we can land a spaceship on Mars, we can certainly put a voter ID card in the hand of every eligible voter.

No nation as rich as ours should have so many people isolated on islands of poverty in such a sea of material wealth.

Nothing is illegal if one hundred businessmen decide to do it.

In a sane, civil, intelligent and moral society, you don't blame poor people for being poor.

We think it is complicated to change the world. Change comes little by little. Nothing worthwhile can happen in one generation.

I wasn't predicted to be anything. I just followed an inner spirit, and it put me in the right place and the right time. I didn't want to be the mayor of Atlanta. I didn't want to run for Congress. I didn't want to work for Martin Luther King Jr. I wanted to work close to him and be a writer and write about the movement.

We rise in glory as we sink in pride.

The two are not mutually exclusive, but we think we can have wealth without good ideas and without values and without a clear vision. Wealth without vision is insanity.

If I wanted to develop a scenario to destroy America, I would do what the Republicans are doing. Take the brightest and best young black men off the streets, put them in jail, make them meaner than hell for 8 or 10 years and then turn them lose in a society where there are plenty of guns for them to play with.

I have about concluded that wealth is a state of mind, and that anyone can acquire a wealthy state of mind by thinking rich thoughts.

The man with courage is a majority.

I always quoted to my parents from Kahlil Gibran, "The Prophet." Your children are not your children. They come through you, but not from you. You can give them your love, but not your thoughts, for they come from a land that you cannot enter, not even in your wildest dreams.

Affirmative action is an effort to include every aspect of society in the decision making.

I've always seen the Olympics as a place where you could act out your differences on the athletic field with a sense of sportsmanship and fairness and mutual respect.

Wishing of all strategies, is the worst.

Everybody is determined by his own experience.

What we forget is that African Americans made the largest contribution to America, economically, before the Civil War of any sector of society. I read that the railroads were worth about $2 billion, but slavery was a $3 billion asset.

You have to expect that if you cuss out the world, The world is going to cuss back.

It stands to reason that unloved and unwanted children are going to get into crime.

When people ask where I studied to be an ambassador, I say my neighborhood and my school. I've tried to tell my kids that you don't wait until you're in high school or college to start dealing with problems of people being different. The younger you start, the better.

No one who's white thinks he's innocent. No one who's black thinks he's guilty.

Slavery didnt break up the black families as much as liberal welfare rules.

Once the Xerox copier was invented, diplomacy died.

The commercialization of sport is the democratization of sport.

If all I get is a little controversy for speaking the truth, if I did less, I would not be worth living.

I like my life. I've had a good life. I think the reason is my parents taught me that life is a burden. But if you take it one day at a time, it's an easy burden.

More and more I find I'm really impressed with how much my son knows and how much he thinks like me. But he never would agree with me and he never would listen to me on anything.

On the soft bed of luxury many kingdoms have expired.

I think we've made tremendous progress on racism. We've even made progress on war. We've made almost no progress on poverty.

For most of the world, civil and political rights... come as luxuries that are far away in the future.

Moral power is probably best when it is not used. The less you use it the more you have.

The Soviet Union is going to have a human-rights explosion. You'll have hundreds of thousands of dissidents.

Look at those they call unfortunate and at a closer view, you'll find many of them are unwise.

There's no problem on the planet that can't be solved without violence. That's the lesson of the civil rights movement.

I was raised that way: don't get mad, get smart.

When the long, varnished buds of beech Point out beyond their reach, And tanned by summer suns Leaves of bright bryony turn bronze, And gossamer floats bright and wet From trees that are their own sunset, Spring, summer, autumn I come here, And what is there to fear? And yet I never lose the feeling That someone else behind is stealing Or else in front has disappeared; Though nothing I have seen or heard, Makes me still walk beneath these boughs With cautious step as in a haunted house.

Can wealth give happiness? look around and see, what gay distress! what splendid misery! Whatever fortunes lavishly can pour, the mind annihilates and calls for more.

Martin Luther King said America had given a bad check to black people.

Nobody Black had learned anything from the `Letter from the Birmingham Jail' or from the `I Have a Dream' speech. That was a revelation of white people.

Civil rights leaders are involved in helping poor people. That's what I've been doing all my life.

If you're a preacher, you talk for a living, so even if you don't make sense, you learn to make nonsense eloquently.

To find people who don't want anything is rare.