Jesse Jackson Quotes

If you fall behind, run faster. Never give up, never surrender, and rise up against the odds.

When everyone is included, everyone wins.

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

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.

Inclusion is not a matter of political correctness. It is the key to growth.

Your children need your presence more than your presents.

You may not be responsible for being down, but you must be responsible for getting up.

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

Tears will get you sympathy, sweat will get you change.

We must face the No. 1 critical issue of our day. It is youth crime in general and black-on-black crime in particular. There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery. Then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved. After all we have been through, just to think we can't walk down our own streets, how humiliating.

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

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

A check or credit card, a Gucci bag strap, anything of value will do. Give as you live.

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

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

While I've spent a lot of quality time with my children, perhaps it's not been enough.

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

The white, the Hispanic, the black, the Arab, the Jew, the woman, the Native American, the small farmer, the businessperson, the environmentalist, the peace activist, the young, the old, the lesbian, the gay and the disabled make up the American quilt.

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.

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

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.

If you try you may fail, if you don't try you're guaranteed to fail.

You can't teach what you don't know. And you can't lead where you don't go.

A man must be willing to die for justice. Death is an inescapable reality and men die daily, but good deeds live forever.

The only time you should look down at someone, is when you are helping them up.

Most poor people are not on welfare. . . I know they work. I'm a witness. They catch the early bus. They work every day. They raise other people's children. They work every day. They clean the streets. They work every day. They drive vans with cabs. They work every day. They change beds you slept in these hotels last night and can't get a union contract. They work every day . . .

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.

I was born in a slum, but the slum wasn't born in me.

You must never stop dreaming. Face reality, yes. But don't stop with the way things are; dream of things as they ought to be. Dream of peace. Peace is rational and reasonable. War is irrational in this age and unwinnable.

I hear that melting pot stuff a lot, and all I can say is that we haven't melted.

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.

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

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.

Just because a chicken was born in the oven doesn't make it a biscuit.

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

It is in struggle and service with our brothers and sisters, individually and collectively, that we find the meaning of life.

When we're unemployed, we're called lazy; when the whites are unemployed it's called a depression.

Many have fought for and even lost their lives to end segregation, to win the right to vote. It disappoints me to now have to cajole people to register and to vote.

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.

There have been more people disenfranchised in Washington than there have been in Kuwait.

We must never surrender. America will get better and better. Keep hope alive. Keep hope alive.

When I came here, I put my hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution. I didn't put my hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible.

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

In politics, an organized minority is a political majority.

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.

The great responsibility that we have today is to put the poor and the near poor back on front of the American agenda.

At the end of the day, we're defined by our predicament, not by the sides of town.

When I first went to jail in 1960 with seven classmates trying to use their public library against the backdrop of my father being a veteran of World War II, not being able to use - having to sit behind Nazi on American military bases, I lost my fear of jails and death.

That's just like America. It's made up of lots of different people. We're all different colors, different ages, we do different jobs -- but it takes all of us black people, white people, brown people, men and women, young and old, working in the factories, working in the fields, working in offices, working in stores -- it takes a lot of different kinds of people to get the job done for America.

It'll be a great day when the seniors have all the baseball caps they need and the Pentagon bombs Gilligan's Island.