Jesse Jackson

I want to make America better!

Today's students can put dope in their veins or hope in their brains. If they can ...
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Many have fought for and even lost their lives to end segregation, to win the right ...
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It is a historical error for those who were not there to just refer to August ...
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I take my role seriously as a pastor.

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

A man who cannot be enticed by money or intimidated by the threat of jail or death has two of the strongest weapons that anyone has to offer.

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

Any attempt to dilute my support for Sen. Obama will not succeed.

America needs young people to be inspired to choose sacrifice over greed.

America is not a blanket woven from one thread, one color, one cloth.

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

At least the politicians are accountable to the voters.

Black men of integrity cannot make a deal with a politician and leave out the poor of the nation, all God's children.

Black and Jewish leaders have been a coalition of conscience.

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

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

Conservatives and liberals can find common ground.

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

Fighting disparities is very significant.

Few would deny that blacks have become very dominant in athletics: football, basketball, track, now dominant in tennis and dominant in golf.

From seeds of his body blossomed the flower that liberated a people and touched the soul of a nation.

George Bush has met more foreign heads of state than I have. But a substantial number of them were dead.

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.

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.

Great things happen in small places. Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Jesse Jackson was born in Greenville.

I had to steal to survive.

I had gained a greater appreciation of hearing the concerns of woman, doctors, and so many others.

I cast my bread on the waters long ago. Now it's time for you to send it back to me - toasted and buttered on both sides.

I know how to run a nationally paced campaign.

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

I remember being taught my place.

I mean, the fight for a health care bill to cover all Americans and leave none behind is attacked as being a race appeal, which is not true, but then it's put out in the media as true.

I know they are all environmentalists. I heard a lot of my speeches recycled.

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.

I take my role seriously as a pastor.

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

I want to make America better!

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

If a black doctor discovers a cure for cancer, ain't no hospital going to lock him out.

I was extended secret service protection during my presidential run in 1984, when I received the most death threats ever made toward a candidate.

If there are occasions when my grape turned into a raisin and my joy bell lost its resonance, please forgive me. Charge it to my head and not to my heart.

If the states had to vote on slavery, we would have lost the vote.

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.

If you don't know what tomorrow holds, you need to know who holds tomorrow!

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.

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.

If you run, you might lose. If you don't run, you're guaranteed to lose.

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

In many ways Africa subsidised America and Europe's development.

I'm too mature to be angry.

I'm not wasting my time with any more non-straight-talking candidates.

In politics, an organized minority is a political majority.

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.

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

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.

In tough economic times, desperate people do desperate things, and the abortion rate goes up.

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

Keep hope alive!

Look at the coded language the Right is using against President Barack Obama. Openly calling him a liar in Congress, saying he is 'not a Christian, he was not born here, he is not one of us.' That makes addressing such issues trickier for the first African-American in the White House.

Life has its dimensions in the mysterious.

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

Many kids come out of college, they have a credit card and a diploma. They don't know how to buy a house or a car or health insurance or life insurance. They do not know basic microeconomics.

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.

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.

My very first recollection of life on earth was waking up in bed with my mother, and she was showing me a picture of my father, Charles Jackson, with a group of soldiers.

Most blacks will argue that they excel because of hard work, because of intellect, determination, sweat, blood, tears and risk.

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.

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

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

People always grow and mature.

So here we are today with a new conversation. When University of Georgia plays Georgia Tech, it's uniform color versus skin color. We have - we've overcome that level of racial fear.

Ronald Reagan was older than I was when he ran for president.

Statehood for the District of Columbia is the most important civil rights and social justice issue in America today.

So many bright stars, bright in life, burn out quickly.

The American people on the ground need a clearer, stronger, Lyndon B. Johnson-type voice from their president. Obama has that voice. It has to be used.

Success needs no explanation. Failure does not have one that matters.

The law protects you from being abused. It doesn't threaten your lifestyle for someone else to have the right to exhibit their lifestyle.

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

The coffers are full of money and equipment for the Ferguson Police and the Missouri National Guard to put down a potential uprising, but no money for actually uplifting the people of Ferguson, St. Louis, Missouri and around the nation.

The relationship between the prophet and the President, the priest and the President, is a sacred one.

The more you focus on sex without love, and drugs and violence, lifestyle of intimidation and recycling, the less energy you spend on opening up the big tent.

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.

There is no power in cynicism. There is no forward thrust in cynicism.

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

Those powers that control the tent are not threatened at all by any activity that you engage in, in the shadows, that's not moving toward the tent. And I am rather convinced that we have a generation that is so preoccupied with life in the shadows, they never even focus on getting to the sunlight where you open up the big tent.

Those who have the most wealth and the most property, their children have the first, the best, and the most.

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.

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

Those who write the editorials and those who write the columns, they simply are unaccountable. They're free to impose their cultural politics in the name of freedom of the press.

Watch the walls come down, whether it's in the South or on Wall Street. When the walls come down, what do we find? More markets, more talent, more capital and growth. Which means that the race and sex discrimination stunt economic growth. It's not good for capitalism. It's not good for America's growth. And it's not morally right.

Urban America has been redlined. Government has not offered tax incentives for investment, as it has in a dozen foreign markets. Banks have redlined it. Industries have moved out, they've redlined it. Clearly, to break up the redlining process, there must be incentives to green-line with hedges against risk.

We must all learn a good lesson - how to live together.

We blacks were the first people embracing Obama, long before the people at expensive fundraisers were supporting him. We gave him his first love, 96 percent of blacks voted for him in 2008. Yet today we are the number one in unemployment, with 16 percent of American blacks out of work.

We reveal our joys and successes, we conceal our pain.

We must not measure greatness from the mansion down, but from the manger up.

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.

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

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.

When they wrote the Constitution, only white male landowners had the right to vote.

When the doors of opportunity swing open, we must make sure that we are not too drunk or too indifferent to walk through.

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

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

When you create more small businesses, you create small entrepreneurship. Out of that comes self-determination and employment.

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.

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.

Your children need your presence more than your presents.

You may choose your mate, but you cannot deny someone else the right to choose their mate.