Quotes By Jesse Jackson

The American people on the ground need a clearer, stronger, Lyndon B. Johnson-type voice from their president.

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.

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

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

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.

I'm too mature to be angry.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I had to steal to survive.

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

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

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

I have worked hard to build relationships between Jewish people and black people.

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

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 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.

We have to judge politicians by their cumulative score. In one innings they make a great catch, in another they drop the ball. In one they score a home run, in another they strike out. But it is their cumulative batting average that we are interested in.

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

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.

Black and Jewish leaders have been a coalition of conscience.

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.

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.

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