When the doors of opportunity swing open, we must make sure that we are not too drunk or too indifferent to walk through.
—Jesse Jackson
Topics: Drunkenness, Opportunity
No one rises to low expectations.
—Jesse Jackson
Topics: Excellence
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
Topics: Dreams
Never look down on anybody unless you’re helping him up.
—Jesse Jackson
Topics: Attitude, Animals, Kindness, Helping, Pride, Helpfulness
America is not a blanket woven from one thread, one color, one cloth.
—Jesse Jackson
When we’re unemployed, we’re called lazy; when the whites are unemployed it’s called a depression.
—Jesse Jackson
Topics: Work, Racism, Unemployment
Both tears and sweat are salty, but they render a different result. Tears will get you sympathy; sweat will get you change.
—Jesse Jackson
Topics: Change
Our dreams must be stronger than our memories. We must be pulled by our dreams, rater than pushed by our memories.
—Jesse Jackson
Topics: Dreams
Our flag is red, white and blue, but our nation is a rainbow—red, yellow, brown, black and white—and we’re all precious in God’s sight.
—Jesse Jackson
Time is neutral and does not change things. With courage and initiative, leaders change things.
—Jesse Jackson
Topics: Time
Capital punishment turns the state into a murderer. But imprisonment turns the state into a gay dungeon-master.
—Jesse Jackson
Topics: Justice
Your children need your presence more than presents.
—Jesse Jackson
Topics: Children, Parents
Hold your head high, stick your chest out. You can make it. It gets dark sometimes, but morning comes. Keep hope alive.
—Jesse Jackson
Topics: Morning, Hope
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.
—Jesse Jackson
Topics: Public
America is not like a blanket: one piece of unbroken cloth, the same color, the same texture, the same size. America is more like a quilt: many patches, many pieces, many colors, many sizes, all woven and held together by a common thread.
—Jesse Jackson
Topics: America
God doesn’t make orange juice; God makes oranges.
—Jesse Jackson
Leadership has a harder job to do than just choose sides. It must bring sides together.
—Jesse Jackson
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
Topics: Drugs
A check or credit card, a Gucci bag strap, anything of value will do. Give as you live.
—Jesse Jackson
Topics: Giving, Charity
Leadership cannot just go along to get along. Leadership must meet the moral challenge of the day
—Jesse Jackson
Topics: Challenges
If my mind can conceive it, and my heart can believe it, I know I can achieve it.
—Jesse Jackson
Topics: Heart
We’ve removed the ceiling above our dreams. There are no more impossible dreams.
—Jesse Jackson
Topics: Dreams
Racism as a form of skin worship, and as a sickness and a pathological anxiety for America, is so great, until the poor whites—rather than fighting for jobs or education—fight to remain pink and fight to remain white. And therefore they cannot see an alliance with people that they feel to be inherently inferior.
—Jesse Jackson
Topics: Racism, Race
My constituency is the desperate, the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected and the despised.
—Jesse Jackson
Topics: Politics, Politicians
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- W. E. B. Du Bois American Sociologist, Activist
- Martin Luther King, Jr. American Civil Rights Leader
- Rosa Parks American Civil Rights Leader
- Whitney Young American Civil Rights Leader
- Carrie Chapman Catt American Suffragist
- Susan B. Anthony American Civil Rights Leader
- George Boardman the Younger American Baptist Minister
- Harry Emerson Fosdick American Baptist Minister
- Russell Conwell American Baptist Minister
- Billy Graham American Baptist Religious Leader
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