Your children need your presence more than your presents.
— Jesse Jackson
America is not a blanket woven from one thread, one color, one cloth.
Our dreams must be stronger than our memories. We must be pulled by our dreams, rater than pushed by our memories.
When we're unemployed, we're called lazy; when the whites are unemployed it's called a depression.
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.
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.
Both tears and sweat are salty, but they render a different result. Tears will get you sympathy; sweat will get you change.
When the doors of opportunity swing open, we must make sure that we are not too drunk or too indifferent to walk through.
We've removed the ceiling above our dreams. There are no more impossible dreams.
Deliberation and debate is the way you stir the soul of our democracy.
George Bush has met more foreign heads of state than I have. But a substantial number of them were dead.
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.
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.
Keep hope alive!
If you fall behind, run faster. Never give up, never surrender, and rise up against the odds.
Great things happen in small places. Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Jesse Jackson was born in Greenville.
Time is neutral and does not change things. With courage and initiative, leaders change things.
In politics, an organized minority is a political majority.
A man must be willing to die for justice. Death is an inescapable reality and men die daily, but good deeds live forever.
Leadership has a harder job to do than just choose sides. It must bring sides together.
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.
From seeds of his body blossomed the flower that liberated a people and touched the soul of a nation.
