Andrew Young
Most of my teachers wanted to send me to the principal's office. But my fourth-grade teacher once put her arms around me and said, 'You sure write well.' And I've had good penmanship until this day. She was the only one who ever said anything nice to me. That's the kind of motivation that students need.Collection: Teacher
We think it is complicated to change the world. Change comes little by little. Nothing worthwhile can happen in one generation.Collection: Change
For most of the world, civil and political rights... come as luxuries that are far away in the future.Collection: Future
There can be no democracy without truth. There can be no truth without controversy, there can be no change without freedom. Without freedom there can be no progress.Collection: Truth
I've always seen the Olympics as a place where you could act out your differences on the athletic field with a sense of sportsmanship and fairness and mutual respect.Collection: Respect
Moral power is probably best when it is not used. The less you use it the more you have.Collection: Power
If Congress can move President's Day, Columbus Day and, alas, Martin Luther King's Birthday celebration for the convenience of shoppers, shouldn't they at least consider moving Election Day for the convenience of voters?Collection: Birthday
What we forget is that African Americans made the largest contribution to America, economically, before the Civil War of any sector of society. I read that the railroads were worth about $2 billion, but slavery was a $3 billion asset.Collection: Society
Affirmative action is an effort to include every aspect of society in the decision making.Collection: Society
Everybody in America has been dependent on the government at some time. We owe everybody in America the right to vote and access to capital. What I say is, let's make America work, let's make democracy and free enterprise work for everybody.Collection: Government
Freedom is a struggle, and we do it together. Not only together as black citizens, but black and white together.Collection: Freedom
We rise in glory as we sink in pride.
To whom much is given, much is required - not expected, but required.
It is a blessing to die for a cause, because you can so easily die for nothing.
Nothing is illegal if one hundred businessmen decide to do it.
There's no problem on the planet that can't be solved without violence. That's the lesson of the civil rights movement.
The commercialization of sport is the democratization of sport.
On the soft bed of luxury many kingdoms have expired.
I like my life. I've had a good life. I think the reason is my parents taught me that life is a burden. But if you take it one day at a time, it's an easy burden.
I have about concluded that wealth is a state of mind, and that anyone can acquire a wealthy state of mind by thinking rich thoughts.
Egypt's problem is that you've got an economy that works for about 40 million people, only you have 90 million people. The answer to the Egyptian problem is not guns, but jobs. We've got to find a private-sector, nongovernmental, aggressive way of creating jobs. That's not America's role totally.
Once the Xerox copier was invented, diplomacy died.
Tomorrow is the day when idlers work, and fool reform, and mortal men lay hold on heaven.
The unsung heroes of the civil rights movement were always the wives and the mothers.
If I hadn't been so outspoken, Jimmy Carter wouldn't have wanted me.
Nobody black had learned anything from the 'Letter from the Birmingham Jail' or from the 'I Have a Dream' speech. That was a revelation of white people.
I was raised that way: don't get mad, get smart.
There is a sense in which the United States ambassador speaks to the United States, as well as for the United States. I have always seen my role as a thermostat rather than a thermometer. So I'm going to be actively working... for my own concerns. I have always had people advise me on what to say, but never on what not to say.
President Jimmy Carter was a citizen soldier. Ironically, he was considered weak because he didn't kill anybody and he didn't get anyone killed.
You have to start living for something that's worth dying for.
Influence is like a savings account. The less you use it, the more you've got.
In a world where change is inevitable and continuous, the need to achieve that change without violence is essential for survival.
No one who's white thinks he's innocent. No one who's black thinks he's guilty.
Look at those they call unfortunate and at a closer view, you'll find many of them are unwise.
Some kind of affirmative action is important in a democracy and for economic competitiveness and national security. The Army was the first to realize that you had to have desegregation of a military to have it working properly.
One of the principles of nonviolence is that you leave your opponents whole and better off than you found them.
We've changed in the sense that we flipped - and this is no longer the Republican party of Lincoln. This is the party of suppression.
To find people who don't want anything is rare.
Wishing of all strategies, is the worst.
If I wanted to develop a scenario to destroy America, I would do what the Republicans are doing. Take the brightest and best young black men off the streets, put them in jail, make them meaner than hell for 8 or 10 years and then turn them lose in a society where there are plenty of guns for them to play with.
Civil rights leaders are involved in helping poor people. That's what I've been doing all my life.
If you're a preacher, you talk for a living, so even if you don't make sense, you learn to make nonsense eloquently.
I'm against voter fraud in any form, and I have long supported a national voter ID card. But ID cards need not - and must not - restrict voting rights in any way, shape or form.
When people ask where I studied to be an ambassador, I say my neighborhood and my school. I've tried to tell my kids that you don't wait until you're in high school or college to start dealing with problems of people being different. The younger you start, the better.
I wasn't predicted to be anything. I just followed an inner spirit, and it put me in the right place and the right time. I didn't want to be the mayor of Atlanta. I didn't want to run for Congress. I didn't want to work for Martin Luther King Jr. I wanted to work close to him and be a writer and write about the movement.
It stands to reason that unloved and unwanted children are going to get into crime.
I tried. But not everybody thought so.
Violence is not more efficient than non-violence.
I was much more comfortable and a much better congressman running in a district that was 37 percent black, where I had to have a white constituency to get elected, than I would have been if I was in a 75 percent black district.
Our children lost our direction because they have been compromised. They have found freedom at the ballot box, and then they have taken on plastic chains around their minds and souls and mortgage their future on credit cards. They have to learn better - they have to learn the value of ideas and health as opposed to wealth.