Jesse Jackson
There is no power in cynicism. There is no forward thrust in cynicism.
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.
Conservatives and liberals can find common ground.
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.
I'm not wasting my time with any more non-straight-talking candidates.
Life has its dimensions in the mysterious.
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.
I was extended secret service protection during my presidential run in 1984, when I received the most death threats ever made toward a candidate.
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.
From seeds of his body blossomed the flower that liberated a people and touched the soul of a nation.
I hear that melting-pot stuff a lot, and all I can say is that we haven't melted.
George Bush has met more foreign heads of state than I have. But a substantial number of them were dead.
Great things happen in small places. Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Jesse Jackson was born in Greenville.
A check or credit card, a Gucci bag strap, anything of value will do. Give as you live.
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.
We must all learn a good lesson - how to live together. That is the new challenge of the new world... learning to co-exist and not co-annihilate.
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.
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.
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.
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'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.
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.
I remember being taught my place.
I had to steal to survive.
Statehood for the District of Columbia is the most important civil rights and social justice issue in America today.
There have been more people disenfranchised in Washington than there have been in Kuwait.
I take my role seriously as a pastor.
The relationship between the prophet and the President, the priest and the President, is a sacred one.
I know how to run a nationally paced campaign.
Any attempt to dilute my support for Sen. Obama will not succeed.
If the states had to vote on slavery, we would have lost the vote.
You may choose your mate, but you cannot deny someone else the right to choose their mate.
The law protects you from being abused. It doesn't threaten your lifestyle for someone else to have the right to exhibit their lifestyle.
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.
When they wrote the Constitution, only white male landowners had the right to vote.
Those who have the most wealth and the most property, their children have the first, the best, and the most.
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.
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 had gained a greater appreciation of hearing the concerns of woman, doctors, and so many others.
In tough economic times, desperate people do desperate things, and the abortion rate goes up.
People always grow and mature.
So many bright stars, bright in life, burn out quickly.
If a black doctor discovers a cure for cancer, ain't no hospital going to lock him out.
In many ways Africa subsidised America and Europe's development.
I want to make America better!
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.
Black men of integrity cannot make a deal with a politician and leave out the poor of the nation, all God's children.
The great responsibility that we have today is to put the poor and the near poor back on front of the American agenda.
Black and Jewish leaders have been a coalition of conscience.