Quotes from Jesse Jackson

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.

It is a historical error for those who were not there to just refer to August 28th as 'I Have a Dream' speech day. That is a real disservice to those who were there. It was a sad day. It was not a celebration environment.

Never look down on anybody unless you're helping them up.

Capital punishment turns the state into a murderer. But imprisonment turns the state into a gay dungeon-master.

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.

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 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.

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

Keep hope alive!

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

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

In many ways, history is marked as 'before' and 'after' Rosa Parks. She sat down in order that we all might stand up, and the walls of segregation came down.

Leadership cannot just go along to get along. Leadership must meet the moral challenge of the day.

Those who write the editorials and those who write the columns, they simply are unaccountable. They're free to impose their cultural politics in the name of freedom of the press.

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 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.

In politics, an organized minority is a political majority.

People internalize, from the jail to student loan debt, to credit card debt, to unemployment to the whole collective. It manifests itself in many ways, in people's home lives, domestic stuff.

On the political front, of course it's a zero-sum game. If it's all white males holding positions, you bring 10 women in, then it's, 'Women are coming!' Get 10 blacks and it's, 'Blacks are coming!' 'Hispanics are coming!' Zero-sum game. The seatmates might change but the chairs don't move. In the economy, the number of chairs can actually increase.

Music of all arts should be expansive and inclusive.

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.

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.

A man who cannot be enticed by money or intimidated by the threat of jail or death has two of the strongest weapons that anyone has to offer.

The relationship between the prophet and the President, the priest and the President, is a sacred one.