Quotes from John Lewis

We must be headlights and not taillights.

Sometimes I hear people saying, 'Nothing has changed.' Come and walk in my shoes.

Now we have black and white elected officials working together. Today, we have gone beyond just passing laws. Now we have to create a sense that we are one community, one family. Really, we are the American family.

I remember back in the 1960s - late '50s, really - reading a comic book called 'Martin Luther King Jr. and the Montgomery Story.' Fourteen pages. It sold for 10 cents. And this little book inspired me to attend non-violence workshops, to study about Gandhi, about Thoreau, to study Martin Luther King, Jr., to study civil disobedience.

We are tired of being beaten by policemen. We are tired of seeing our people locked up in jails over and over again. And then you holler, 'Be patient.' How long can we be patient?

I say to people today, 'You must be prepared if you believe in something. If you believe in something, you have to go for it. As individuals, we may not live to see the end.'

We need comprehensive immigration reform. Dr. King wouldn't be pleased at all to know that there are millions of people living in the shadow, living in fear in places like Georgia and Alabama.

In 1965, the attempted march from Selma to Montgomery on March 7 was planned to dramatize to the state of Alabama and to the nation that people of color wanted to register to vote.

My mother and father and many of my relatives had been sharecroppers.

I am very, very hopeful about the American South - I believe that we will lead America to what Dr. King called 'the beloved community.'

We're one people, and we all live in the same house. Not the American house, but the world house.

Too many of us still believe our differences define us.

We are one people with one family. We all live in the same house... and through books, through information, we must find a way to say to people that we must lay down the burden of hate. For hate is too heavy a burden to bear.

There are still forces in America that want to divide us along racial lines, religious lines, sex, class. But we've come too far; we've made too much progress to stop or to pull back. We must go forward. And I believe we will get there.

I think the administration can do a lot of good by telling folks that are on their side of the aisle, look, we may have lost the election on the Democrat side, but it's time to come together.

There may be some difficulties, some interruptions, but as a nation and as a people, we are going to build a truly multiracial, democratic society that maybe can emerge as a model for the rest of the world.

There's nothing wrong with a little agitation for what's right or what's fair.

When you make mistakes, when you're wrong, you should admit you're wrong and ask people to forgive you.

Customs, traditions, laws should be flexible, within good reason, if that is what it takes to make our democracy work.

We must continue to go forward as one people, as brothers and sisters.

Listening to Dr. King on the radio inspired me. Coming under the influence of Jim Lawson inspired me to think that I, too, could do something.

When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have to speak up. You have to say something; you have to do something.

I really believe that all of us, as Americans... we all need to be treated like fellow human beings.

I do not agree with what Mr. Snowden did. He has damaged American international relations and compromised our national security. He leaked classified information and may have jeopardized human lives. That must be condemned.