Quotes from Andrew Young

My hope for my children must be that they respond to the still, small voice of God in their own hearts.

Can wealth give happiness? look around and see, what gay distress! what splendid misery! Whatever fortunes lavishly can pour, the mind annihilates and calls for more.

Look at those they call unfortunate and at a closer view, you'll find many of them are unwise.

Nothing is illegal if a hundred businessmen decide to do it.

Nothing is illegal if one hundred businessmen decide to do it.

On the soft bed of luxury many kingdoms have expired.

You have to expect that if you cuss out the world, The world is going to cuss back.

Nothing is illegal if one hundred businessmen decide to do it. -Andrew Young, author, civil rights activist, US congressman, mayor, and UN ambassador (b. 1932)

These new songs that I sing Were islands in the sea That never missed a spring, No, nor a century. A starry voyager, I to these islands come Knowing not by what star I am at last come home.

Knowledge is not enough. You must take action!

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.

One of the principles of nonviolence is that you leave your opponents whole and better off than you found them.

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.

Profits should be for a purpose. Profits should be productive. You should make money for producing benefits that make the world a better place. Making money is a good thing when it is made in service to humanity or the democracy.

To whom much is given, much is required - not expected, but required.

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.

Civil rights leaders are involved in helping poor people. That's what I've been doing all my life.

Do not try to live your children's lives out of your own frustrations.

I've been dyslexic and had Attention Deficit Disorder at some time in my life. I still read with a highlighter, but I've always loved to read.

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.

The unsung heroes of the civil rights movement were always the wives and the mothers.

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.

No one who's white thinks he's innocent. No one who's black thinks he's guilty.

I grew up in the middle of a block where there was an Irish grocery store on one corner, an Italian bar on another corner and the Nazi Party was on the third corner.