Top 60 Al Sharpton Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “But resist we much. We must, and we will much- about that- be committed.”

— Al Sharpton

2. “What do we want? Dead cops. When do we want it? Now.”

— Al Sharpton

3. “You can’t get a solution if you won’t talk to the people that have the problem. You can’t ever have healing if the patient is left out of the operation room.”

— Al Sharpton

4. “I am in hell already. I am in Israel.”

— Al Sharpton

5. “I’ve seen enough things to know that if you just keep on going, if you turn the corner, the sun will be shining.”

— Al Sharpton

6. “We’re not willing to give black leaders second chances because, in most cases, we’re not willing to give them first chances.”

— Al Sharpton

7. “Don’t talk to us like we ignint!”

— Al Sharpton

8. “I’ve never seen an effective boycott that didn’t work.”

— Al Sharpton

9. “I have the right to express myself. Once we get through expressing, do we really move forward in society.”

— Al Sharpton

10. “Life is about not where you start, but where you’re going. That’s family values.”

— Al Sharpton

11. “If you play the theatrics too much, you get in the way of your own cause.”

— Al Sharpton

12. “It seems some have chosen to ignore or have simply forgotten the big-picture vision promoted by Dr. King and his kin.”

— Al Sharpton

13. “It was better walk with dignity than ride in shame. A lot of people in Cincinnati are saying, “Rather than have the continual problems of police brutality and economic disparity, I’m willing to make some sacrifices.” And I think that they ought to be respected for doing that.”

— Al Sharpton

14. “Getting Democrats organized is like herding cats.”

— Al Sharpton

15. “They tried to say that being gay is a sin, and I said that adultery is a sin. Adultery is responsible for breaking up more marriages, but do we put that in the Constitution? It’s absurd.”

— Al Sharpton

16. “As I often say, we have come a long way from the days of slavery, but in 2014, discrimination and inequality still saturate our society in modern ways. Though racism may be less blatant now in many cases, its existence is undeniable.”

— Al Sharpton

17. “We have defeated Jim Crow, but now we have to deal with his son, James Crow Jr., esquire.”

— Al Sharpton

18. “My ordination in the Church of God in Christ was at age 9, and I later became a Baptist minister, which I am today.”

— Al Sharpton

19. “I’ve seen too much in life to give up.”

— Al Sharpton

20. “How do you make things fair?”

— Al Sharpton

21. “I think drugs affect poor people and people of color more than anyone.”

— Al Sharpton

22. “I always go by instinct and then wrestle with where by instinct brought me.”

— Al Sharpton

23. “When you’re dealing with boycotts, you don’t need everyone. You just need enough to be effective.”

— Al Sharpton

24. “The dream was not to put one black family in the White House, the dream was to make everything equal in everybody’s house.”

— Al Sharpton

25. “Who defines terrorists? Today’s terrorist is tomorrow’s friend.”

— Al Sharpton

26. “I won vice president of my student body in high school. That doesn’t mean anything.”

— Al Sharpton

27. “If a cop sees a person running out of a store with a gun he’s seeing a crime. He’s not seeing a person standing.”

— Al Sharpton

28. “I think that you can’t choose leadership. You have to deal with the leadership that the people respond to.”

— Al Sharpton

29. “What’s wrong with denouncing white interlopers?”

— Al Sharpton

30. “The GOP’s freak out over Donald Trump. Just two months to Iowa, can anyone stop him?”

— Al Sharpton

31. “Crime is going down everywhere but in the New York City Police Department.”

— Al Sharpton

32. “I’m a patriot in the truest sense of the word.”

— Al Sharpton

33. “During my 2004 presidential campaign, I was fond of saying that it was high time for the Christian right to meet the right Christians.”

— Al Sharpton

34. “If Charlton Heston can have a constitutional right carry a rifle, why can’t grandma have a constitutional right to health care?”

— Al Sharpton

35. “Evangelicals catapulted George W. Bush back to the White House.”

— Al Sharpton

36. “Dr. King’s general principles are universal. But the things he confronted took place in another era.”

— Al Sharpton

37. “Somebody had to bring the truth to the doorstep of this president.”

— Al Sharpton

38. “I understand deficit spending. I was born in deficit spending.”

— Al Sharpton

39. “We need an amendment that gives us the right to vote protected by the federal government and the Constitution.”

— Al Sharpton

40. “We blacks had problems in the ’60s and we solved them by marching. We’ve still got problems – let’s march.”

— Al Sharpton

41. “Bill Clinton strikes me as the kind of guy who goes wherever the polls lead him, rather than leading the polls.”

— Al Sharpton

42. “I haven’t done the things I’ve done to be in a sitcom.”

— Al Sharpton

43. “I feel that it is our moral obligation to stand and to be courageous with these families, and particularly Cindy, that have become the conscience of this nation.”

— Al Sharpton

44. “The Democratic Party hasn’t whipped anybody into a frenzy. The assumption is that the people that are marching and protesting and standing up against this don’t have enough sense to stand up for their own interests.”

— Al Sharpton

45. “National Action Network, the group I founded, has affiliates or chapters in over 40 cities around the country.”

— Al Sharpton

46. “I think that any time you look at the fact that boycotts have historically led to change, whatever temporary inconvenience there may be, it in the long run leads toward, in my opinion, a better change for everybody.”

— Al Sharpton

47. “While the rest of the country waves the flag of Americana, we understand we are not part of that. We don’t owe America anything – America owes us.”

— Al Sharpton

48. “As a Baptist minister, I don’t have the right to impose my views on anyone else. If committed gay and lesbian couples want to marry, that is their business; none of us should stand in their way.”

— Al Sharpton

49. “But we believed if we kept on working, if we kept on marching, if we kept on voting, if we kept on believing, we would make America beautiful for everybody.”

— Al Sharpton

50. “I very rarely read any fiction. I love biographies; I read about all kinds of people. I love theology and some philosophy.”

— Al Sharpton