Top 60 Andrew Young Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “I have about concluded that wealth is a state of mind, and that anyone can acquire a wealthy state of mind by thinking rich thoughts.”

— Andrew Young

2. “There is a happy land, Far, far away, Where Saints in glory stand, Bright, bright as day.”

— Andrew Young

3. “The commercialization of sport is the democratization of sport.”

— Andrew Young

4. “Any racial reconciliation we’ve had in this country has come not out of confrontation but out of a spirit of reconciliation. If we continue to practice an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, we’ll eventually end up with a land of people who are blind and toothless.”

— Andrew Young

5. “There’s no problem on the planet that can’t be solved without violence. That’s the lesson of the civil rights movement.”

— Andrew Young

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

— Andrew Young

7. “Once the Xerox copier was invented, diplomacy died.”

— Andrew Young

8. “I had to get a second passport in a hurry.”

— Andrew Young

9. “We rise in glory as we sink in pride.”

— Andrew Young

10. “It stands to reason that unloved and unwanted children are going to get into crime.”

— Andrew Young

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

— Andrew Young

12. “In a world where change is inevitable and continuous, the need to achieve that change without violence is essential for survival.”

— Andrew Young

13. “It is a blessing to die for a cause, because you can so easily die for nothing.”

— Andrew Young

14. “Nike has always been a business about excellence and achievement.”

— Andrew Young

15. “I believe in humanitarian capitalism, and there are good people on Wall Street.”

— Andrew Young

16. “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.”

— Andrew Young

17. “What Iran wants and what North Korea wants is respect.”

— Andrew Young

18. “Influence is like a savings account, the less you use it, the more you’ve got.”

— Andrew Young

19. “I always quoted to my parents from Kahlil Gibran, “The Prophet.” Your children are not your children. They come through you, but not from you. You can give them your love, but not your thoughts, for they come from a land that you cannot enter, not even in your wildest dreams.”

— Andrew Young

20. “On the soft bed of luxury many kingdoms have expired.”

— Andrew Young

21. “We think it is complicated to change the world. Change comes little by little. Nothing worthwhile can happen in one generation.”

— Andrew Young

22. “I’ve always seen the Olympics as a place where you could act out your differences on the athletic field with a sense of sportsmanship and fairness and mutual respect.”

— Andrew Young

23. “I was raised that way: don’t get mad, get smart.”

— Andrew Young

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

— Andrew Young

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

— Andrew Young

26. “Surely, if we can land a spaceship on Mars, we can certainly put a voter ID card in the hand of every eligible voter.”

— Andrew Young

27. “My daddy was determined to make me a dentist and a baseball player. And I loved my daddy but I wasted four years of college trying to do what he wanted me to do, and not what I felt I wanted to do.”

— Andrew Young

28. “In a sane, civil, intelligent and moral society, you don’t blame poor people for being poor.”

— Andrew Young

29. “Some kind of affirmative action is important in a democracy and for economic competitiveness and national security. The Army was the first to realize that you had to have desegregation of a military to have it working properly.”

— Andrew Young

30. “I wouldn’t listen to my parents, but I found out that I absorbed. I never heard what they said – told me – but I did what they did.”

— Andrew Young

31. “I’m against voter fraud in any form, and I have long supported a national voter ID card. But ID cards need not – and must not – restrict voting rights in any way, shape or form.”

— Andrew Young

32. “Martin Luther King was talking about racism, war and poverty. I think we have made progress enormous progress in racism and war, but we have made little or no progress in poverty. And it’s because the economy has gotten more and more complex as we have globalized.”

— Andrew Young

33. “Having personally watched the Voting Rights Act being signed into law that August day, I can’t begin to imagine how we could have all been so wrong in believing that more Americans would vote once they were all truly free to do so.”

— Andrew Young

34. “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.”

— Andrew Young

35. “To find people who don’t want anything is rare.”

— Andrew Young

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

— Andrew Young

37. “Freedom is a struggle, and we do it together. Not only together as black citizens, but black and white together.”

— Andrew Young

38. “Martin Luther King said America had given a bad check to black people.”

— Andrew Young

39. “I think we’ve made tremendous progress on racism. We’ve even made progress on war. We’ve made almost no progress on poverty.”

— Andrew Young

40. “Do not try to live your children’s lives out of your own frustrations.”

— Andrew Young

41. “The Soviet Union is going to have a human-rights explosion. You’ll have hundreds of thousands of dissidents.”

— Andrew Young

42. “Affirmative action is an effort to include every aspect of society in the decision making.”

— Andrew Young

43. “If you’re a preacher, you talk for a living, so even if you don’t make sense, you learn to make nonsense eloquently.”

— Andrew Young

44. “No nation as rich as ours should have so many people isolated on islands of poverty in such a sea of material wealth.”

— Andrew Young

45. “If I hadn’t been so outspoken, Jimmy Carter wouldn’t have wanted me.”

— Andrew Young

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

— Andrew Young

47. “Slavery didnt break up the black families as much as liberal welfare rules.”

— Andrew Young

48. “The man with courage is a majority.”

— Andrew Young

49. “What we forget is that African Americans made the largest contribution to America, economically, before the Civil War of any sector of society. I read that the railroads were worth about $2 billion, but slavery was a $3 billion asset.”

— Andrew Young

50. “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.”

— Andrew Young