Top 160 Jesse Jackson Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “People always grow and mature.”

— Jesse Jackson

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

— Jesse Jackson

53. “The ground is no place for a champion. The ground is no place that I will wallow on.”

— Jesse Jackson

54. “I was born in a slum, but the slum wasn’t born in me.”

— Jesse Jackson

55. “It is time for us to turn to each other, not on each other.”

— Jesse Jackson

56. “Gangs are a group reaction to helplessness.”

— Jesse Jackson

57. “Leadership has a harder job to do than just choose sides. It must bring sides together.”

— Jesse Jackson

58. “The burden of being black is that you have to be superior just to be equal. But the glory of it is that, once you achieve, you have achieved, indeed.”

— Jesse Jackson

59. “What is the American dream? The American dream is one big tent. One big tent. And on that big tent you have four basic promises: equal protection under the law, equal opportunity, equal access, and fair share.”

— Jesse Jackson

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

— Jesse Jackson

61. “If you don’t know what tomorrow holds, you need to know who holds tomorrow!”

— Jesse Jackson

62. “It’s not enough to be quiet. Quietness is the absence of noise. We need peace, the presence of justice and to be – and so people here can coexist and live together.”

— Jesse Jackson

63. “The white, the Hispanic, the black, the Arab, the Jew, the woman, the Native American, the small farmer, the businessperson, the environmentalist, the peace activist, the young, the old, the lesbian, the gay and the disabled make up the American quilt.”

— Jesse Jackson

64. “When the doors of opportunity swing open, we must make sure that we are not too drunk or too indifferent to walk through.”

— Jesse Jackson

65. “Deliberation and debate is the way you stir the soul of our democracy.”

— Jesse Jackson

66. “To bring up a child in the way he should go, travel that way yourself once in a while. Your children need your presence more than your presents.”

— Jesse Jackson

67. “My constituency is the desperate, the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected and the despised.”

— Jesse Jackson

68. “I hear that melting pot stuff a lot, and all I can say is that we haven’t melted.”

— Jesse Jackson

69. “I cast my bread on the waters long ago. Now it’s time for you to send it back to me – toasted and buttered on both sides.”

— Jesse Jackson

70. “When we’re unemployed, we’re called lazy; when the whites are unemployed it’s called a depression.”

— Jesse Jackson

71. “Our flag is read, white and blue, but our nation is a rainbown-red, yellow, brown, black and white – and we’re all precious in God’s sight.”

— Jesse Jackson

72. “That’s all Hymie wants to talk about is Israel. Every time you go to Hymietown that’s all they want to talk about.”

— Jesse Jackson

73. “A new leadership. A choice. A chance. Don’t cry about what you don’t have. Use what you got.”

— Jesse Jackson

74. “Let nothing and nobody break your spirit. Let the unity in the community remain intact.”

— Jesse Jackson

75. “I’m too mature to be angry.”

— Jesse Jackson

76. “I had to steal to survive.”

— Jesse Jackson

77. “What we have to be judged by is the work we try to do. It’s public service, not perfect service.”

— Jesse Jackson

78. “Our goal was not freedom. Freedom was the necessary prerequisite to get to equality.”

— Jesse Jackson

79. “If you don’t feel apologetic for slavery, if you don’t feel apologetic for colonialism, if you feel proud of it then say that.”

— Jesse Jackson

80. “No one should negotiate their dreams. Dreams must be free to fly high. No government, no legislature, has a right to limit your dreams. You should never agree to surrender your dreams.”

— Jesse Jackson

81. “If you wear a hoodie but aren’t registered to vote, you got the symbolism but missed the substance.”

— Jesse Jackson

82. “Many kids come out of college, they have a credit card and a diploma. They don’t know how to buy a house or a car or health insurance or life insurance. They do not know basic microeconomics.”

— Jesse Jackson

83. “When I came here, I put my hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution. I didn’t put my hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible.”

— Jesse Jackson

84. “Everywhere I go, kids walk around not with books under their arms, but with radios up against their heads. Children can’t read or write, but they can memorize whole albums.”

— Jesse Jackson

85. “Great things happen in small places. Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Jesse Jackson was born in Greenville.”

— Jesse Jackson

86. “Unfortunate. Unfortunate. Sometimes people struggling for freedom lose their way.”

— Jesse Jackson

87. “I want to cut his nuts off.”

— Jesse Jackson

88. “Peace is the alternative to war, and nonviolence should be seen as the antidote to violence, not simply as its opposite. Nonviolence is more concerned with saving life than with saving face.”

— Jesse Jackson

89. “You may choose your mate, but you cannot deny someone else the right to choose their mate.”

— Jesse Jackson

90. “Music of all arts should be expansive and inclusive.”

— Jesse Jackson

91. “No one wants to see self-destructive riots because there’s no future in riots.”

— Jesse Jackson

92. “It is in struggle and service with our brothers and sisters, individually and collectively, that we find the meaning of life.”

— Jesse Jackson

93. “Workers, black and white, need some kind of international affirmative action to protect them from unfair competition with unorganized or slave labor abroad and unfair competition with robots at home.”

— Jesse Jackson

94. “Conservatives and liberals can find common ground.”

— Jesse Jackson

95. “Just because a chicken was born in the oven doesn’t make it a biscuit.”

— Jesse Jackson

96. “I’m not wasting my time with any more non-straight-talking candidates.”

— Jesse Jackson

97. “Surrender had played out for good with me.”

— Jesse Jackson

98. “We must all learn a good lesson – how to live together.”

— Jesse Jackson

99. “Semi-automatic weapons are not just about gun control, they’re about national security. You know that these weapons can shoot down airplanes, they can blow up railroads. This is really a whole national security issue.”

— Jesse Jackson

100. “If a black doctor discovers a cure for cancer, ain’t no hospital going to lock him out.”

— Jesse Jackson