John Lewis Quotes
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You have to have the capacity and the ability to take what people did, and how they did it, and forgive them and move on.
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Don`t give up! Don`t give in! Keep the faith! And keep your eyes on the prize!
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Be prepared to organize nonviolent workshops - a teach-in around what is happening in America today. Organize your teachers and schoolmates, and be prepared to engage in some action.
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I think all Americans should be hopeful, and try to be optimistic.
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First time I got arrested, I knew somehow and some way, we would succeed. To go on the Freedom Ride to be beaten and left bloody and unconscious, to be beaten on that bridge in Selma, have a concussion - I thought that I was going to die on that bridge. But somehow and some way, I lived to tell about what happened, and I've seen some of the fruits of the labor of so many people, and people must understand that.
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You cannot give up - you have to be persistent and keep pushing, and press on.
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Today, all across this country there are going to be rallies led by Democrats and others to fight against the devastating impact of repeal of the Affordable Care Act. 20 million people thrown off of health insurance, prescription drug prices raising for seniors, privatization of Medicare: devastation. And we've got to fight back against that.
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The events in Prague, together with the Berlin blockade, convinced the European recipients of American economic assistance that they needed military protection as well: that led them to request the creation of a North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which committed the United States for the first time ever to the peacetime defense of Western Europe.
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This book [March], in my estimation, is a road map. It is a change agent. It is saying to people, "This is a way".
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I can tell just from working closely for the last year an half with president-elect [Donald Trump] and even over the course of the last six weeks, he has no problem with differing opinions in a room.
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If you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have a moral obligation to do something about it.
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For a person [like John Lewis] that is a champion of voter rights to question whether or not Donald Trump legitimately won an election or not is an incredible position to take five days before an inauguration.
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Nobody thinks that Obamacare is perfect. It has its problems.
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Our struggle is a struggle to redeem the soul of America. It's not a struggle that lasts for a few days, a few weeks, a few months, or a few years. It is the struggle of a lifetime, more than one lifetime.
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When people tell me nothing has changed, I say come walk in my shoes and I will show you change.
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I think [Donald Trump] is going to be inaugurated this week. I have great concerns, and apparently Republicans do as well, and there's going to be an investigation about the role that Russian hacking played in getting him elected.
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There are hundreds and thousands of young Americans who cannot or will not receive an education, because in order to get an education, you have to spend money. Students come out of college and universities with unbelievable debt. It's not right, it's not fair, and it's not just, in a society such as ours. And those dollars are not going to the teachers.
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My parents told me in the very beginning as a young child when I raised the question about segregation and racial discrimination, they told me not to get in the way, not to get in trouble, not to make any noise.
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The civil rights movement was based on faith. Many of us who were participants in this movement saw our involvement as an extension of our faith. We saw ourselves doing the work of the Almighty. Segregation and racial discrimination were not in keeping with our faith, so we had to do something.
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The advent of the civil rights movement during the 50s and 60s made it very plain crystal clear to me that we had an obligation to do what we could to make real the Constitution of the United States of America.
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['March'] is a path you must take if you want to move from one point to another point. If you want to make it down this very long and troublesome road, follow this path. Follow this message. Follow this map. And you will get there some day.
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I heard of Martin Luther King Jr. when I was 15 years old. I heard of Rosa Parks. And I met Dr. King in 1958 at the age of 18. I met Rosa Parks ... But to pick up a fun comic book - some people used to call them "funny books" - to pick this little book up, it sold for 10 cents, 12 pages or 14 pages? 14 pages I digested. And it inspired me. And I said to myself, "If the people of Montgomery can do this, maybe I can do something. Maybe I can make a contribution."
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Some people think that [it was] Martin Luther King Jr.'s idea to have a boycott. It was a black woman, a teacher, who said we should boycott the buses. You had people like Fannie Lou Hamer; Delta, Mississippi.
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I think, in fact, I think President [Barack] Obama could step up.
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I think all three of those men [James Mattis, Mike Pompeo and Rex Tillerson] that you just mentioned, depending on what deal was struck with Russia, depending on what terms the deal would have and what incremental steps we would have to take and measurements that we would have to take with potentially Russia in a deal, some of those positions could change, and some of President-elect Donald Trump's positions could change depending on what deal could be struck.
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My mother and father and many of my relatives had been sharecroppers.
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[Donald Trump's inauguration] will be the first one that I miss since I've been in Congress. You cannot be at home with something that you feel that is wrong, is not right.
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Even in the civil rights movement, there were so many unbelievable women. They never, ever received the credit that they should have received. They did all of the, and I cannot say it, they did all of the dirty work. Hard work.
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I remember being at the church a few hours after the church was bombed in Birmingham, the 16th Street Baptist Church. It was very hard and very difficult to stand on that corner across the street from the church. Or to go Mississippi and search for the three civil rights workers who came up missing. There is a lot of trauma.
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We have had a great relationship with the White House.We just had every cabinet person designee of ours meet with the cabinet members of the [Barack] Obama administration on Friday. I've met numerous times with Denis McDonough, they've been nothing but helpful.
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