Jack Canfield Quotes

The action of Rosa Parks, the words and leadership of Dr. King inspired me. I was deeply inspired. I wanted to do something.

Dr. King used Gandhi's commitment to non-violence and to passive resistance.

Rosa Parks inspired me to find a way to get in the way, to get in trouble... good trouble, necessary trouble.

I love revolutionaries who have the courage to stand up against the status quo. They're always misunderstood, but they're the ones who are standing up for human rights.

There are many people making a difference. I mean, Dr. King never held an office. Gandhi never held an office. There are people who are archetypes in our society who have never held office and made a difference.

Movies, TV, sports, come and go, but what you stand for is what people remember. Mandela, Martin Luther King, John Kennedy are people who really stood for something and were willing to die for it. You don't see a whole lot of that any more.

I got interested in politics during the civil rights movement and then Vietnam.

I grew up in the sixties watching B.B. King and Tito Puente and Miles Davis and Coltrane, everybody, Marvin Gaye, Jimi. And at the same time, with my left eye I was watching Dolores Huerta, Cesar Chavez, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Mother Teresa.

When you look at the times in history when change was brought about, there were two factors: crisis and leadership.

I want you to leave here with a sense of mission. Martin Luther King is waiting for you to march with him.

We come to Selma to be renewed. We come to be inspired. We come to be reminded that we must do the work that justice and equality calls us to do.

I remember back in the 1960s - late '50s, really - reading a comic book called 'Martin Luther King Jr. and the Montgomery Story.' Fourteen pages. It sold for 10 cents. And this little book inspired me to attend non-violence workshops, to study about Gandhi, about Thoreau, to study Martin Luther King, Jr., to study civil disobedience.

Following the teaching of Gandhi and Thoreau, Dr. King, it set me on a path. And I never looked back.

If you go up on a mountain and scream about change, you better make sure you're ready for people to come.

It was the understanding of the power of perception that allowed the Martin Luther King, Jr. generations to stay true to the strategy of non-violence, refusing to retaliate when every emotional instinct would justify them doing so.

Martin Luther King didn't know he was going to have a day named after him; Muhammad Ali didn't know he was going to be the people's champion. He was doing what he was doing because it was right.

In college, I was so blessed to have relationships with those who did the civil rights movement.

Especially in the sphere of social activism, I think we tend to unwittingly conceptualize progress or revolution as black and white and having a clear beginning and end.

It takes courage to speak up against complacency and injustice while others remain silent. But that's what leadership is.

Martin [Luther King] wasn't one to buck forces too much.

In many ways, history is marked as 'before' and 'after' Rosa Parks. She sat down in order that we all might stand up, and the walls of segregation came down.

I was involved in some peaceful protests.

People look at me like I should have been like Malcolm X or Martin Luther King or Rosa Parks. I should have seen life like that and stay out of trouble, and don't do this and don't do that. But it's hard to live up to some people's expectations.

Anyone who said he wasn't afraid during the civil rights movement was either a liar or without imagination. I was scared all the time. My hands didn't shake but inside I was shaking.

We have to remember that Dr. King was not an idle dreamer. Dr. King was a man of action. If Dr. King were here, he would challenge us and exhort us.