Jesse Jackson Quotes

I was raised in a very activist household so that I grew up surrounded by people who were activists.

I don't think that people in power can be convinced by words or articles. They will never give it up by choice.

We who have the final word can speak softly or angrily. We can seek to challenge and annoy, as we need not stay docile and quiet.

The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.

Activism could be defined as activities engaged in by individuals to change there of others situation.

You don't change the course of history by turning the faces of portraits to the wall.

The people in power will not disappear voluntarily, giving flowers to the cops just isn't going to work. This thinking is fostered by the establishment; they like nothing better than love and nonviolence.

I got personal satisfaction from making trouble for high-placed sexists and helping less lucky women fight the establishment

You can’t change Washington from the inside. You can only change Washington from the outside.

Somehow, the guys in power have to be reached by counter-power, or through a change in their hearts and minds, or change will not come.

I had the blessing of opportunity. You need the folks in the boardroom who have consciences and the people in the streets who can picket at the right time.

If you're going to change things, you have to be with the people who hold the levers.

I am not a politician. I am just a simple person who has come to break down this system.

I am not naive enough to believe that voting is the only way to bring about transformational change, just as I know that protest alone is not the sole solution to the challenges we face.

If I want to get my ideas out, I have to be involved in the mechanism that the world is ran by.

It was clear to us that social movements and activism can only take us so far in our mission.

What we've seen is an attempt by mainstream politics and politicians to co-opt movements that galvanize people in order for them to move closer to their own goals and objectives. We don't think that playing a corrupt game is going to bring change and make black lives matter.

I am mindful that the goal of protest is not more protest, but the goal of protest is change.

Rhetoric never won a revolution yet.

It's the reason why I am always interested in engaging in people who are pushing us and pushing against the status quo. But having been an activist, the only thing that I'm always encouraging activists to do is, once you have raised the issue, and even through controversial means, you have to come behind it with an agenda and the possibility of reconciliation if power meets your demands.

The role that theater has placed in enhancing consciousness and moving systems ahead. I think of what South African theater meant for the apartheid movement, for example. I think of what music has meant for so many social movements across time.

There are men put on this earth to make laws designed to break the spirits of men. There are those put here to have their spirits broken by those put here to break them. Then there are those who are here to break the laws that break the men who break the spirits of other men. I am one of those men. - Harry West

If you go to one demonstration and then go home, that's something, but the people in power can live with that. What they can't live with is sustained pressure that keeps building, organisations that keep doing things, people that keep learning lessons from the last time and doing it better the next time.

Does political correctness have a good side? Yes, it does, for it makes us re-examine attitudes, and that is always useful. The trouble is that, with all popular movements, the lunatic fringe so quickly ceases to be a fringe; the tail begins to wag the dog. For every woman or man who is quietly and sensibly using the idea to examine our assumptions, there are twenty rabble-rousers whose real motive is desire for power over others. The fact that they see themselves as antiracists or feminists or whatever does not make them any less rabble-rousers.