Samuel L. Jackson Quotes

Who can sit back as our towns and cities are torn apart by violence and be content with the status quo?

In a summer marked by instability in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, I know the world also took notice of the small American city of Ferguson, Missouri - where a young man was killed, and a community was divided. So yes, we have our own racial and ethnic tensions.

So that the failures to pass a civil rights bill isn't because of Black Power, isn't because of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; it's not because of the rebellions that are occurring in the major cities.

A mob is the method by which good citizens turn over the law and the government to the criminal or irresponsible classes.

… representatives of those forces which simmer beneath the surface of every civilized community and if they could break out, would destroy not only property and civilization but finally even themselves. .

Tensions and violence in cities across America are reminders of how quickly communities can erupt with an absence of social trust.

I do worry about civil unrest, or complete collapse of society, or having to flee, or Europe falling into a war.

The tumultuous populace of large cities are ever to be dreaded.

There are a lot of people - and I'm not talking about elected Democrats - there are a lot of your fellow citizens - you don't know them, you don't know where they are - but there's many more of them than you know and realize, and they revel in all of this. They love the chaos. They love the majority being disturbed, bothered, shaken up by it.

We are sitting on many powder kegs. Whether it's Ferguson, or St Louis, or like the other night, or Baltimore. Or different parts of Chicago.

You also had in Detroit that summer, an early variation of Ferguson. A black prostitute was shot in the back by police. And all of the efforts that a very progressive police chief and mayor of that period had put into trying to restore race relations started to fall apart again, and you could see that unraveling for several years until the riots or rebellion of 1967.

I'M SAD, because another young life was lost from his family, the racial divide has widened, a community is in shambles, accusations, insensitivity hurt and hatred are boiling over, and we may never know the truth about what happened that day.

Many other cities could go the way that Los Angeles went last night unless the president is willing to step in and take some strong action in terms of letting people know that he cares about this issue.

The spirit of rebellion is present in every great city, and the great task of wise government is to keep it dormant, for if it wakes it is a torrent which no dam can hold back.

No one wants to see self-destructive riots because there's no future in riots.

If labor mainly, or to any considerable degree, serves the purpose of a police, to keep men out of mischief, it indicates a rottenness at the foundation of our community.

If you want to know anything about community, you have to realize that the contemplative side is essential. Community without retreating and quiet time never survives.

and in some of the people of the town and community surrounding it, one of the characteristic diseases of the twentieth century was making its way: the suspicion that they would be greatly improved if they were somewhere else.

America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards. On the road to tyranny, we've gone so far that polite political action is about as useless as a miniskirt in a convent. ... Something's eventually going to happen. Government will bloat until it chokes us to death, or one more tyrannical power grab will turn out to be one too many. ... Maybe it'll be one more round of "reasonable gun control" or one more episode of burning children to death to save them from "child abuse." Whatever, something will snap.

We've gone through the urban renewal cycle in the '60s and '70s that really did a lot of damage to the fabric of urban life - neighborhoods bulldozed and highways pushed through, and all that kind of stuff that really destroyed the kind of social underpinning and the kind of mom and pop stores and all the stuff that makes a community viable.

Leaders of political parties need to keep in contact with the people; that's what it's all about. If violence were to erupt, I am fairly confident that we could control our people. Whether or not the authorities can control theirs is another matter altogether.

Life is a tragedy filled with suffering and despair and yet some people do manage to avoid jury duty.

The question is not whether a community lives or dies, the question is on what plane does it live? There are different modes of survival. But all are not equally honorable.

Folk caught up in a riot aren't our cousins and sisters, our brothers and uncles. They are part of a big animal with many arms and claws, armed with stones and sticks.