Al Sharpton Quotes

If you athletes boycott the Olympics, it will be like a rock dropping in the water. The ripples and waves will be felt all over. You can be that rock. No one will die and that is the way to fight.

I see the value of being a force. I don't want to say a force, but numbers. If you're all spread out, you can't change policy for the better, and I feel we've done that.

58% of the American public are with us. We're preaching to the choir, but the choir's not singing, if all of the 58% started singing, this war would end.

I hope lots of people will join the solidarity march on May 7th and I hope things will change.

A movement is only composed of people moving. To feel its warmth and motion around us is the end as well as the means.

Solidarity is an attitude of resistance, I suppose, or it should be.

Activism, to me, I don't know if it really works. It may work for somebody else, but it does not work for me.

So we must stand together to resist, for we will get what we can take - just that and no more.

I learned more complex ways to manipulate the manipulators, to bring attention to issues about which I felt passionate.

In 2012, I see the potential for people to come together, huge moments of political and social engagement where elections are part of the strategy for change, but not the end goal and not the only thing that matters.

Heed this cry that comes from the hearts of men. Organize the Unorganized.

The consumer boycott is the only open door in the dark corridor of nothingness down which farm workers have had to walk for many years. It is a gate of hope through which they expect to find the sunlight of a better life for themselves and their families.

America won't be saved because one or 10 people stand up. It will be saved because millions of us stand up.

If you want to remember me, organize!

Boycotts are not something to be taken lightly.

The essence of Ferguson is the spirit of the people, and I'm so happy to see the spirit because I haven't seen it like that since the Civil Rights Movement.

You don't need role models to be part of a social movement as long as you care about the issues.

One of the beautiful things about a movement is that there are many strategies and many tactics contained within it. Not every participant in a movement is required to do exactly the same things.

It's about people rising up in Ferguson and in Egypt and in Occupy Wall Street and in every place where a community has had enough and decides to make change happen. It's not about praising one charismatic leader but celebrating thousands of them... 'Black Messiah' is not one man. It's a feeling that, collectively, we are all that leader.

Usually, boycotts sometimes don't really accomplish anything besides the fact that you show you that don't agree with what's going on.

I want to appeal to all people to come together across the country and stand against this politics of corruption.

I think it just takes one little snowflake to start a snowball to go down the hill. My contribution and, say, Kendrick Lamar's and some chosen others' start the snowball. That's all I can hope for. I don't know if I'm comfortable being quote-unquote a leader.

I laid my hand on top of theirs, and all I could think was, Is this how revolutions begin? Not with a proclamation or a riot, but with a few people in a room somewhere with their hands clasped and a purpose.

We need all the newfangled web-based Internet spread, you know, social media that can catalyze, you know, some serious consciousness about what's going on. But we also need people on the streets pounding the pavement to make a significant and dramatic appearance to suggest that what's going on here is unacceptable.

It is my hope that people today will see that, in another time, in another period, when we saw the need for people to speak up, to organize, to mobilize, and to do something about injustice, we came together.