Al Sharpton People Quotations

In 1999, I was in St. Louis with Martin Luther King III as we led protests against the state's failure to hire minority contractors for highway construction projects. We went at dawn on a summer day with over a thousand people and performed acts of civil disobedience.

From racial profiling and being pulled over just for 'driving while black' to this new phenomenon of killing unarmed people out of some preconceived idea of fear, our lives and our children's lives are not being valued.

Countries around the world have their own immigration laws and methods of dealing with a recurring theme: desperate people searching for peace from volatile parts of the world. And nations everywhere thrive and prosper from the contributions of immigrants and the children of immigrants - including right here in the U.S.

I knew from the age of four that I wanted to preach. I didn't even consider it strange that grown people were listening to this kid preaching until I was around thirteen. I have never believed in limitations.

If it weren't for the mentorship and guidance from people like my mother, James Brown and others, I wouldn't have been able to make something of my life.

My organization, National Action Network (NAN), was on the ground talking and meeting with people in Ferguson, just as we did in Staten Island following Eric Garner's death.

I very rarely read any fiction. I love biographies; I read about all kinds of people. I love theology and some philosophy.

When people discuss the 1960s and the great Civil Rights Era, they often speak in romantic terms as if there wasn't immense work put in, and as if there wasn't immense sacrifice that took place. But none of those battles were easily fought and won; there were sustained movements behind them.

I think that you can't choose leadership. You have to deal with the leadership that the people respond to.

You can't get a solution if you won't talk to the people that have the problem. You can't ever have healing if the patient is left out of the operation room.

I think drugs affect poor people and people of color more than anyone.

The Democratic Party hasn't whipped anybody into a frenzy. The assumption is that the people that are marching and protesting and standing up against this don't have enough sense to stand up for their own interests.

People in the age of [President] Obama don't dress like they did in the age of [Lyndon] Johnson. That's for sure.

It was better walk with dignity than ride in shame. A lot of people in Cincinnati are saying, "Rather than have the continual problems of police brutality and economic disparity, I'm willing to make some sacrifices." And I think that they ought to be respected for doing that.

I wrestled with this, even over the last few days, as I sat and stood and walked in Louisiana, where I saw people ravaged, lives torn. I thought about the fact that we need a man that's strong enough to bring us through 9/11 but compassionate enough that if Katrina hits, will make sure that poor people are not the scapegoats of a natural disaster.

I think that one of the responsible ways of making decisions is to talk to the people that you both have struggled with. We want to see Bush defeated, but we also want to see our constituency dealt with. And how that will play out, we'll know in the next day or so.

We didn't come to lead a march. We came to follow the young people leading it.

We are seeing people from Iraq being treated better than people from New Orleans.

This is no time for bowing and scraping. This is no time for buck dancing and genuflecting. Our people are dying in Iraq, are being drowned in New Orleans, and you're going to sit around scared?

It is wrong that people are dying as we speak with no stated reason.

It is the height of hypocrisy for George Bush and others to mourn a human rights leader and scorn the movement she represents. It's ironic that someone who supports wiretapping will be here among the people who were victims of wiretapping in the 1960s.

It is the responsibility of everybody to stand up against people that are biased and racist and see them for the cowards that they are.

The civil rights movement and the peace movement was not made from big names ... and I wanted to come on the anniversary with ordinary people that are doing what I think Dr. King would have wanted us to do today.