If you fall behind, run faster. Never give up, never surrender, and rise up against the odds.

Never look down on anybody unless you're helping him up.

At the end of the day, we must go forward with hope and not backward by fear and division.

Both tears and sweat are salty, but they render a different result. Tears will get you sympathy; sweat will get you change.

What is the American dream? The American dream is one big tent. One big tent. And on that big tent you have four basic promises: equal protection under the law, equal opportunity, equal access, and fair share.

Keep hope alive!

Your children need your presence more than your presents.

Today's students can put dope in their veins or hope in their brains. If they can conceive it and believe it, they can achieve it. They must know it is not their aptitude but their attitude that will determine their altitude.

I was born in a slum, but the slum wasn't born in me.

In politics, an organized minority is a political majority.

If my mind can conceive it, and my heart can believe it, I know I can achieve it.

Time is neutral and does not change things. With courage and initiative, leaders change things.

I am not a perfect servant. I am a public servant doing my best against the odds. As I develop and serve, be patient. God is not finished with me yet.

Deliberation and debate is the way you stir the soul of our democracy.

Leadership cannot just go along to get along. Leadership must meet the moral challenge of the day.

If there are occasions when my grape turned into a raisin and my joy bell lost its resonance, please forgive me. Charge it to my head and not to my heart.

No one should negotiate their dreams. Dreams must be free to fly high. No government, no legislature, has a right to limit your dreams. You should never agree to surrender your dreams.

It is time for us to turn to each other, not on each other.

If you don't know what tomorrow holds, you need to know who holds tomorrow!

Success needs no explanation. Failure does not have one that matters.

America is not a blanket woven from one thread, one color, one cloth.

Leadership has a harder job to do than just choose sides. It must bring sides together.

If you run, you might lose. If you don't run, you're guaranteed to lose.

When we're unemployed, we're called lazy; when the whites are unemployed it's called a depression.

Our dreams must be stronger than our memories. We must be pulled by our dreams, rater than pushed by our memories.

I hear that melting-pot stuff a lot, and all I can say is that we haven't melted.

Life has its dimensions in the mysterious.

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.

You can be out of slavery and have the right to vote, but unless you have access to capital, industry and technology, you can't fulfill your dreams.

To allow injustice and inequality invites a Ferguson to your community. We must stand together, black, white, brown, red, and yellow and fight for justice and equality for all. It's the only way to avoid more Fergusons.

When the doors of opportunity swing open, we must make sure that we are not too drunk or too indifferent to walk through.

I came to the conclusion that in order to end racial barriers, I needed to run for the office of the president and put forth an agenda of social justice and world peace. In addition, I concluded that someone needed to run and challenge the liberal orthodoxy.

I'm too mature to be angry.

While I've spent a lot of quality time with my children, perhaps it's not been enough.

I think reconciliation is Obama's goal - but the fight with the Republicans is like a fight with pit bulls, they never let go. Even worse, now the Republicans feel they can keep pushing and he will keep giving. They have not seen a stiff resistance on his part.

When they wrote the Constitution, only white male landowners had the right to vote.

Look at the coded language the Right is using against President Barack Obama. Openly calling him a liar in Congress, saying he is 'not a Christian, he was not born here, he is not one of us.' That makes addressing such issues trickier for the first African-American in the White House.

We've removed the ceiling above our dreams. There are no more impossible dreams.

We reveal our joys and successes, we conceal our pain.

Those companies that don't see the black and brown communities are missing, out of their closed eye, talent, which leads to money and growth. When baseball, football and basketball couldn't see the field, they missed talent and growth. The same is true in the tech industry.

If the states had to vote on slavery, we would have lost the vote.

If you think black people have a motivation problem, open up a Wal-Mart and advertise a thousand jobs. Watch 5,000 people show up.

A check or credit card, a Gucci bag strap, anything of value will do. Give as you live.

A man must be willing to die for justice. Death is an inescapable reality and men die daily, but good deeds live forever.

In tough economic times, desperate people do desperate things, and the abortion rate goes up.

If you don't feel apologetic for slavery, if you don't feel apologetic for colonialism, if you feel proud of it then say that.

The coffers are full of money and equipment for the Ferguson Police and the Missouri National Guard to put down a potential uprising, but no money for actually uplifting the people of Ferguson, St. Louis, Missouri and around the nation.

We must not measure greatness from the mansion down, but from the manger up.

I take my role seriously as a pastor.

Great things happen in small places. Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Jesse Jackson was born in Greenville.