Al Sharpton's Quotes

I've never done anything else in my life other than preach and be an activist. Way before I was known.

If you play the theatrics too much, you get in the way of your own cause.

It seems some have chosen to ignore or have simply forgotten the big-picture vision promoted by Dr. King and his kin.

James Brown became my father. He would talk to me the way a father talked to a son. He became the father I never had.

My ministry's always been one of social activism. I think a responsible minister must be at some levels involved in the social order.

My ordination in the Church of God in Christ was at age 9, and I later became a Baptist minister, which I am today.

National Action Network, the group I founded, has affiliates or chapters in over 40 cities around the country.

One of the reasons I get so much joy out of my own children's childhoods is that I'm having my first childhood myself.

The boxing world is full of all kinds of corruption.

The right wing always mobilizes around constitutional amendments: the right to bear arms, school prayer.

The United States government has the obligation to educate all young people in this country.

The United States has got to adopt a policy of befriending and creating allies around the world.

We need an amendment that gives us the right to vote protected by the federal government and the Constitution.

We're not willing to give black leaders second chances because, in most cases, we're not willing to give them first chances.

I was raised by a single mother who made a way for me. She used to scrub floors as a domestic worker, put a cleaning rag in her pocketbook and ride the subways in Brooklyn so I would have food on the table. But she taught me as I walked her to the subway that life is about not where you start, but where you're going. That's family values.

The dream was not to put one black family in the White House, the dream was to make everything equal in everybody's house.

We're not anti-police... we're anti-police brutality.

It is true that Mr. Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, after which there was a commitment to give 40 acres and a mule. That's where the argument, to this day, of reparations starts. We never got the 40 acres. We went all the way to Herbert Hoover, and we never got the 40 acres. We didn't get the mule. So we decided we'd ride this donkey as far as it would take us.

If you can get the proper definition of trouble, then we can find out who the real troublemakers are.

I've seen too much in life to give up.

If Charlton Heston can have a constitutional right carry a rifle, why can't grandma have a constitutional right to health care?

The promise of America is one immigration policy for all who seek to enter our shores, whether they come from Mexico, Haiti or Canada, there must be one set of rules for everybody. We cannot welcome those to come and then try and act as though any culture will not be respected or treated inferior. We cannot look at the Latino community and preach 'one language.' No one gave them an English test before they sent them to Iraq to fight for America.

I've seen enough things to know that if you just keep on going, if you turn the corner, the sun will be shining.

We have defeated Jim Crow, but now we have to deal with his son, James Crow Jr., esquire.

Bill Clinton strikes me as the kind of guy who goes wherever the polls lead him, rather than leading the polls.

Dr. King used Gandhi's commitment to non-violence and to passive resistance.