Quotes by Al Sharpton

“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 da...”

“Demonstrations must be dignified and nonviolent, as the overwhelming protests in Ferguson and Staten Island have been. Do not confuse anarchists who don't want the system to work and thugs who want...”

“Following Michael Brown's death, I went to Ferguson and met with his parents. I stood with them as they tried to hold their heads high and deal with both their immense loss and the larger issues of...”

“There's no reason why children in inner cities or rural areas do not receive the same quality education or opportunities as those in suburbs or wealthy neighborhoods. If we truly believe in giving ...”

“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 t...”

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

“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...”

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

“Everything from who sits on your local board of education to the prosecutors and judicial appointments in your area and much more are all impacted by who holds political office.”

“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. Bu...”

“As I often say, we have come a long way from the days of slavery, but in 2014, discrimination and inequality still saturate our society in modern ways. Though racism may be less blatant now in many...”

“We cannot reform institutional racism or systemic policies if we are not actively engaged. It's not enough to simply complain about injustice; the only way to prevent future injustice is to create ...”

“Mark Miller is my brother and I love him dearly.”

“We built pyramids before Donald Trump even knew what architecture was. We taught philosophy and astrology [sic] and mathematics before Socrates and them Greek homos ever got around to it…Do some cr...”

“There is a systemic and methodical strategy to eliminate our people from doing business off 125th Street. I want to make it clear … that we will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so ...”

“What’s wrong with denouncing white interlopers?”

“Though there were over 200 policemen standing around, none of them made a move to grab him.”

“Crime is going down everywhere but in the New York City Police Department.”

“I disagree with [Khalid Abdul] Muhammad. I'm against hate, anti-Semitism and homophobia.… This is not a village of hate. It's a village of hope.… Don't let midgets give us a bad name. There are sti...”

“When he said he was going to stop the march and called it a hate march, I think that was very provocative. The Mayor's statements have created a climate that could possibly lead to some kind of con...”