Selected Quotes By John Lewis
"We saw that our attackers were also victims, victims of a negative indoctrination that taught the false values of superiority and inferiority, the sanction of violence and brutality, and the justification of inhumanity and hate."
John Lewis, Society
"No government, no multinational corporation, no agency at all could counter the mandates of a unified world community. And that is why so much energy and resources are invested in division and separation."
John Lewis, Government, Business, Society
"It is only through examining history that you become aware of where you stand within the continuum of change."
John Lewis, Intelligence/Wisdom
"the question for us as a society is whether we participate in any way in the corruption of the defenseless, the undereducated, and the poor in spirit. We may not be able to stop the violence of others, but we can stop our own. A child is born in innocence, and this violence does not emerge out of thin air. It is created, fomented, and nurtured in them to their detriment."
John Lewis, Society
"We called it “making a way out of no way.” So when we were standing in protest facing police dogs and fire hoses, we knew without any doubt that somebody who was greater than us all would make a way out of no way and protect the defenders of the truth."
John Lewis, Belief, Truth
"I believed innocently and profoundly as a child that the world could be a better place."
John Lewis, Life
"Some people have told me that I am a rare bird in the blue sky of dreamers."
John Lewis, Goals
"We have a “fast-food mentality” that expects an instant return on our investment of time, attention, and effort, a return that is concrete and clear. We are so comfortable charging forward and succeeding through our aggression and innovation that the idea of patience can seem contrary to our instincts."
John Lewis, Society
"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world."
John Lewis, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Instead of suggesting that people with cultures and customs we do not understand, people with different color skin, or those who speak another language are somehow beneath us, instead of developing an elaborate rationale to justify our discomfort, it is more honest to simply admit our insecurity and gain acceptance."
John Lewis, Society
"Faith, to me, is knowing in the solid core of your soul that the work is already done, even as an idea is being conceived in your mind. It is being as sure as you are about your dreams as you are about anything you know as a hard fact."
John Lewis, Goals
"What is the purpose of a nation if not to empower human beings to live better together than they could individually? When government fails to meet the basic needs of humanity for food, shelter, clothing, and even more important—the room to grow and evolve—the people will begin to rely on one another, to pool their resources and rise above the artificial limitations of tradition or law. Each of us has something significant to contribute to society be it physical, material, intellectual, emotional, or spiritual."
John Lewis, Society, Government
"Despite everything that has happened, regardless of the pain of their loss, despite all the other nonviolent peaceful warriors who suffered and sometimes fell, I have never once considered giving up or giving out. I could not let myself get lost in a sea of despair, because I had faith that the truth is bigger than all humanity. The tragedy of their loss was a crisis of faith, but in that struggle I discovered that you can kill a Medgar Evers or a Jimmie Lee Jackson. You can kill three civil rights workers named Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner. You can bomb four innocent little girls in church on a Sunday morning. You can even kill three of the finest leaders of the twentieth century, but you cannot kill the truth they represented. The truth marches on; it is not connected to the life of any one individual. When a person dies, the dream does not die. You can kill a man, but the truth that he stood for will never die."
John Lewis, Truth
"Freedom is not a state; it is an act. It is not some enchanted garden perched high on a distant plateau where we can finally sit down and rest. Freedom is the continuous action we all must take, and each generation must do its part to create an even more fair, more just society. The work of love, peace, and justice will always be necessary, until their realism and their imperative takes hold of our imagination, crowds out any dream of hatred or revenge, and fills up our existence with their power."
John Lewis, Freedom, Love, Justice, Power
"There is a power that can raise you up even from the lowliest of places and guide you to the forefront of change if you truly want to create a better world."
John Lewis, Power
"He graduated from Morehouse at nineteen, and by the time he was twenty-three years old he held a doctorate in divinity from Boston College and a degree in divinity from Crozer Theological Seminary. He never forgot his purpose or his people in his work, and he used the mandates of graduate research to begin developing his own brand of social gospel. In his quest, he made it a point to study the work of all the major theologians and philosophers who might have had any bearing on his thesis. He also branched out beyond his comfort zone, as any credible scholar would, to study influential ideas of the time that were antithetical to his beliefs, like the work of Marx, Lenin, and Nietzsche. He examined every possible angle to find the theological answers to the questions he was asking, and he emerged in his study as a notable student and a compelling scholar."
John Lewis, Goals
"Lynching and vigilantism were considered duties, the necessary protection of men who were guarding the sanctity of social boundaries and the “purity” of their lineage. No matter the rationale, these ideas put a virtuous face on centuries of brutal history that actually robbed our aggressors of their moral grounding and made them creative participants in violence."
John Lewis, Society
"I meet so many ambitious young politicians and leaders who want to jump to the head of the line. They do not know how we arrived at this point in our history as a nation, but they believe they should be appointed to lead us into the future. They think that because they are educated, articulate, and talented someone should usher them down the red carpet to a throne of leadership. But real leaders are not appointed. They emerge out of the masses of the people and rise to the forefront through the circumstances of their lives. Either their inner journey or their human experience prepares them to take that role. They do not nominate themselves. They are called into service by a spirit moving through a people that points to them as the embodiment of the cause they serve."
John Lewis, Government
"We in the movement decided to actualize our belief that the hatred we experienced was not based on any truth, but was actually an illusion in the minds of those who hated us."
John Lewis, Truth
"It takes courage to admit that we participate in killing, violence, and hate around the world. And once you face the truth, it is difficult to retreat back into a state of unconsciousness. Becoming aware of the truth requires action, and that is when the struggle begins."
John Lewis, Courage, Truth
"We need to make books available to children so they can easily learn about the world, and they can follow their imaginations. Children who read maintain their sense of wonder and ask questions—necessary questions—that make us examine why things are the way they are."
John Lewis, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Martin Luther King Jr. said that peace is not the absence of tension, but the presence of justice."
John Lewis, Justice
"each of us has a moral obligation to stand up, speak up and speak out. When you see something that is not right, you must say something. You must do something. Democracy is not a state. It is an act, and each generation must do its part to help build what we called the Beloved Community, a nation and world society at peace with itself."
John Lewis, Society
"Governments and corporations do not live. They have no power, no capacity in and of themselves. They are given life and derive all their authority from their ability to assist, benefit, and transform the lives of the people they touch. All authority emanates from the consent of the governed and the satisfaction of the customer."
John Lewis, Government, Business, Society
"Because I had long ago decided that I wasn’t going to be bound by the mental shackles of hate, anger, and discontent. Forgiveness is medicine for the mind, balm for the body, and healing for the heart."
John Lewis, Forgive
"What can you do to get into good trouble? There is a light inside of you that will turn on when you get into good trouble. You will feel emboldened and freed. You will realize that unjust laws cannot stop you. These laws cannot stop the truth that is in your heart and soul."
John Lewis, Goals
"When you see something that is not the way it should be, don’t be afraid. Speak up, speak out, be courageous."
John Lewis, Courage
"When we set our minds against one another, when we focus on destructive energy and propagate the negative notions of separation, division, discrimination, rejection, domination, and war, we waste our power in a futile attempt to debase, degrade, and even destroy the light in others."
John Lewis, Anger and Fighting
"Without patience, we will learn less in life. We will see less. We will feel less. We will hear less. Ironically, rush and more usually mean less."
John Lewis, Life
"There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting."
John Lewis, Goals, Truth, Mistakes
"Whatever good work you do, whatever powerful, profound work—do it because it’s right or because it’s necessary. Do it to make change for the better. Do it because you know you must. Don’t do it for credit."
John Lewis, Goals, Work
"There was a time when politicians needed to be great orators because the people themselves were grappling with the challenges of conscience, trying to perceive what is “right” and what is “wrong.” But today, not only do we miss the eloquence of public speaking, but the moral compass of so many leaders seems to be skewed."
John Lewis, Government
"It is the responsibility, yet the individual choice, of each of us to use the light we have to dispel the work of darkness, because if we do not, then the power of falsehood rises."
John Lewis, Goals
"The only reason unjust systems exist is that the masses of people silently give their consent and believe these systems are necessary—whether for their security or survival."
John Lewis, Society
"The power of faith is transformative. It can be utilized in your own personal life to change your individual condition, and it can be used as a lifeline of spiritual strength to change a nation."
John Lewis, Belief
"I have seen this restlessness among the people before. It was in another millennium, another decade, and at another time in our history, but it pushed through America like a storm. In ten short years, there was a tempest that transformed what the American Revolution did not address, what the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were afraid to confront, what the Civil War could not unravel, what Reconstruction tried to mediate, and Jim Crow did its best to retrench. This mighty wind made a fundamental shift in the moral character of our nation that has reached every sector of our society. And this history lends us one very powerful reminder today: Nothing can stop the power of a committed and determined people to make a difference in our society."
John Lewis, Society
"It is so strange to me that we have learned to fly in the air like birds, learned to swim in the ocean like fish, shoot a rocket to the moon, but we have not yet learned how to live together in harmony with one another."
John Lewis, Society
"When you pray, move your feet."
John Lewis, Goals
"It’s the action, not the fruit of the action, that’s important. You have to do the right thing. It may not be in your power, may not be in your time, that there’ll be any fruit. But that doesn’t mean you stop doing the right thing. You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result."
John Lewis, Goals
"In terms of our elected officials, I think we need to ask...: How far should we go with our need to know before we completely veer off into the personal and the private and leave behind any chance of having a legitimate debate or discussion or discourse about the issues at hand?"
John Lewis, Government
"even though the truth can’t be denied or erased, it can be systemically obscured, strategically misinterpreted, and hidden from mainstream comprehension."
John Lewis, Truth
"There’s a quote of Dr. King’s that I use from time to time, which I rephrase: “To be bold, to be creative, to never give up, and never to hate—for hate is too big a burden to bear. I have decided to love."
John Lewis, Goals, Love
"Malcolm (X) talked about the need to shift our focus from race to class, both among one another and between ourselves and the white community. He said he believed that was the root of our problems, not just in America, but all over the world. Malcolm was saying, in effect, that it is a struggle for the poor -- for those who have been left out and left behind -- and that it transcends race."
John Lewis, Goals
"By the force of our demands, our determination and our numbers, we shall splinter the segregated South into a thousand pieces and put them back together in the image of God and democracy."
John Lewis, Goals
"As citizens, we knew we had ceded some of our individual rights to society in order to live together as a community. But we did not believe this social contract included support for an immoral system. Since the people invested government with its authority, we understood that we had to obey the law. But when law became suppressive and tyrannical, when human law violated divine principles, we felt it was not only our right, but our duty to disobey. As Henry Thoreau strongly believed, to comply with an unjust system is to accept abuse. It is not the role of the citizen to follow the government down a path that violates his or her own conscience."
John Lewis, Society, Government, Freedom
"We are one people, one family, the human family, and what affects one of us affects us all."
John Lewis, Society
"Take a long, hard look down the road you will have to travel once you have made a commitment to work for change. Know that this transformation will not happen right away. Change often takes time. It rarely happens all at once. In the movement, we didn't know how history would play itself out. When we were getting arrested and waiting in jail or standing in unmovable lines on the courthouse steps, we didn’t know what would happen, but we knew it had to happen.
Use the words of the movement to pace yourself. We used to say that ours is not the struggle of one day, one week, or one year. Ours is not the struggle of one judicial appointment or presidential term. Ours is the struggle of a lifetime, or maybe even many lifetimes, and each one of us in every generation must do our part. And if we believe in the change we seek, then it is easy to commit to doing all we can, because the responsibility is ours alone to build a better society and a more peaceful world."
John Lewis, Goals
"Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and help redeem the soul of America."
John Lewis, Goals, Anger and Fighting
"We are involved now in a serious revolution. This nation is still a place of cheap political leaders who build their careers on immoral compromises and ally themselves with open forms of political, economic and social exploitation. What political leader here can stand up and say, "My party is the party of principles?"
John Lewis, Government
"Darkness cannot overcome darkness, only light can do that. Violence can never overcome violence, only peace can do that. Hate can never overcome hate, only love can do that."
John Lewis, Anger and Fighting, Love
"Fury spends itself pretty quickly when there's no fury facing it."
John Lewis, Anger and Fighting
"Rioting is not a movement. It is not an act of civil disobedience. I think it is a mistake for people to consider disorganized action, mayhem, and attacks on other people and property as an extension of any kind of movement. It is not. It is simply an explosion of emotion. That's all. There is nothing constructive about it. It is destructive."
John Lewis, Society
"I loved going to the library. It was the first time I ever saw Black newspapers and magazines like JET, Ebony, the Baltimore Afro-American, or the Chicago Defender. And I’ll never forget my librarian."
John Lewis, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Every generation leaves behind a legacy. What that legacy will be is determined by the people of that generation. What legacy do you want to leave behind?"
John Lewis, Life
"You are a light. You are the light. Never let anyone—any person or any force—dampen, dim or diminish your light. Study the path of others to make your way easier and more abundant. Lean toward the whispers of your own heart, discover the universal truth, and follow its dictates. […] Release the need to hate, to harbor division, and the enticement of revenge. Release all bitterness. Hold only love, only peace in your heart, knowing that the battle of good to overcome evil is already won. Choose confrontation wisely, but when it is your time don't be afraid to stand up, speak up, and speak out against injustice. And if you follow your truth down the road to peace and the affirmation of love, if you shine like a beacon for all to see, then the poetry of all the great dreamers and philosophers is yours to manifest in a nation, a world community, and a Beloved Community that is finally at peace with itself."
John Lewis, Life, Love
"I believe in freedom of speech, but I also believe that we have an obligation to condemn speech that is racist, bigoted, anti-Semitic, or hateful."