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My mother and father and many of my relatives had been sharecroppers.

John Lewis

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John Lewis
Age: 80 †
Born: 1940
Born: February 21
Died: 2020
Died: July 17
Chairperson
Human Rights Activist
Politician
U.S. Representative
Troy
Alabama
John Robert Lewis
Relatives
Father
Mother
Many

More quotes by John Lewis

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The book Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story, I read it when I was about 17-and-a-half or 18. It changed my life.
John Lewis
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I think right now, the focus has got to be on how we hold [Donald] Trump accountable.
John Lewis
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Don`t give up! Don`t give in! Keep the faith! And keep your eyes on the prize!
John Lewis
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Be prepared to organize nonviolent workshops - a teach-in around what is happening in America today. Organize your teachers and schoolmates, and be prepared to engage in some action.
John Lewis
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My parents told me in the very beginning as a young child when I raised the question about segregation and racial discrimination, they told me not to get in the way, not to get in trouble, not to make any noise.
John Lewis
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You have to have the capacity and the ability to take what people did, and how they did it, and forgive them and move on.
John Lewis
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It is our hope that when people read March - Book One, Book Two, and Book Three - that they will understand that another generation of people, especially young people, were deeply inspired by the work of Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr. and many others.
John Lewis
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I remember being at the church a few hours after the church was bombed in Birmingham, the 16th Street Baptist Church. It was very hard and very difficult to stand on that corner across the street from the church. Or to go Mississippi and search for the three civil rights workers who came up missing. There is a lot of trauma.
John Lewis
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I think that [James] Comey acted in an outrageous way during the [presidential ] campaign [in 2016].
John Lewis
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When people tell me nothing has changed, I say come walk in my shoes and I will show you change.
John Lewis
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I think all Americans should be hopeful, and try to be optimistic.
John Lewis
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People should organize people to just turn up and participate in the democratic process. Knock on doors. They may not be old enough to register to vote, but they can urge their teachers, their parents, their grandparents, their mothers, their fathers, and others to get out and vote.
John Lewis
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Our struggle is a struggle to redeem the soul of America. It's not a struggle that lasts for a few days, a few weeks, a few months, or a few years. It is the struggle of a lifetime, more than one lifetime.
John Lewis
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Some people know Rosa Parks, they know Daisy Bates in Arkansas, but every... Ruby Doris Smith, Diane Nash, countless individuals.
John Lewis
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Nobody thinks that Obamacare is perfect. It has its problems.
John Lewis
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Races don't fall in love, genders don't fall in love: Individuals fall in love. We all should be free to marry the person that we love.
John Lewis
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The events in Prague, together with the Berlin blockade, convinced the European recipients of American economic assistance that they needed military protection as well: that led them to request the creation of a North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which committed the United States for the first time ever to the peacetime defense of Western Europe.
John Lewis
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We never gave up. We didn't get lost in a sea of despair. We kept the faith. We kept pushing and pulling. We kept marching. And we made some progress.
John Lewis
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I believe it is my obligation to tell the story of the civil rights movement to the next generation.
John Lewis
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To question the legitimacy of the next United States president, you know, and you're worried about a tweet that says, hey, why don't you get back to work instead of questioning my legitimacy? Too bad.
John Lewis