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I don't have any extraordinary gifts. I'm just an average Joe who grew up very poor in rural Alabama.

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
Extraordinary
Average
Grew
Poor
Alabama
Rural
Gifts

More quotes by John Lewis

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I truly believe that one day we will get there, we will arrive. And if we do it right in America, maybe, just maybe, we can serve as a model for the rest of the world.
John Lewis
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I think all Americans should be hopeful, and try to be optimistic.
John Lewis
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The reward for playing jazz is playing jazz.
John Lewis
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It is my hope that people today will see that, in another time, in another period, when we saw the need for people to speak up, to organize, to mobilize, and to do something about injustice, we came together.
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But you have to have hope. You have to be optimistic in order to continue to move forward.
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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This man [ Donald Trump] won in an electoral landslide.
John Lewis
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We have so many issues today that we need to confront. Comprehensive immigration reform. We have to solve the issue of poverty, the issue of hunger, the issue of war - spending billions of dollars to kill rather than to build. We have to deal with the fact that all of our children should be receiving the best possible education.
John Lewis
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The last thing we want is a monolithic viewpoint where six people are standing before a president saying the same thing over and over again.
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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The civil rights movement was based on faith. Many of us who were participants in this movement saw our involvement as an extension of our faith. We saw ourselves doing the work of the Almighty. Segregation and racial discrimination were not in keeping with our faith, so we had to do something.
John Lewis
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I believe that teachers - whether in elementary schools, at the secondary level, or at colleges and universities - every teacher deserves the Nobel Peace Prize just for maintaining order in our schools!
John Lewis
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If we must grind up human flesh and bones in the industrial machine that we call modern America, then, before God, I assert that those who consume the coal and you and I who benefit from that service, because we live in comfort, we owe protection to those men first and we owe security for their families if they die.
John Lewis
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President-elect [Donald] Trump won 30 of 50 states, more counties since Ronald Reagan.
John Lewis
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Today, all across this country there are going to be rallies led by Democrats and others to fight against the devastating impact of repeal of the Affordable Care Act. 20 million people thrown off of health insurance, prescription drug prices raising for seniors, privatization of Medicare: devastation. And we've got to fight back against that.
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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I would like to think that we have made much more progress, that we've come much further, to have someone like a Donald Trump to emerge as the nominee of a major political party.
John Lewis
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My mother and father and many of my relatives had been sharecroppers.
John Lewis
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We built a coalition of conscience, and that we can do it again, and we can go forward, and help redeem the soul of America.
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