Quote

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

John Lewis

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Rural
Gifts
Extraordinary
Average
Grew
Poor
Alabama

More quotes by John Lewis

Image
Don`t give up! Don`t give in! Keep the faith! And keep your eyes on the prize!
John Lewis
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Right now what my job is, and I think the job of Democrats and Republicans, is to protect the middle class and working families of this country from some devastating ideas that [Donald] Trump has proposed.
John Lewis
Image
I heard Dr. King speaking on the radio, and it seemed like he was saying, John Robert Lewis, you too can make a contribution. You can get involved!
John Lewis
Image
The lessons of nonviolence are universal. Not just for America.
John Lewis
Image
But you have to have hope. You have to be optimistic in order to continue to move forward.
John Lewis
Image
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
Image
The reward for playing jazz is playing jazz.
John Lewis
Image
John Lewis stood up and said in an interview that Donald Trump was not a legitimate president. It's insanity.
John Lewis
Image
I think all Americans should be hopeful, and try to be optimistic.
John Lewis
Image
Ornette Coleman is doing the only really new thing in jazz since the innovations in the mid-forties of Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and those of Thelonious Monk
John Lewis
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Donald Trump has made it clear that certainly over the last few years that President [Barack] Obama was born in Hawaii.
John Lewis
Image
The government, both state and federal, has a duty to be reasonable and accommodating.
John Lewis
Image
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
Image
Nobody thinks that Obamacare is perfect. It has its problems.
John Lewis
Image
The point is not where Barack Obama was born, the point is is that we've got congressmen on the Democratic side of the aisle that are questioning the legitimacy of President-elect [Donald] Trump who won in an electoral landslide.
John Lewis
Image
I think, in fact, I think President [Barack] Obama could step up.
John Lewis