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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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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
Continue
Forward
Move
Hope
Moving
Order
Optimistic

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The reward for playing jazz is playing jazz.
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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.
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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.
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I believe it is my obligation to tell the story of the civil rights movement to the next generation.
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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.
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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.
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[Donald Trump] is not going to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
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Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse.
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I say to people today, 'You must be prepared if you believe in something. If you believe in something, you have to go for it. As individuals, we may not live to see the end.
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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
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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.
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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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This man [ Donald Trump] won in an electoral landslide.
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That's where the outrage should be, not old news, but the fact that we are preparing for the transfer of power. and we have been working with President [Barack] Obama, hand in glove, and I think that they - including the president - should step up and get his people in line and tell them to grow up and accept the fact that they lost the election.
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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!
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I think all Americans should be hopeful, and try to be optimistic.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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President-elect [Donald] Trump won 30 of 50 states, more counties since Ronald Reagan.
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