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

John Lewis Quotes

We could not waste time harboring bitterness or resentment. We knew that our focus had to be on what we hoped to create, not the indignities we were pressing to leave behind.

— John Lewis

It is only through examining history that you become aware of where you stand.

— John Lewis

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

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

Each and every one of us has the power to turn our enemies around because we are all a spark of the divine. It does not matter whether we are fit or weak, short and scrawny, or big and strong. There is no adversary who can defeat us if we believe in our own inner capacity to overcome. Sometimes we have to gain tools to overcome our adversaries. We might need to study, to get help, to pray, or develop a plan, but there is no obstacle we as human beings cannot overcome.

— John Lewis

America, a nation destined for greatness but tarnished by a persistent, nagging untruth.

— John Lewis

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. Through our inaction it becomes stronger, and a more potent force. It can even lead to the dimming of the light of all humanity born on this planet.

— John Lewis

If we are truly to learn the lessons of the Civil Rights Movement, the Holocaust, or the conflict in Northern Ireland, we must concede that discomfort breeds dislike, dislike breeds disdain, disdain breeds contempt, and contempt breeds hate.

— John Lewis

We think of ourselves as more enlightened, more developed than the “primitive” peoples our civilizations have supplanted, yet in all our advancement, we are responsible for more death, more suffering, more murder and mayhem than any period in recorded history.

— John Lewis

Martin Luther King Jr. was much more than a dreamer. He believed that faith had no meaning unless it had the power to resolve the problems of our daily lives.

— John Lewis

We were very aware that our civility demonstrated above all the absurdity of brutalizing peaceful, law-abiding citizens and detaining them from exercising their constitutional rights.

— John Lewis

Informed activism requires reading the newspaper, tracking bills through the Library of Congress’s THOMAS website, and watching legislative debates on C-SPAN. It also means learning which legislators on all levels sit on committees that affect your issue.

— John Lewis

Whenever the people finally reject the efforts to fragment their collective energies into warring factions and remember their divine union with one another, when they throw off material distractions and irrelevant negativity and hear their souls speak with one voice, they will rise up. And whatever is in their path will either transform or transpire.

— John Lewis

Soul force is the ability to counter the forces of injustice with fearlessness, knowing that your soul is connected to the greatest force in the universe. Threats, violence, and aggression are simply tools that are used to make us doubt our capacity to overcome.

— John Lewis

During the 1960s, we protested with non-violent methods. There is something peaceful, cleansing, and wholesome about being orderly and not threatening.

— John Lewis

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

Destruction doesn’t work. Rioting isn’t a movement. We must be constructive and not destructive. Chaos is sowing more division and discord.

— John Lewis

When you burn down a building or topple a car, the violence drown out the injustice of what’s being done to you. It puts you on the same moral level as the people whose violence you are protesting. You’re no longer on the higher ground or plane. You make enemies of the people you need to win over to effect change.

— John Lewis

There is still much more work to do. One movement will never offer all the growth humanity needs to experience. To expect so is to build your hopes on a puff of smoke, on a whispered breath; it is to anticipate an illusion.

— John Lewis

We no longer dwell in that daydream. We were shaken to realism by the harshness of what we have witnessed in the last few years – the vilification of President Obama, a drive to wreck his legacy and undo the progress we have made as a nation in the last hundred years, a disdain for the sick and the poor, militarization of the police, and the weaponizing of government not to serve as an advocate, but as an agent of oppression and compliance.

— John Lewis
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