Andrew Young
Andrew Young
Andrew Jackson Young, Jr.is an American politician, diplomat, activist, and pastor from Georgia. He has served as a Congressman from Georgia's 5th congressional district, the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, and Mayor of Atlanta. He served as President of the National Council of Churches USA, was a member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conferenceduring the Civil Rights Movement, and was a supporter and friend of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth12 March 1932
CityNew Orleans, LA
CountryUnited States of America
It's hard not to have friends. In fact, as soon as you become mayor, everybody is your friend. They might use your name in a way you might not know anything about.
We're here to proclaim a victory. We're here, not to wallow in tragedy, but to celebrate a triumph of the human spirit.
With this, I had to learn and develop a character over time.
If all I get is a little controversy for speaking the truth, if I did less, I would not be worth living.
My solutions are to include Africa in the global economy, and not African charity, AIDS research, but African infrastructure development. And I think that Africa can import and needs everything the whole world can manufacture. And they have got enough money to pay for it. It's just that the money is in the ground.
Martin Luther King was talking about racism, war and poverty. I think we have made progress enormous progress in racism and war, but we have made little or no progress in poverty. And it's because the economy has gotten more and more complex as we have globalized.
My daddy was determined to make me a dentist and a baseball player. And I loved my daddy but I wasted four years of college trying to do what he wanted me to do, and not what I felt I wanted to do.
I always quoted to my parents from Kahlil Gibran, "The Prophet." Your children are not your children. They come through you, but not from you. You can give them your love, but not your thoughts, for they come from a land that you cannot enter, not even in your wildest dreams.
What we forget is that African Americans made the largest contribution to America, economically, before the Civil War of any sector of society. I read that the railroads were worth about $2 billion, but slavery was a $3 billion asset.
When people ask where I studied to be an ambassador, I say my neighborhood and my school. I've tried to tell my kids that you don't wait until you're in high school or college to start dealing with problems of people being different. The younger you start, the better.
Can wealth give happiness? look around and see, what gay distress! what splendid misery! Whatever fortunes lavishly can pour, the mind annihilates and calls for more.
We were trying to transform America, not triumph over white folk.
No one who's white thinks he's innocent. No one who's black thinks he's guilty.
I had to get a second passport in a hurry.