Jesse Jackson

b. 1941 · American civil-rights leader, Baptist minister & orator

The Rev. Jesse Louis Jackson rose to prominence as an aide to Martin Luther King Jr. and became one of America’s most recognizable orators through his “I Am Somebody” refrain and two presidential campaigns. His 1978 rendering — “if my mind can conceive it and my heart can believe it, then I know I can achieve it” — is the closest documented source for the line now pinned on Muhammad Ali. Jackson himself was reworking a much older motivational maxim popularized by Napoleon Hill.

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“If my mind can conceive it and my heart can believe it, then I can achieve it”

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