Wit & Attitude Quote by Andrew Young

Tomorrow is the day when wishful thinking puts on a hard hat. Andrew Young, the preacher-activist who moved between pulpit, street protest, and political power, isn’t offering a calendar note so much as calling out a religious alibi: the habit of postponing justice until it costs less. “Tomorrow” becomes a pressure point, the word people use when they mean “never,” or when they want moral credit without moral risk.

The line works because it flips expected roles and exposes the theater of virtue. “Idlers work” is less compliment than indictment: the comfortable finally get busy only when time runs out, when history drags them into responsibility. “Fool reform” stings even more. Reformers can be righteous and still be naive, mistaking symbolic progress for structural change, confusing a new committee for a new world. Young knew the civil rights era’s greatest danger wasn’t only open hatred; it was the soothing pace of incrementalism, the kind that asks the oppressed to be patient while the powerful congratulate themselves for “moving forward.”

Then he widens the frame: “mortal men lay hold on heaven.” That’s classic sermonic audacity, but it’s also a political argument. Heaven isn’t just afterlife; it’s a horizon of dignity that humans are supposed to reach for here, in laws and wages and voting booths. The subtext is bracing: if you keep postponing the work, you’re not being prudent, you’re being faithless. Tomorrow is either the excuse that kills change, or the deadline that forces it.