Marian Wright Edelman Quotes

Be a good ancestor. Stand for something bigger than yourself. Add value to the Earth during your sojourn.

Education is a precondition to survival in America today.

I'm tough in the sense that I believe as strongly in what I'm doing as anybody else believes in what they are doing.

Let all children come unto me.

So often we are depressed by what remains to be done and forget to be thankful for all that has been done.

You'd better stay determined, because that's how our ancestors got us where we are.

History does not pose problems without eventually producing the solutions.

The crisis of children having children has been eclipsed by the greater crisis of children killing children.

The legacy I want to leave is a child-care system that says that no kid is going to be left alone or left unsafe.

The poor have been sent to the front lines of a federal budget deficit reduction war that few other groups were drafted to fight ...

Whoever said anybody has a right to give up?

There are levels of outrage, and there's a point at which you can't be trespassed upon anymore.

You really can change the world if you care enough.

Justice is not cheap. Justice is not quick. It is not ever finally achieved.

No one, Eleanor Roosevelt said, can make you feel inferior without your consent. Never give it.

Being considerate of others will take your children further in life than any college degree.

A nation that does not stand for its children does not stand for anything and will not stand tall in the future.

I try to be a person of faith.

Character, self-discipline, determination, attitude and service are the substance of life.

You just do it one step at a time.

People who don't vote have no line of credit with people who are elected and thus pose no threat to those who act against our interests.

God did not create two classes of children or human beings-only one.

Education is for improving the lives of others and for leaving your community and world better than you found it.

Service is what life is all about.

The question is not whether we can afford to invest in every child; it is whether we can afford not to.

In trying to make a big difference, don't ignore the small daily differences we can make.

A lot of people are waiting for Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi to come back-but they are gone. We are it. It is up to us. It is up to you.

Children cannot lobby and cannot vote. We must speak for them.

We must serve consciously as caring role models, emphasizing the ethic of service, not consumption.

If we don't stand up for children, then we don't stand for much.

Understand and be confident that each of us can make a difference by caring and acting in small as well as big ways.

I hope that people of all faiths will start looking for our too-invisible children who are crying out for help ...

Don't just dream about grandiose acts of doing good. Every day do small ones, that add up over time to positive patterns.

I need to work outside government, on my own.

It is time for every one of us to roll up our sleeves and put ourselves at the top of our commitment list.

We're spending, on average, three times more for prison than for public-school pupils. That's the dumbest investment policy. It doesn't make us safer.

Never let us confuse what is legal with what is right. Everything Hitler did in Nazi Germany was legal, but it was not right.

Parents have become so convinced that educators know what is best for their children that they forget that they themselves are really the experts.

If things are too easy, life is a whole lot less interesting.

If parents snicker at racial and gender jokes, another generation will pass on the poison adults still have not had the courage to snuff out.

Children don't vote but adults who do must stand up and vote for them.

Hope is the best contraceptive.

Black women rock the cradle, and whoever rocks the cradle rocks the future.

Amidst protestations of 'Who can be against the children?' too few people are FOR children when it really matters.

I never thought I was breaking a glass ceiling. I just had to do what I had to do, and it never occurred to me not to.

Ordinary women of grace are, in a sense, my real role models.

It never occurred to me that I was not going to challenge segregation.

There comes a time when you roll up your sleeves and put yourself at the top of your commitment list.

If you don't like the way the world is, you change it. You have an obligation to change it. You just do it one step at a time.

Be grateful for good breaks and kind favors but don't count on them.

Don't wait for, expect, or rely on favors.
Count on earning them by hard work
and perseverance.

In politics, there are no friends.

Whoever said anyone has the right to give up.

I hadn't planned on going to law school. I wanted to study 19th-century Russian literature.

People want to pick the leader, and we are obsessed with celebrity and whoever is on the cover of this or that.

We do not have a money problem in America. We have a values and priorities problem.

Children teach us to be courageous and to stand up against injustice.

We are willing to spend the least amount of money to keep a kid at home, more to put him in a foster home and the most to institutionalize him.

Democracy cannot breathe, indeed will die, if those enjoined to protect it and uphold the laws snuff it out - with no consequences.

It is a spiritually impoverished nation that permits infants and children to be the poorest Americans.

Service is the rent we pay for the life we have been given.

You can achieve much in life if you don't mind doing the work and giving someone else the credit.

It is [children] who are God's presence, promise and hope for mankind.

Service is the rent we pay for being. It is the very purpose of life, and not something you do in your spare time.

The challenge of social justice is to evoke a sense of community that we need to make our nation a better place, just as we make it a safer place.

Learn to be quiet enough to hear the genuine within yourself so that you can hear it in others.

Semi-automatic weapons have no socially redeeming purpose.

No time is ever wasted if you have a book along as a companion.

The future which we hold in trust for our own children will be shaped by our fairness to other people's children.

Never work just for money or for power. They won't save your soul or help you sleep at night.

Every child's life is sacred and it is long past time that we protect it.

You were born God's original. Try not to become someone's copy.

[Martin Luther ] King didn't pick his leadership position. Most movements are not started by single people.

Be real. Try to do what you say, say what you mean, and be what you seem.

People who don't vote have no call on political leaders!

Failure is just another way to learn how to do something right.

Family and moral values are so central to everything that I am.

In every seed of good there is always a piece of bad.

Don't be afraid of hard work.

Don't feel entitled to anything you don't sweat and struggle for

I have always believed that I could help change the world, because I have been lucky to have adults around me who did.

This act will leave a moral blot on his presidency

I try to act out of faith.

You didn't have a choice about the parents you inherited, but you do have a choice about the kind of parent you will be.

Service is the rent we pay for living.

I don't care what my children choose to do professionally, just as long as within their choices they understand they've got to give something back.

Unless children have strong education and strong families and strong communities and decent housing, it's not enough to go sit in at a lunch counter.