Top 177 Quotes & Sayings by Marian Wright Edelman

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

It was very clear to me in 1965, in Mississippi, that, as a lawyer, I could get people into schools, desegregate the schools, but if they were kicked off the plantations - and if they didn't have food, didn't have jobs, didn't have health care, didn't have the means to exercise those civil rights, we were not going to have success.

No person has the right to rain on your dreams.

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

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.

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

It was clear to me as a civil rights leader in the '60s that unless we put the social and economic underpinnings beneath the political and the civil rights, we wouldn't go anywhere.

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.

There should not be one new dime in tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires as long as millions of children in America are poor, hungry, uneducated and without health coverage.

We have the capacity to make sure that every mother has pre-natal care. Yet, we don't do it. What is it about America? It says we don't value children and families. We are hypocrites.

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

Education is a precondition to survival in America today.

I worry about the kids who have too much. As a parent living in a so-called good neighborhood with children who went to private high school, I found myself spending much time in parent groups worrying about alcohol, unsupervised parties, and parents not being parents.

Children under five are the poorest age group in America, and one in four infants, toddlers and preschoolers are poor during the years of greatest brain development.

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.

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

My faith has been the driving thing of my life. I think it is important that people who are perceived as liberals not be afraid of talking about moral and community values.

The key is that your children are aware that you love them a lot, and that you are there when they really, really need you. If a kid was ill, I would simply leave a meeting and go home.

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

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.

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.

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

We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee.

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.

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

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.

Hunger and malnutrition have devastating consequences for children and have been linked to low birth weight and birth defects, obesity, mental and physical health problems, and poorer educational outcomes.

You just need to be a flea against injustice. Enough committed fleas biting strategically can make even the biggest dog uncomfortable and transform even the biggest nation.

I need to work outside government, on my own.

I feel very lucky to have grown up having interaction with adults who were making change but who were far from perfect beings. That feeling of not being paralyzed by your incredible inadequacy as a human being, which I feel every day, is a part of the legacy that I've gotten from so many of the adult elders.

Service is what life is all about.

Remember and help America remember that the fellowship of human beings is more important than the fellowship of race and class and gender in a democratic society.

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

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

Our true remembrance to President Kennedy is in our actions to honor the unspoken words and finish the unfinished work today and tomorrow and for as long as it takes.

We must always refill and ensure there is a critical mass of leaders and activists committed to nonviolence and racial and economic justice who will keep seeding and building transforming movements.

The Declaration of Independence was always our vision of who we wanted to be, our ideal of freedom and justice, how we were going to be different, and what the American experiment was going to be about.

Semi-automatic weapons have no socially redeeming purpose.

If we think we have ours and don't owe any time or money or effort to help those left behind, then we are a part of the problem rather than the solution to the fraying social fabric that threatens all Americans.

So much of the deep lingering sadness over President Kennedy's assassination is about the unfinished promise: unspoken speeches, unfulfilled hopes, the wondering about what might have been.

I've always hated being hemmed in or seeing anybody being hemmed in. Even when I was the smallest child, I couldn't bear being told I couldn't drink at a so-called white drinking fountain.

When President Kennedy was elected, many black Americans, like so many Americans, were captivated by his youth and energy and promise and were especially hopeful that he might move the country in a new direction on civil rights.

In politics, there are no friends.

You really can change the world if you care enough.

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

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

Far less wealthy industrialized countries have committed to end child poverty, while the United States is sliding backwards. We can do better. We must demand that our leaders do better.

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.

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

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.

Whoever said anybody has a right to give up?

To all those mothers and fathers who are struggling with teen-agers, I say, just be patient: even though it looks like you can't do anything right for a number of years, parents become popular again when kids reach 20.

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.

I try to act out of faith.

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

You're not obligated to win. You're obligated to keep trying to do the best you can every day.

I'm sure I am impatient sometimes. I sure do get angry sometimes. I think it's outrageous how hard it is to get this country to feed its children and to take care of its children, to give them a decent education.

I grew up in a very religious family and it is the motivating force to every thing I do. I am fortunate to have had adults all around me who really lived their faith, in helping other people and doing the best you can do.

Together we can and must fight for justice for our children and protect them from draconian tax cuts and budget choices that threaten their survival, education and preparation for the future. If they are not ready for tomorrow, neither is America.