Marian Wright Edelman Quotes

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

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.

Children must have at least one person who believes in them. It could be a counselor, a teacher, a preacher, a friend. It could be you. You never know when a little love, a little support will plant a small seed of hope.

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

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

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

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

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.

It's time for greatness - not for greed. It's a time for idealism - not ideology. It is a time not just for compassionate words, but compassionate action.

It is so important not to let ourselves off the hook or to become apathetic or cynical by telling ourselves that nothing works or makes a difference. Every day, light your small candle.... The inaction and actions of many human beings over a long time contributed to the crises our children face, and it is the action and struggle of many human beings over time that will solve them-with God's help. So every day, light your small candle.

Investing in [children] is not a national luxury or a national choice. It's a national necessity. If the foundation of your house is crumbling, you don't say you can't afford to fix it while you're building astronomically expensive fences to protect it from outside enemies. The issue is not are we going to pay - it's are we going to pay now, up front, or are we going to pay a whole lot more later on.

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

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

What's wrong with our children? Adults telling children to be honest while lying and cheating. Adults telling children to not be violent while marketing and glorifying violence... I believe that adult hypocrisy is the biggest problem children face in America.

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

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

When Jesus Christ asked little children to come to him, he didn't say only rich children, or White children, or children with two-parent families, or children who didn't have a mental or physical handicap. He said, Let all children come unto me.

No person has the right to rain on your dreams.

This act will leave a moral blot on his presidency

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

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

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.

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

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.

The outside world told black kids when I was growing up that we weren't worth anything. But our parents said it wasn't so, and our churches and our schoolteachers said it wasn't so. They believed in us, and we, therefore, believed in ourselves.

It is the responsibility of every adult... to make sure that children hear what we have learned from the lessons of life and to hear over and over that we love them and that they are not alone.

You are in charge of your own attitude whatever others do or circumstances you face. The only person you can control is yourself...worry more about your attitude than your aptitude or lineage.

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

You can't be what you can't see.

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

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

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.

It really takes a community to raise children, no matter how much money one has. Nobody can do it well alone. And it's the bedrock security of community that we and our children need.

We are not going to deal with the violence in our communities, our homes, and our nation, until we learn to deal with the basic ethic of how we resolve our disputes and to place an emphasis on peace in the way we relate to one another.

Why are guns the only unregulated consumer products in America? We regulate toy guns and teddy bears, but we do not regulate a product that kills 4,600 children a year.

Service is the rent we pay for living.

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

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.

Whoever said anybody has a right to give up?

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

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.

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

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

It is utterly exhausting being Black in America - physically, mentally, and emotionally. While many minority groups and women feel similar stress, there is no respite or escape from your badge of color.

Dr. King used to say, 'I was sitting in the back of the bus, but my mind was always up front.' Don't let anybody tell you that you can't do it. You aim high and you work very hard and now I think it's clear that you can be anything you want to.

I'm doing what I think I was put on this earth to do. And I'm really grateful to have something that I'm passionate about and that I think is profoundly important.

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.

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

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.

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 and the very dream that is America.