Marian Wright Edelman Quotes & Sayings

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. — Marian Wright Edelman

We all need to get out of our safety zones too. In addition to voting, we need to embarrass people who don't do the right thing. It's going to take citizen action. — Marian Wright Edelman

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

Service is what life is all about. — Marian Wright Edelman

Don't feel entitled to anything you don't sweat and struggle for — Marian Wright Edelman

When I started out as an activist, the issues were much clearer. There's advantage to the new media, but on the other hand, you miss the ability to frame an issue that you had when there were just three TV networks: CBS, NBC, and ABC. So the whole world could see the same police dogs. The same Bull Connor and his white tank. Now you've got narrow-casting. The media is all fragmented. It's so hard to get people to focus in a sustained way. — Marian Wright Edelman

Service is the rent we pay for the life we have been given. — Marian Wright Edelman

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

You just do it one step at a time. — Marian Wright Edelman

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. — Marian Wright Edelman

No time is ever wasted if you have a book along as a companion. — Marian Wright Edelman

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. — Marian Wright Edelman

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

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. — Marian Wright Edelman

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. — Marian Wright Edelman

I get very upset with all of the crowd seekers today, and people out there trying to get on TV. It ain't about you. It's about trying to make the world more just for everybody. — Marian Wright Edelman

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. — Marian Wright Edelman

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. — Marian Wright Edelman

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. — Marian Wright Edelman

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

I try to be a person of faith. — Marian Wright Edelman

We do not have a money problem in America. We have a values and priorities problem. — Marian Wright Edelman

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

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. — Marian Wright Edelman

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. — Marian Wright Edelman

Luckily, I had incredible parents who, when they saw a problem, didn't say, "Why doesn't somebody do something?" They would say, "Why don't we do something?". — Marian Wright Edelman

Whoever said anybody has a right to give up? — Marian Wright Edelman

If things are too easy, life is a whole lot less interesting. — Marian Wright Edelman

As [Martin Luther] King said, it never cost anybody a dime to integrate the lunch counters. When you start talking about trying to deal with jobs and hunger and things that require investment, then that's really the tough stuff, because everybody wants to do right if it doesn't cost them anything. — Marian Wright Edelman

The crisis of children having children has been eclipsed by the greater crisis of children killing children. — Marian Wright Edelman

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

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. — Marian Wright Edelman

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. — Marian Wright Edelman

The literacy level at Mississippi prisons? Fifth grade. Can't read, what are you going to do? If you've got a conviction rap, what are you going to do? It's a real crisis. — Marian Wright Edelman

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

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

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. — Marian Wright Edelman

So much of America's tragic and costly failure to care for all its children stems from our tendency to distinguish between our own children and other people's children
as if justice were divisible. — Marian Wright Edelman

I need to work outside government, on my own. — Marian Wright Edelman

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

When I fight about what is going on in the neighborhood, or when I fight about what is happening to other people's children, I'm doing that because I want to leave a community and a world that is better than the one I found. — Marian Wright Edelman

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. — Marian Wright Edelman

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

If it's wrong for 13-year-old inner-city girls to have babies without the benefit of marriage, it's wrong for rich celebrities, and we ought to stop putting them on the cover of People magazine. — Marian Wright Edelman

Never work just for money. Money alone won't save your soul or build a decent family life or help you sleep at night. We're the richest nation on Earth, with the highest number of imprisoned people in the world. Our drug addictions and child poverty are among the highest in the industrialized world. So don't ever confuse wealth or fame with character. — Marian Wright Edelman

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

Whoever said anyone has the right to give up. — Marian Wright Edelman

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. — Marian Wright Edelman

Children cannot lobby and cannot vote. We must speak for them. — Marian Wright Edelman

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

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

Every day I wear my Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth medallions around my neck. When I think I'm having a bad day, I try to think about their day, and I get up. — Marian Wright Edelman

Just because a child's parents are poor or uneducated is no reason to deprive the child of basic human rights to health care, education and proper nutrition. — Marian Wright Edelman

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. — Marian Wright Edelman

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

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. — Marian Wright Edelman

The old notion that children are the private property of parents dies very slowly. In reality, no parent raises a child alone. How many of us nice middle-class folk could make it without our mortgage reduction — Marian Wright Edelman

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. — Marian Wright Edelman

You really can change the world if you care enough. — Marian Wright Edelman

I wasn't thinking about history. I was thinking about how we were going to end segregation at lunch counters in Atlanta, Georgia.We would have never thought about making history, we just thought: Here is our chance to get out our sense of rejection at this kind of racial discrimination. I don't know that there was a time that anybody growing up in the South wasn't enraged about being segregated and being discriminated against. — Marian Wright Edelman

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. — Marian Wright Edelman

The core of the culture is racism and how black men are viewed. They've always been demonized and seen as threats in our culture. Another holdover from slavery. We've got to deal with that core root of racism and demonization of the upbringing of black men. Black women are not exempt by any means. — Marian Wright Edelman

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. — Marian Wright Edelman

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

God, please help us remember that all the darkness in the world cannot snuff out the light of one little candle. Help us to keep lighting our little candles until a mighty torch of justice sweeps our nation and the world. — Marian Wright Edelman

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. — Marian Wright Edelman

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. — Marian Wright Edelman

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. — Marian Wright Edelman

Family and moral values are so central to everything that I am. — Marian Wright Edelman

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. — Marian Wright Edelman

That's not to say that some of the new media is not advantageous. You can reach lots of folks with what Black Lives Matter is doing, mobilizing people. God bless them. — Marian Wright Edelman

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

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. — Marian Wright Edelman

Don't count out Marian Wright Edelman, because there is talk that President Clinton may want to shock the nation by putting a real black on the Supreme Court. — Marian Wright Edelman

In 1990, when we started the Black Community Crusade for Children, we were always talking about all children, but we paid particular attention to children who were not white, who were poor, who were disabled, and who were the most vulnerable.Parents didn't think their children would live to adulthood, and the children didn't think they were going to live to adulthood. That's when we started our first gun-violence campaign. We've lost 17 times more young black people to gun violence since 1968 than we lost in all the lynching in slavery. — Marian Wright Edelman

Homeless shelters, child hunger, and child suffering have become normalized in the richest nation on earth. It's time to reset our moral compass and redefine how we measure success. — Marian Wright Edelman

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. — Marian Wright Edelman

Ordinary women of grace are, in a sense, my real role models. — Marian Wright Edelman

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

In my generation, we learned how to be leaders by being exposed to and involved with adults who empowered us and gave us a sense that we could choose things. We've let down the generations coming behind us and we are trying to re- establish that connection. — Marian Wright Edelman

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

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. — Marian Wright Edelman

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

[Rosa Louise] Parks used to say, "Everybody looks at me because I sat down once in Montgomery, but the real hero is a woman named Septima Clark."She created the Citizenship Schools [where civil-rights activists taught basic literacy and political education classes]. — Marian Wright Edelman

So often we think we have got to make a difference and be a big dog. Let us just try to be little fleas biting. Enough fleas biting strategically can make a big dog very uncomfortable. — Marian Wright Edelman

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. — Marian Wright Edelman

If we don't stand up for children, then we don't stand for much. — Marian Wright Edelman

Education is a precondition to survival in America today. — Marian Wright Edelman

In every seed of good there is always a piece of bad. — Marian Wright Edelman

You were born God's original. Try not to become someone's copy. — Marian Wright Edelman

Don't be afraid of hard work. — Marian Wright Edelman

There were these great women in Montgomery, [Rosa Louise] Parks was among them. Jo Ann Robinson [who organized the bus boycott] was among them. It's always these ordinary women and men of grace who have been waiting and seething and planning to change things that are unjust that bring movement. — Marian Wright Edelman

This act will leave a moral blot on his presidency — Marian Wright Edelman

The civil-rights movement was completely impossible to achieve. But look at what ordinary people were able to do because they were willing to sacrifice their lives to stay with it. They didn't expect a political process to respond to them. They made the political process respond to them. To say "It's so bad I won't bother" is to give up on your children and give up on your future. — Marian Wright Edelman

God did not create two classes of children or human beings-only one. — Marian Wright Edelman

It never occurred to me that I was not going to challenge segregation. — Marian Wright Edelman

Education remains one of the black community's most enduring values. It is sustained by the belief that freedom and education go hand in hand, that learning and training are essential to economic quality and independence. — Marian Wright Edelman

I try to act out of faith. — Marian Wright Edelman

Semi-automatic weapons have no socially redeeming purpose. — Marian Wright Edelman

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. — Marian Wright Edelman