Edelman Quotes & Sayings

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

When a mother dies, a daughter grieves. And then her life moves on. She does, thankfully, feel happiness again. But the missing her, the wanting her, the wishing she were still here - I will not lie to you, although you probably already know. That part never ends. — Hope Edelman

Science is imagination in the service of the verifiable truth, and that service is indeed communal. It cannot be rigidly planned. Rather, it requires freedom and courage and the plural contributions of many different kinds of people who must maintain their individuality while giving to the group. — Gerald Edelman

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. — Marian Wright Edelman

Julian Edelman. He's the worst dancer. — Rob Gronkowski

People who don't vote have no call on political leaders! — Marian Wright Edelman

You just do it one step at a time. — 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

The real functional "machinery" of the brain, for Edelman, consists of millions of neuronal groups, organized into larger units or "maps". These maps, continually conversing in everchanging, unimaginably complex, but always meaningful patterns, may change in minutes or seconds. One is reminded of C. S. Sherrington's poetic evocation of the brain as "an enchanted loom", where "millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern, always a meaningful pattern though never an abiding one; a shifting harmony of subpatterns". — Oliver Sacks

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. — Marian Wright Edelman

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. — 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

Most theoretical work since the proposals of Hebb (1949) and Hayek (1952) has relied upon particular forms of dependent synaptic rules in which either pre- or postsynaptic change is contingent upon closely occurring events in both neurons taking part in the synapse. — Gerald 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

Each brain is exposed to different circumstances. It's very likely that your brain is unique in the history of the universe. — Gerald 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

Someone did us all a grave injustice by implying that mourning has a distinct beginning, middle, and end. — Hope 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

When a mother dies, a daughter's mourning never completely ends. — Hope Edelman

Poor is a state of mind. Broke is a state of wallet. You can fix being broke; it's not so easy to fix being poor. — Ric Edelman

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. — Marian Wright Edelman

I was taught that the world had a lot of problems; that I could struggle and change them; that intellectual and material gifts brought the privilege and responsibility of sharing with others less fortunate; and that service is the rent each of us pays for living
the very purpose of life and not something you do in your spare time or after you have reached your personal goals. — Marian Wright Edelman

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

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. — 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

I couldn't chance failing in New York yet, letting the city fail me. It was the only place I knew I belonged. If I couldn't survive there, I would have no place else to go. — Hope Edelman

This, indeed, is the problem, the ultimate question, in neuroscience - and it cannot be answered, even in principle, without a global theory of brain function, one capable of showing the interactions of every level, from the micropatterns of individual neuronal responses to the grand macropatterns of an actual lived life. Such a theory, a neural theory of personal identity, has been proposed in the last few years by Gerald M. Edelman, in his theory of neuronal group selection, or neural Darwinism. — Oliver Sacks

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

Hope is the best contraceptive. — 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

No longer dependent on 30 second spots, today's marketers need a never-ending stream of content. — David Louis Edelman

When one parent dies, the world is dramatically altered, absolutely, but you still have another one left. When that second parent dies, it's the loss of all ties, and where does that leave you? You lose your history, your sense of connection to the past. You also lose the final buffer between you and death. Even if you're an adult, it's weird to be orphaned. — Hope Edelman

The analogy between the mind and a computer fails for many reasons. The brain is constructed by principles that assure diversity and degeneracy. Unlike a computer, it has no replicative memory. It is historical and value driven. It forms categories by internal criteria and by constraints acting at many scales, not by means of a syntactically constructed program. The world with which the brain interacts is not unequivocally made up of classical categories. — Gerald Edelman

Failure is just another way to learn how to do something right. — Marian Wright Edelman

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

New York City is filled with random, quirky moments like this, chance collisions that just might change your life. — Hope Edelman

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

The degree to which a surviving parent copes is the most important indicator of the child's long-term adaptation. Kids whose surviving parents are unable to function effectively in the parenting role show more anxiety and depression, as well as sleep and health problems, than those whose parents have a strong support network and solid inner resources to rely on. — Hope 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

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. — Marian Wright Edelman

Motherless mothers with a history of caretaking experience, usually for sick mothers or younger siblings when they were still children themselves, said that the round-the-clock nature of infant and toddler care sometimes brought up familiar emotions from the past. — Hope Edelman

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

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

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

Our mothers are our most direct connection to our history and gender. — Hope Edelman

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. — 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

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. — 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

Children teach us to be courageous and to stand up against injustice. — Marian Wright Edelman

Political history is largely an account of mass violence and of the expenditure of vast resources to cope with mythical fears and hopes — Murray Edelman

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

When finally substantiated by scientific means, such a view will allow an individual to see his place in the world with greater clarity
how he came from the world and how he may contribute to his fellows while he enjoys for a brief time the privilege of consciousness and communication. — Gerald Edelman

Some sense of ongoing, of "next," is always with us. But this sense of movement, of happening, Greg lacked; he seemed immured, without knowing it, in a motionless, timeless moment. And whereas for the rest of us the present is given its meaning and depth by the past (hence it becomes the "remembered present," in Gerald Edelman's term), as well as being given potential and tension by the future, for Greg it was flat and (in its meager way) complete. This living-in-the-moment, which was so manifestly pathological, had been perceived in the temple as an achievement of higher consciousness. G — Oliver Sacks

Don't assume a door is closed; push on it. Don't assume if it was closed yesterday that it is closed today. Don't ever stop learning and improving your mind. If you do, you're going to be left behind. — Marian Wright Edelman

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

A mother's death also means the loss of the consistent, supportive family system that once supplied her with a secure home base, she then has to develop her self-confidence and self-esteem through alternate means. Without a mother or mother-figure to guide her, a daughter also has to piece together a female self-image of her own. — Hope Edelman

Let all children come unto me. — Marian Wright Edelman

Somehow we are going to have to develop a concept of enough for those at the top and at the bottom so that the necessities of the many are not sacrificed for the luxuries of the few. — Marian Wright Edelman

In politics, there are no friends. — Marian Wright Edelman

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

History does not pose problems without eventually producing the solutions. — Marian Wright Edelman

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

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

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

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

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. — 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

Children cannot eat rhetoric and they cannot be sheltered by commissions. I don't want to see another commission that studies the needs of kids. We need to help them. — Marian Wright Edelman

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

At some second transcendent moment in evolution, Edelman proposed, the development of "higher-order consciousness" was made possible in humans (and perhaps a few other species including apes and dolphins) by a higher level of reentrant signaling. Higher-order consciousness brings an unprecedented power of generalization and reflection, of recognizing past and future, so that finally self-consciousness, the awareness of being a self in the world, is achieved. — Oliver Sacks

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

Your brain develops depending on your individual history. What has gone on in your own brain and its consciousness over your lifetime is not repeatable, ever - not with identical twins, not even with conjoined twins. — Gerald Edelman

We do not often get to declare victories, Natch, and most of them do not remain victories for very long. Ultimately when you reach my age you realize that victories are temporary, and in all the years of human history there is one final battle which nobody has ever won.Time has a way of changing the terms of your victories over the years, until you begin to wonder precisely what it was you fought for so viciously, so uncompromisingly. You begin to see that victory and defeat are but alternate reflections from the same prism.You see that the measure of a person really might be the integrity with which he fought his battles and not their ultimate dispensation, just like your elders have been telling you all along. — David Louis 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

Hanna Krall's book Shielding the Flame drew on the experience of Dr. Marek Edelman, who before he died in 2009 was the sole survivor of the five-person command that led the April 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. — Chris Hedges

Our government has to be held accountable for enforcing the law. Tamir Rice, the fact that they could exonerate that police person [who killed him], and Tamir's family was charged for the ambulance to take him [to the hospital]. It's inhumane. — 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

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

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

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

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. — Marian Wright Edelman

In 1986, I read a remarkable article by Israel Rosenfield in The New York Review of Books in which he discussed the revolutionary work and views of Gerald M. Edelman. Edelman was nothing if not bold. We are at the beginning of — Oliver Sacks

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

My financial adviser Ric Edelman ... thinks the time to start educating people about money is when they are children. He's set up a retirement plan called the RIC-E-Trust that can provide retirement security. A $5,000 one-time tax-deferred investment at birth, with an average interest rate of ten percent compounded, means that a child would have $2.4 million when he or she is 65 years old. Who needs Social Security with that kind of nest egg? — Cal Thomas

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

We are on the threshold of a sea change in the agency business. — David Louis Edelman

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. — Marian Wright Edelman

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

The computer is not, in our opinion, a good model of the mind, but it is as the trumpet is to the orchestra - you really need it. And so, we have very massive simulations in computers because the problem is, of course, very complex. — Gerald Edelman

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