Marian Wright Edelman famous quotes

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

#Education #Community #Leaving

No person has the right to rain on your dreams.
-- Marian Wright Edelman

#Dream #Rain #Acceptance

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

#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.
-- Marian Wright Edelman

#Cheating #Children #Lying

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

#Success #Winning #History

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

#Dog #Justice #African American

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

#Inspirational #Life #Motivational

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

#Graduation #Kindness #Children

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

#Earth #Add #Bigger

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.
-- Marian Wright Edelman

#Growing Up #Kids #Parent

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

#Children #Doe

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

#Children #Responsibility #Fighting

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

#Peace #Justice #Community

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

#Children #Kids #Care

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.
-- Marian Wright Edelman

#Jesus #Children #Godly

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

#People #African American #Credit

I think it is important that people who are perceived as liberals not be afraid of talking about moral and community values.
-- Marian Wright Edelman

#Thinking #Talking #People

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

#Justice #Independence #Vision

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

#Inspirational #Change #Black

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

#Change #Kings #People

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

#Inspiring #Meditation #Quiet

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

#Children #People #Social Justice

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

#Children #Kids #Needs

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

#Racism #Levels #Discrimination

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

#Change #Inspiring #Peace

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.
-- Marian Wright Edelman

#Inspirational #Peace #Women

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

#Family #Education #Children

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

#Parent #Choices #Kind

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

#Inspiring #Money #Work

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

#Perfect #Feelings #Lucky

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

#Education #America #Survival

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

#Children #Educational #Rights

Service is the rent we pay for living.
-- Marian Wright Edelman

#Pay #Serving Others

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

#Success #Determination #Giving Up

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

#Inspirational #Failure #Writing

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

#Caring #Differences #Making A Difference

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

#Famous Inspirational #Life Is

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

#Teacher #Children #Believe

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

#Greatness #Greed #Action

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

#Peace #Home #Community

Democracy is not a spectator sport.
-- Marian Wright Edelman

#Sports #Democracy #Spectators

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

#Women #Being Thankful #Good Woman

Be real. Try to do what you say, say what you mean, and be what you seem.
-- Marian Wright Edelman

#Real #Mean #Being Real

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

#Caring #Role Models #African American

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

#Giving Up #Giving #Said

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

#Inspirational #Dream #Patterns

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

#Kids #Home #Willing

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

#Justice #Leader #Movement

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

#Children #Promise #Mankind