Quotes by Marian Wright Edelman

"You really can change the world if you care enough."

"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."

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

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

"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."

"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."

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"In politics, there are no friends."

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

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

"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."