Quotes by Marian Wright Edelman

"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."

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

"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."

"Education is a precondition to survival in America today."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

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

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

"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 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."

"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."

"No person has the right to rain on your dreams."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"In politics, there are no friends."

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

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

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

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

"I try to act out of faith."

"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."

"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."

"It was very clear to me in 1965, in Mississippi, that, as a lawyer, I could get people into schools, desegregate the schools, but if they were kicked off the plantations - and if they didn't have food, didn't have jobs, didn't have health care, didn't have the means to exercise those civil rights, we were not going to have success."

"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."

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

"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."

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

"My faith has been the driving thing of my life. I think it is important that people who are perceived as liberals not be afraid of talking about moral and community values."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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