Marian Wright Edelman Quotes

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.

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

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.

Semi-automatic weapons have no socially redeeming purpose.

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.

Every child’s life is sacred and it is long past time that we protect it.

Service is what life is all about.

You can achieve much in life if you don't mind doing the work and giving someone else the credit.

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.

Each American must 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.

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

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.

Don't be afraid of hard work.

You were born God's original. Try not to become someone's copy.

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

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?".

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.

Whoever said anyone has the right to give up.

Democracy is not a spectator sport.

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.

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

It's the new slavery. It came out of the drug laws and it really is something we're going to have to confront, but I don't see enough people up in arms about that. We need to be.

Let all children come unto me.

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

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.

We have the capacity to make sure that every mother has pre-natal care. Yet, we don't do it. What is it about America? It says we don't value children and families. We are hypocrites.

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.

Black women rock the cradle, and whoever rocks the cradle rocks the future.

I try to be a person of faith.

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

Children don't vote but adults who do must stand up and vote for them.

Hope is the best contraceptive.

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

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

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

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.

Character, self-discipline, determination, attitude and service are the substance of life.

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

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.

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

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.

If things are too easy, life is a whole lot less interesting.

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.

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

The crisis of children having children has been eclipsed by the greater crisis of children killing children.

I also grew up with community co-parents who looked out for each other. They looked out for children and tried to be the hands of God. They tried to live their faith.

Justice is not cheap. Justice is not quick. It is not ever finally achieved.

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

God did not create two classes of children or human beings-only one.

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