Marian Wright Edelman Quotes

Children cannot lobby and cannot vote. We must speak for them.

In politics, there are no friends.

I don't care what my children choose to do professionally, just as long as within their choices they understand they've got to give something back.

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.

Children teach us to be courageous and to stand up against injustice.

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

Our true remembrance to President Kennedy is in our actions to honor the unspoken words and finish the unfinished work today and tomorrow and for as long as it takes.

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.

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.

It never occurred to me that I was not going to challenge segregation.

I have always believed that I could help change the world, because I have been lucky to have adults around me who did.

History does not pose problems without eventually producing the solutions.

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.

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.

People who don't vote have no call on political leaders!

None of the candidates are ever perfect, ok? Then you have to get them in there and you have to hold them accountable. You have to make noises.

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.

I try to act out of faith.

I need to work outside government, on my own.

So often we think we have got to make a difference and be a big dog. Let us just try to be little fleas biting. Enough fleas biting strategically can make a big dog very uncomfortable.

I'm tough in the sense that I believe as strongly in what I'm doing as anybody else believes in what they are doing.

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.

Amidst protestations of 'Who can be against the children?' too few people are FOR children when it really matters.

We're a violent nation, and we need to confront it. This gun plague has to stop.

Service is the rent we pay for the life we have been given.

Being considerate of others will take you and your children further in life than any college or professional degree.

Service to others is the rent you pay for living on this planet.

The legacy I want to leave is a child-care system that says no kid is going to be left alone or left unsafe.

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.

We must not... ignore the small daily differences we can make which over time add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee.

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.