Marian Wright Edelman Quotes

38 Sourced Quotes

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

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.

Marian Wright Edelman
There are so many noises and pulls and competing demands in our lives that many of us never find out who we are. Learn to be quiet enough to hear the sound of the genuine within yourself so that you can hear it in other people.

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

Marian Wright Edelman
There are levels of outrage, and there's a point at which you can't be trespassed upon anymore. Certain things happen to you that cement your determination never to take it again.

Marian Wright Edelman
It is the responsibility of every adult — especially parents, educators, and religious leaders — to make sure that children hear what we have learned from the lessons of life, and to hear over and over that we love them and that they are not alone.

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

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

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

Marian Wright Edelman
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
Service to others is the rent you pay for living on this planet. It is the very purpose of life, and not something you do in your spare time.

Marian Wright Edelman
Do not feel entitled to anything you do not sweat or struggle for.

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

Marian Wright Edelman
It's time for greatness, not greed. Idealism, not ideology. It's a time not just for compassionate words, but compassionate action.

Marian Wright Edelman
Children—all children—are the world. Children are hope and life. Children are our immortality. Children are the seeds and the molders of history and the transmitters of our values— good and bad.

Marian Wright Edelman
The legacies that parents and church and teachers left to my generation of Black children were priceless but not material: a living faith reflected in daily service, the discipline of hard work and stick-to-itiveness, and a capacity to struggle in the face of adversity.

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

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

Marian Wright Edelman
It doesn't matter how many times you fall down. What matters is how many times you get up.

Marian Wright Edelman
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
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.

Marian Wright Edelman
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
Justice is not cheap. Justice is not quick. It is not ever finally achieved.

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

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

Marian Wright Edelman
It is utterly exhausting being Black in America — physically, mentally, and emotionally. While many minority groups and women feel similar stress, there is no respite or escape from your badge of color.

Marian Wright Edelman
I've been struck by the upside-down priorities of the juvenile justice system. 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
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