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You're not obligated to win. You're obligated to keep trying to do the best you can every day.
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
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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.
Marian Wright Edelman -
When Jesus Christ asked little children to come to him, he didn't say only rich children, or White children, or children with two-parent families, or children who didn't have a mental or physical handicap. He said, Let all children come unto me.
Marian Wright Edelman -
Be grateful for good breaks and kind favors but don't count on them.
Marian Wright Edelman -
Family and moral values are so central to everything that I am.
Marian Wright Edelman -
It is a spiritually impoverished nation that permits infants and children to be the poorest Americans.
Marian Wright Edelman -
Dr. King used to say, 'I was sitting in the back of the bus, but my mind was always up front.' Don't let anybody tell you that you can't do it. You aim high and you work very hard and now I think it's clear that you can be anything you want to.
Marian Wright Edelman
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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.
Marian Wright Edelman -
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.
Marian Wright Edelman -
Children must have at least one person who believes in them. It could be a counselor, a teacher, a preacher, a friend. It could be you. You never know when a little love, a little support will plant a small seed of hope.
Marian Wright Edelman -
People who don't vote have no line of credit with people who are elected and thus pose no threat to those who act against our interests.
Marian Wright Edelman -
You have to have a fundamental change in the culture of policing, and who is the police person. How do they change? How do you learn from England and the other places, or Australia? In England, they don't carry guns on the whole. It's a different kind of mentality that does not demonize, and it's justified on race and income and class.
Marian Wright Edelman -
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.
Marian Wright Edelman
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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.
Marian Wright Edelman -
In 1990, when we started the Black Community Crusade for Children, we were always talking about all children, but we paid particular attention to children who were not white, who were poor, who were disabled, and who were the most vulnerable.Parents didn't think their children would live to adulthood, and the children didn't think they were going to live to adulthood. That's when we started our first gun-violence campaign. We've lost 17 times more young black people to gun violence since 1968 than we lost in all the lynching in slavery.
Marian Wright Edelman -
People who don't vote have no call on political leaders!
Marian Wright Edelman -
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. The world wasn't so wonderful back then, with segregated rule in the South. But we were never hopeless and we never despaired because we had adults out there struggling with us, being there for us, and buffering us.
Marian Wright Edelman -
It is the responsibility of every adult... 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 -
People want to pick the leader, and we are obsessed with celebrity and whoever is on the cover of this or that.
Marian Wright Edelman
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Be a good ancestor. Stand for something bigger than yourself. Add value to the Earth during your sojourn.
Marian Wright Edelman -
Semi-automatic weapons have no socially redeeming purpose.
Marian Wright Edelman -
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.
Marian Wright Edelman -
Education is a precondition to survival in America today.
Marian Wright Edelman