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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 -
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.
Marian Wright Edelman
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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.
Marian Wright Edelman -
Service is the rent we pay for being. It is the very purpose of life, and not something you do in your spare time.
Marian Wright Edelman -
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.
Marian Wright Edelman -
The crisis of children having children has been eclipsed by the greater crisis of children killing children.
Marian Wright Edelman -
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.
Marian Wright Edelman -
Being considerate of others will take your children further in life than any college degree.
Marian Wright Edelman
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When I fight about what is going on in the neighborhood, or when I fight about what is happening to other people’s children, I’m doing that because I want to leave a community and a world that is better than the one I found.
Marian Wright Edelman -
I think it is important that people who are perceived as liberals not be afraid of talking about moral and community values.
Marian Wright Edelman -
Character, self-discipline, determination, attitude and service are the substance of life.
Marian Wright Edelman -
Whoever said anyone has the right to give up.
Marian Wright Edelman -
Service is the rent we pay for living.
Marian Wright Edelman -
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.
Marian Wright Edelman
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I have always believed that I could help change the world, because I have been lucky to have adults around me who did.
Marian Wright Edelman -
There were these great women in Montgomery, [Rosa Louise] Parks was among them. Jo Ann Robinson [who organized the bus boycott] was among them. It's always these ordinary women and men of grace who have been waiting and seething and planning to change things that are unjust that bring movement.
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 -
I worry about the kids who have too much. As a parent living in a so-called good neighborhood with children who went to private high school, I found myself spending much time in parent groups worrying about alcohol, unsupervised parties, and parents not being parents. We've got to send messages to our kids about what is important.
Marian Wright Edelman -
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.
Marian Wright Edelman -
Be real. Try to do what you say, say what you mean, and be what you seem.
Marian Wright Edelman
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I was taught that the world had a lot of problems; that I could struggle and change them; that intellectual and material gifts brought the privilege and responsibility of sharing with others less fortunate; and that service is the rent each of us pays for living - the very purpose of life and not something you do in your spare time or after you have reached your personal goals.
Marian Wright Edelman -
You can't be what you can't see.
Marian Wright Edelman -
I hope that people of all faiths will start looking for our too-invisible children who are crying out for help.
Marian Wright Edelman -
Children cannot lobby and cannot vote. We must speak for them.
Marian Wright Edelman