Marian Wright Edelman Quotes
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The legacy I want to leave is a child-care system that says that no kid is going to be left alone or left unsafe.
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I hope that people of all faiths will start looking for our too-invisible children who are crying out for help.
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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.
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Much of what I do now stems from my rage at segregation and discrimination. I can't stand to see children not able to do anything, anybody not able to do what they can do. The daily lessons of exclusion, having hand-me-down books in schools, of seeing ambulances turn away and not give health care for people lying in the streets who are migrant workers. Everything I do today stems from that segregated existence.
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Character, self-discipline, determination, attitude and service are the substance of life.
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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.
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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.
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So often we are depressed by what remains to be done and forget to be thankful for all that has been done.
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Together we can and must fight for justice for our children and protect them from draconian tax cuts and budget choices that threaten their survival, education and preparation for the future. If they are not ready for tomorrow, neither is America.
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Don't be afraid of hard work.
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We're spending, on average, three times more for prison than for public-school pupils. That's the dumbest investment policy. It doesn't make us safer.
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I'm doing what I think I was put on this earth to do. And I'm really grateful to have something that I'm passionate about and that I think is profoundly important.
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The poor have been sent to the front lines of a federal budget deficit reduction war that few other groups were drafted to fight.
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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.
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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.
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We do not have a money problem in America. We have a values and priorities problem.
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When President Kennedy was elected, many black Americans, like so many Americans, were captivated by his youth and energy and promise and were especially hopeful that he might move the country in a new direction on civil rights.
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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.
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I think it is important that people who are perceived as liberals not be afraid of talking about moral and community values.
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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.
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There should not be one new dime in tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires as long as millions of children in America are poor, hungry, uneducated and without health coverage.
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I try to act out of faith.
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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.
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The future which we hold in trust for our own children will be shaped by our fairness to other people's children.