Marian Wright Edelman Quotes
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It really takes a community to raise children, no matter how much money one has. Nobody can do it well alone. And it's the bedrock security of community that we and our children need.
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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.
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What's wrong with our children? Adults telling children to be honest while lying and cheating. Adults telling children to not be violent while marketing and glorifying violence... I believe that adult hypocrisy is the biggest problem children face in America.
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If we think we have ours and don't owe any time or money or effort to help those left behind, then we are a part of the problem rather than the solution to the fraying social fabric that threatens all Americans and the very dream that is America.
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If it's wrong for 13-year-old inner-city girls to have babies without the benefit of marriage, it's wrong for rich celebrities, and we ought to stop putting them on the cover of People magazine.
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I need to work outside government, on my own.
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The civil-rights movement was completely impossible to achieve. But look at what ordinary people were able to do because they were willing to sacrifice their lives to stay with it. They didn't expect a political process to respond to them. They made the political process respond to them. To say "It's so bad I won't bother" is to give up on your children and give up on your future.
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If we don't stand up for children, then we don't stand for much.
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Parents have become so convinced that educators know what is best for their children that they forget that they themselves are really the experts.
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You really can change the world if you care enough.
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Don't wait for, expect, or rely on favors. Count on earning them by hard work and perseverance.
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A nation that does not stand for its children does not stand for anything and will not stand tall in the future.
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If things are too easy, life is a whole lot less interesting.
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It's the new slavery. It came out of the drug laws and it really is something we're going to have to confront, but I don't see enough people up in arms about that. We need to be.
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Children cannot lobby and cannot vote. We must speak for them.
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Democracy cannot breathe, indeed will die, if those enjoined to protect it and uphold the laws snuff it out - with no consequences.
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Children don't vote but adults who do must stand up and vote for them.
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Failure is just another way to learn how to do something right.
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We are not going to deal with the violence in our communities, our homes, and our nation, until we learn to deal with the basic ethic of how we resolve our disputes and to place an emphasis on peace in the way we relate to one another.
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We're a violent nation, and we need to confront it. This gun plague has to stop.
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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.
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Don't feel entitled to anything you didn't sweat and struggle for.
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In politics, there are no friends.
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It is [children] who are God's presence, promise and hope for mankind.