Marian Wright Edelman > Quotes

“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

“You can't be what you can't see.”
― Marian Wright Edelman

“Never work just for money or for power. They won't save your soul or help you sleep at night.”
― 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

“You really can change the world if you care enough.”
― Marian Wright Edelman

“Being considerate of others will take your children further in life than any college degree.”
― 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

“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

“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

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

“Don’t feel entitled to anything you don’t sweat and struggle for”
― Marian Wright Edelman

“Understand and be confident that each of us can make a difference by caring and acting in small as well as big ways.”
― 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

“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

“If we don't stand up for children, then we don't stand for much.”
― Marian Wright Edelman

“You were born God's original. Try not to become someone's copy.”
― Marian Wright Edelman

“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

“It's time for greatness -- not for greed. It's a time for idealism -- not ideology. It is a time not just for compassionate words, but compassionate action.”
― Marian Wright Edelman

“I've tried to teach what I learned all those years in my mother and father's house, all those things I didn't realize I was learning and that I never knew I'd be so grateful for. When you have love and it's proffered every day in a kind of tender, yet stern insistence and even reckless laughter, when it is given to you and you accept it in life as a thing as natural as rain or snow, or the littler of leaves in fall, you can't help but take it for granted. For a bewildered while you incorrectly understand that the world has given you this becuase it's there in equal measure, everywhere. You never knowuntil it's too late to do anything about it, how seet the effort is: how lasting the human will to love can be in the breast of people who want to make it for you, who want to give it to you, without calculating what's in it fo them, without thinking at all of what it will mean when you grow to full adulthood, see the world as it is, and forget to mention what you have been given.

Ever day of my grown-up life, I have wanted to do what my parents did. I have wanted to widen the province of love and weaken hate and bitterness in the hearts of my children. And I've done these things because of what I got from my family, all those lovely years when I was growing up, being loved and cherished and, unbeknown to me, and in the best way, honored, for myself.”
― Marian Wright Edelman, Dream Me Home Safely: Writers on Growing Up in America – Intimate Essays on Diverse Childhoods

“Service is the rent we pay for living.”
― Marian Wright Edelman

“If you as parents cut corners, your children will too. If you lie, they will too. If you spend all your money on yourselves and tithe no portion of it for charities, colleges, churches, synagogues, and civic causes, your children won't either. And if parents snicker at racial and gender jokes, another generation will pass on the poison adults still have not had the courage to snuff out.”
― Marian Wright Edelman

“Service is the rent we pay for the life we have been given.”
― Marian Wright Edelman

“Pick a piece of the problem that you can help solve while trying to see how your piece fits into the broader social change puzzle.”
― Marian Wright Edelman

“It's not the critic who counts. Not the man who points out where the strong man stumbled or where the doer of great deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena. Whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood. Who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again. And who, while daring greatly, spends himself in a worthy cause so that his place may not be among those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat. Theodore Roosevelt quoted by Edelman”
― Marian Wright Edelman, the measure of our success: a letter to my children and yours

“Don't give anyone the proxy for your conscience.”
― Marian Wright Edelman, the measure of our success: a letter to my children and yours

“Parents have become so convinced educators know what is best for children that they forget that they themselves are really the experts.”
― Marian Wright Edeleman

“I admit I still recoil against a society that has so slipped in caring that ordinary human sharing and thoughtfulness appears to warrant a"humanitarian award" and diligent effort seems too often the exception rather than the rule.”
― Marian Wright Edelman, the measure of our success: a letter to my children and yours

“We must not assume a door is closed but must push on it. We must not assume if it was closed yesterday that it's closed today.”
― Marian Wright Edelman, the measure of our success: a letter to my children and yours

“LESSON 8: Forming families is serious business. It requires a measure of thoughtful planning, economic stability, and commitment, particularly with the downward spiral of wages and job opportunities for young families of all races and with the rising costs of good child care and housing, which often require more than one employed parent.”
― Marian Wright Edelman, The Measure of our Success: A Letter to My Children and Yours

“We are the richest nation on earth, yet our incarceration, drug addiction, and child poverty rates are among the highest in the industrialized world.”
― Marian Wright Edelman, The Measure of our Success: A Letter to My Children and Yours