Quotes by Marian Wright Edelman

About Marian Wright Edelman:

Marian Wright Edelman is an American activist for the rights of children. She has been an advocate for disadvantaged Americans for her entire professional life. She is president and founder of the Children's Defense Fund.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

I never thought I was breaking a glass ceiling. I just had to do what I had to do, and it never occurred to me not to.

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

Far less wealthy industrialized countries have committed to end child poverty, while the United States is sliding backwards. We can do better. We must demand that our leaders do better.

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

I've always hated being hemmed in or seeing anybody being hemmed in. Even when I was the smallest child, I couldn't bear being told I couldn't drink at a so-called white drinking fountain.

Marian Wright Edelman

It was clear to me as a civil rights leader in the '60s that unless we put the social and economic underpinnings beneath the political and the civil rights, we wouldn't go anywhere.

Marian Wright Edelman

Failure is just another way to learn how to do something right.

Marian Wright Edelman

Service is the rent we pay for the life we have been given.

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

You really can change the world if you care enough.

Marian Wright Edelman

I feel very lucky to have grown up having interaction with adults who were making change but who were far from perfect beings. That feeling of not being paralyzed by your incredible inadequacy as a human being, which I feel every day, is a part of th...

Marian Wright Edelman

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'...

Marian Wright Edelman

The Declaration of Independence was always our vision of who we wanted to be, our ideal of freedom and justice, how we were going to be different, and what the American experiment was going to be about.

Marian Wright Edelman

Family and moral values are so central to everything that I am.

Marian Wright Edelman

I need to work outside government, on my own.

Marian Wright Edelman

Hunger and malnutrition have devastating consequences for children and have been linked to low birth weight and birth defects, obesity, mental and physical health problems, and poorer educational outcomes.

Marian Wright Edelman

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.

Marian Wright Edelman

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.

Marian Wright Edelman

The key is that your children are aware that you love them a lot, and that you are there when they really, really need you. If a kid was ill, I would simply leave a meeting and go home.

Marian Wright Edelman

No person has the right to rain on your dreams.

Marian Wright Edelman

Education is for improving the lives of others and for leaving your community and world better than you found it.

Marian Wright Edelman

Author Bio

  • NameMarian Wright Edelman
  • DescriptionAmerican activist and founder of the Children's Defense Fund
  • BornJune 6, 1939
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionAuthor
  • AwardsMacArthur Fellows Program; Lillian Smith Book Award; Gandhi Peace Award; National Women's Hall Of Fame