Quotes from Marian Wright Edelman

You can't be what you can't see.

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.

You really can change the world if you care enough.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Don't feel entitled to anything you don't sweat and struggle for

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.

If we don't stand up for children, then we don't stand for much.

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.

You were born God's original. Try not to become someone's copy.

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.

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.

Service is the rent we pay for living.

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.

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

Don't give anyone the proxy for your conscience.

I admit I still recoil against a society that has so slipped in caring that ordinary human sharing and thoughtfulness appears to warrant ahumanitarian award and diligent effort seems too often the exception rather than the rule.

We are the richest nation on earth, yet our incarceration, drug addiction, and child poverty rates are among the highest in the industrialized world.

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.

If things are too easy, life is a whole lot less interesting.