Quotes from 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.

Unless children have strong education and strong families and strong communities and decent housing, it's not enough to go sit in at a lunch counter.

Ordinary women of grace are, in a sense, my real role models.

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

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

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

Don't be afraid of hard work.

It never occurred to me that I was not going to challenge segregation.

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.

Children under five are the poorest age group in America, and one in four infants, toddlers and preschoolers are poor during the years of greatest brain development.

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.

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

We do not have a money problem in America. We have a values and priorities problem.

Don't wait for, expect, or rely on favors. Count on earning them by hard work and perseverance.

I need to work outside government, on my own.

You are in charge of your own attitude whatever others do or circumstances you face. The only person you can control is yourself...worry more about your attitude than your aptitude or lineage.

My faith has been the driving thing of my life. I think it is important that people who are perceived as liberals not be afraid of talking about moral and community values.

Our true remembrance to President Kennedy is in our actions to honor the unspoken words and finish the unfinished work today and tomorrow and for as long as it takes.

I hadn't planned on going to law school. I wanted to study 19th-century Russian literature.

I grew up in a very religious family and it is the motivating force to every thing I do. I am fortunate to have had adults all around me who really lived their faith, in helping other people and doing the best you can do.

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 the legacy that I've gotten from so many of the adult elders.

I try to act out of faith.

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 being. It is the very purpose of life, and not something you do in your spare time.