I need to work outside government, on my own. — Marian Wright Edelman

Don’t be afraid of hard work. — Marian Wright Edelman

Don’t wait for, expect, or rely on favors. Count on earning them by hard work and perseverance. — Marian Wright Edelman

You can achieve much in life if you don’t mind doing the work and giving someone else the credit. — Marian Wright Edelman

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. — 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

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

You just do it one step at a time. — Marian Wright Edelman

Every child’s life is sacred and it is long past time that we protect it. — Marian Wright Edelman

No time is ever wasted if you have a book along as a companion. — 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

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

It is time for every one of us to roll up our sleeves and put ourselves at the top of our commitment list. — Marian Wright Edelman

Don’t just dream about grandiose acts of doing good. Every day do small ones, that add up over time to positive patterns. — 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

Homeless shelters, child hunger, and child suffering have become normalized in the richest nation on earth. It’s time to reset our moral compass and redefine how we measure success. — 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’d better stay determined, because that’s how our ancestors got us where we are. — Marian Wright Edelman

Service is what life is all about. — Marian Wright Edelman

Service is the rent we pay for living. — Marian Wright Edelman

We must serve consciously as caring role models, emphasizing the ethic of service, not consumption. — Marian Wright Edelman

Character, self–discipline, determination, attitude and service are the substance of life. — Marian Wright Edelman

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

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

That’s not to say that some of the new media is not advantageous. You can reach lots of folks with what Black Lives Matter is doing, mobilizing people. God bless them. — Marian Wright Edelman

If we don’t stand up for children, then we don’t stand for much. — Marian Wright Edelman

Children teach us to be courageous and to stand up against injustice. — Marian Wright Edelman

A nation that does not stand for its children does not stand for anything and will not stand tall in the future. — Marian Wright Edelman

Children cannot lobby and cannot vote. We must speak for them. — Marian Wright Edelman

Amidst protestations of ‘Who can be against the children?’ too few people are FOR children when it really matters. — Marian Wright Edelman

Children don’t vote but adults who do must stand up and vote for them. — Marian Wright Edelman

It is [children] who are God’s presence, promise and hope for mankind. — Marian Wright Edelman

The question is not whether we can afford to invest in every child; it is whether we can afford not to. — Marian Wright Edelman

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

Parents have become so convinced that educators know what is best for their children that they forget that they themselves are really the experts. — Marian Wright Edelman

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. — Marian Wright Edelman

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. — Marian Wright Edelman

The crisis of children having children has been eclipsed by the greater crisis of children killing children. — Marian Wright Edelman

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. — Marian Wright Edelman

It is a spiritually impoverished nation that permits infants and children to be the poorest Americans. — Marian Wright Edelman

We have the capacity to make sure that every mother has pre–natal care. Yet, we don’t do it. What is it about America? It says we don’t value children and families. We are hypocrites. — Marian Wright Edelman

Just because a child’s parents are poor or uneducated is no reason to deprive the child of basic human rights to health care, education and proper nutrition. — Marian Wright Edelman

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. — 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

The future which we hold in trust for our own children will be shaped by our fairness to other people’s children. — Marian Wright Edelman

I hope that people of all faiths will start looking for our too–invisible children who are crying out for help. — Marian Wright Edelman

Why are guns the only unregulated consumer products in America? We regulate toy guns and teddy bears, but we do not regulate a product that kills 4,600 children a year. — Marian Wright Edelman

I also grew up with community co–parents who looked out for each other. They looked out for children and tried to be the hands of God. They tried to live their faith. — Marian Wright Edelman

Children cannot eat rhetoric and they cannot be sheltered by commissions. I don’t want to see another commission that studies the needs of kids. We need to help them. — Marian Wright Edelman

God did not create two classes of children or human beings–only one. — Marian Wright Edelman

We’re a violent nation, and we need to confront it. This gun plague has to stop. — 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

The challenge of social justice is to evoke a sense of community that we need to make our nation a better place, just as we make it a safer place. — Marian Wright Edelman

Don’t count out Marian Wright Edelman, because there is talk that President Clinton may want to shock the nation by putting a real black on the Supreme Court. — Marian Wright Edelman