Marian Wright Edelman Quotes & Sayings

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

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

“To all those mothers and fathers who are struggling with teen-agers, I say, just be patient: even though it looks like you can't do anything right for a number of years, parents become popular again when kids reach 20.”

“You really can change the world if you care enough.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“So much of the deep lingering sadness over President Kennedy's assassination is about the unfinished promise: unspoken speeches, unfulfilled hopes, the wondering about what might have been.”

“Service is the rent we pay for being. It is the very purpose of life, and not something you do in your spare time.”

“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.”