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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.

Marian Wright Edelman

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Marian Wright Edelman
Age: 85
Born: 1939
Born: June 6
Activist
Lawyer
Writer
Bennettsville
South Carolina
Looks
Struggle
Mothers
Right
Parent
Popular
Even
Though
Patient
Years
Father
Inspiring
Like
Mother
Reach
Agers
Kids
Number
Teen
Become
Parents
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Anything
Numbers
Fathers

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No person has the right to rain on your dreams.
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I get very upset with all of the crowd seekers today, and people out there trying to get on TV. It ain't about you. It's about trying to make the world more just for everybody.
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Be grateful for good breaks and kind favors but don't count on them.
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No time is ever wasted if you have a book along as a companion.
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Every day I wear my Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth medallions around my neck. When I think I'm having a bad day, I try to think about their day, and I get up.
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Dr. King used to say, 'I was sitting in the back of the bus, but my mind was always up front.' Don't let anybody tell you that you can't do it. You aim high and you work very hard and now I think it's clear that you can be anything you want to.
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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.
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You didn't have a choice about the parents you inherited, but you do have a choice about the kind of parent you will be.
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It is a spiritually impoverished nation that permits infants and children to be the poorest Americans.
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Somehow we are going to have to develop a concept of enough for those at the top and at the bottom so that the necessities of the many are not sacrificed for the luxuries of the few.
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Never work just for money or for power. They won't save your soul or help you sleep at night.
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You're not obligated to win. You're obligated to keep trying to do the best you can every day.
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Each American must remember and help America remember that the fellowship of human beings is more important than the fellowship of race and class and gender in a democratic society.
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[Martin Luther ] King didn't pick his leadership position. Most movements are not started by single people.
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Service is the rent we pay for being. It is the very purpose of life, and not something you do in your spare time.
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If we think we have ours and don't owe any time or money or effort to help those left behind, then we are a part of the problem rather than the solution to the fraying social fabric that threatens all Americans and the very dream that is America.
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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.
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Children don't vote but adults who do must stand up and vote for them.
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I'm doing what I think I was put on this earth to do. And I'm really grateful to have something that I'm passionate about and that I think is profoundly important.
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I'd like to transform the system in very fundamental ways, but you've got to do that in every way that you can. You can't wait for some magic bullet or some magic politician or some magic anything to have that happen. You got to get out there and use your vote.
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