Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Marian Wright Edelman
Age: 85
Born: 1939
Born: June 6
Activist
Lawyer
Writer
Bennettsville
South Carolina
Best
Experts
Children
Convinced
Really
Parents
Parent
Education
Forget
Family
Educators
Become
Educator

More quotes by Marian Wright Edelman

Image
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
Image
I hadn't planned on going to law school. I wanted to study 19th-century Russian literature.
Marian Wright Edelman
Image
We must serve consciously as caring role models, emphasizing the ethic of service, not consumption.
Marian Wright Edelman
Image
It's the new slavery. It came out of the drug laws and it really is something we're going to have to confront, but I don't see enough people up in arms about that. We need to be.
Marian Wright Edelman
Image
In politics, there are no friends.
Marian Wright Edelman
Image
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
Image
Hope is the best contraceptive.
Marian Wright Edelman
Image
If we don't stand up for children, then we don't stand for much.
Marian Wright Edelman
Image
Education is for improving the lives of others and for leaving your community and world better than you found it.
Marian Wright Edelman
Image
You can achieve much in life if you don't mind doing the work and giving someone else the credit.
Marian Wright Edelman
Image
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.
Marian Wright Edelman
Image
It never occurred to me that I was not going to challenge segregation.
Marian Wright Edelman
Image
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
Image
As [Martin Luther] King said, it never cost anybody a dime to integrate the lunch counters. When you start talking about trying to deal with jobs and hunger and things that require investment, then that's really the tough stuff, because everybody wants to do right if it doesn't cost them anything.
Marian Wright Edelman
Image
It is [children] who are God's presence, promise and hope for mankind.
Marian Wright Edelman
Image
It was very clear to me in 1965, in Mississippi, that, as a lawyer, I could get people into schools, desegregate the schools, but if they were kicked off the plantations - and if they didn't have food, didn't have jobs, didn't have health care, didn't have the means to exercise those civil rights, we were not going to have success.
Marian Wright Edelman
Image
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.
Marian Wright Edelman
Image
As I contemplate the kind of future I want for children-my own and other people's-I believe we must look inward to God for guidance and strength and backward to draw on the values and legacies of our families, ancestors, and communities.
Marian Wright Edelman
Image
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.
Marian Wright Edelman
Image
Never work just for money or for power. They won't save your soul or help you sleep at night.
Marian Wright Edelman