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

Marian Wright Edelman

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Marian Wright Edelman
Age: 85
Born: 1939
Born: June 6
Activist
Lawyer
Writer
Bennettsville
South Carolina
Century
Study
Literature
Law
School
Wanted
Planned
Going
Russian
Hadn

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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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No person has the right to rain on your dreams.
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A nation that does not stand for its children does not stand for anything and will not stand tall in the future.
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Luckily, I had incredible parents who, when they saw a problem, didn't say, Why doesn't somebody do something? They would say, Why don't we do something?.
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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.
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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.
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We must serve consciously as caring role models, emphasizing the ethic of service, not consumption.
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People who don't vote have no call on political leaders!
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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If things are too easy, life is a whole lot less interesting.
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We are willing to spend the least amount of money to keep a kid at home, more to put him in a foster home and the most to institutionalize him.
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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.
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Never work just for money or for power. They won't save your soul or help you sleep at night.
Marian Wright Edelman
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In my generation, we learned how to be leaders by being exposed to and involved with adults who empowered us and gave us a sense that we could choose things. We've let down the generations coming behind us and we are trying to re- establish that connection.
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Service is the rent we pay for living.
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Parents have become so convinced that educators know what is best for their children that they forget that they themselves are really the experts.
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It really takes a community to raise children, no matter how much money one has. Nobody can do it well alone. And it's the bedrock security of community that we and our children need.
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