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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
Study
Literature
Law
School
Wanted
Planned
Going
Russian
Hadn
Century

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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.
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No person has the right to rain on your dreams.
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In trying to make a big difference, don't ignore the small daily differences we can make.
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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.
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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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Be grateful for good breaks and kind favors but don't count on them.
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Never let us confuse what is legal with what is right. Everything Hitler did in Nazi Germany was legal, but it was not right.
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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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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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[Martin Luther ] King didn't pick his leadership position. Most movements are not started by single people.
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It is a spiritually impoverished nation that permits infants and children to be the poorest Americans.
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The future which we hold in trust for our own children will be shaped by our fairness to other people's children.
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If we don't stand up for children, then we don't stand for much.
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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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When President Kennedy was elected, many black Americans, like so many Americans, were captivated by his youth and energy and promise and were especially hopeful that he might move the country in a new direction on civil rights.
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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.
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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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It's deeply rooted in the American psyche. Black men have always been viewed as the other, which leads to a different application of the laws. The current laws are an obscenity. More black men are locked up for using pot than white folk are for far more serious crimes.
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God did not create two classes of children or human beings-only one.
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