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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

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Marian Wright Edelman
Age: 85
Born: 1939
Born: June 6
Activist
Lawyer
Writer
Bennettsville
South Carolina
Children
Leave
Going
Says
System
Alone
Child
Left
Kids
Unsafe
Care
Legacy

More quotes by Marian Wright Edelman

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Amidst protestations of 'Who can be against the children?' too few people are FOR children when it really matters.
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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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The crisis of children having children has been eclipsed by the greater crisis of children killing children.
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You can achieve much in life if you don't mind doing the work and giving someone else the credit.
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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.
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No person has the right to rain on your dreams.
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Hope is the best contraceptive.
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Be grateful for good breaks and kind favors but don't count on them.
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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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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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People who don't vote have no call on political leaders!
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We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee.
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I hope that people of all faiths will start looking for our too-invisible children who are crying out for help.
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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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So much of America's tragic and costly failure to care for all its children stems from our tendency to distinguish between our own children and other people's children--as if justice were divisible.
Marian Wright Edelman
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Justice is not cheap. Justice is not quick. It is not ever finally achieved.
Marian Wright Edelman
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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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History does not pose problems without eventually producing the solutions.
Marian Wright Edelman
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Education remains one of the black community's most enduring values. It is sustained by the belief that freedom and education go hand in hand, that learning and training are essential to economic quality and independence.
Marian Wright Edelman
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I worry about the kids who have too much. As a parent living in a so-called good neighborhood with children who went to private high school, I found myself spending much time in parent groups worrying about alcohol, unsupervised parties, and parents not being parents. We've got to send messages to our kids about what is important.
Marian Wright Edelman