Quote

So often we think we have got to make a difference and be a big dog. Let us just try to be little fleas biting. Enough fleas biting strategically can make a big dog very uncomfortable.

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
Trying
Dog
Make
Difference
Think
Differences
Thinking
Bigs
Often
Strategically
Littles
Fleas
Little
Biting
Enough
Uncomfortable

More quotes by Marian Wright Edelman

Image
If we don't stand up for children, then we don't stand for much.
Marian Wright Edelman
Image
You have to have a fundamental change in the culture of policing, and who is the police person. How do they change? How do you learn from England and the other places, or Australia? In England, they don't carry guns on the whole. It's a different kind of mentality that does not demonize, and it's justified on race and income and class.
Marian Wright Edelman
Image
Never let us confuse what is legal with what is right. Everything Hitler did in Nazi Germany was legal, but it was not right.
Marian Wright Edelman
Image
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.
Marian Wright Edelman
Image
The legacies that parents and church and teachers left to my generation of Black children were priceless but not material: a living faith reflected in daily service, the discipline of hard work and stick-to-itiveness, and a capacity to struggle in the face of adversity.
Marian Wright Edelman
Image
Amidst protestations of 'Who can be against the children?' too few people are FOR children when it really matters.
Marian Wright Edelman
Image
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.
Marian Wright Edelman
Image
Don't count out Marian Wright Edelman, because there is talk that President Clinton may want to shock the nation by putting a real black on the Supreme Court.
Marian Wright Edelman
Image
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.
Marian Wright Edelman
Image
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.
Marian Wright Edelman
Image
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.
Marian Wright Edelman
Image
Be real. Try to do what you say, say what you mean, and be what you seem.
Marian Wright Edelman
Image
Black women rock the cradle, and whoever rocks the cradle rocks the future.
Marian Wright Edelman
Image
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.
Marian Wright Edelman
Image
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.
Marian Wright Edelman
Image
God did not create two classes of children or human beings-only one.
Marian Wright Edelman
Image
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.
Marian Wright Edelman
Image
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.
Marian Wright Edelman
Image
It never occurred to me that I was not going to challenge segregation.
Marian Wright Edelman
Image
Education is a precondition to survival in America today.
Marian Wright Edelman