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Be real. Try to do what you say, say what you mean, and be what you seem.

Marian Wright Edelman

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Marian Wright Edelman
Age: 85
Born: 1939
Born: June 6
Activist
Lawyer
Writer
Bennettsville
South Carolina
Seems
Real
Mean
Trying
Seem

More quotes by 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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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
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I try to be a person of faith.
Marian Wright Edelman
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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.
Marian Wright Edelman
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Service is the rent we pay for living.
Marian Wright Edelman
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Black women rock the cradle, and whoever rocks the cradle rocks the future.
Marian Wright Edelman
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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.
Marian Wright Edelman
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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.
Marian Wright Edelman
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We must serve consciously as caring role models, emphasizing the ethic of service, not consumption.
Marian Wright Edelman
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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
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So much of the deep lingering sadness over President Kennedy's assassination is about the unfinished promise: unspoken speeches, unfulfilled hopes, the wondering about what might have been.
Marian Wright Edelman
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I don't care what my children choose to do professionally, just as long as within their choices they understand they've got to give something back.
Marian Wright Edelman
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The challenge of social justice is to evoke a sense of community that we need to make our nation a better place, just as we make it a safer place.
Marian Wright Edelman
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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.
Marian Wright Edelman
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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.
Marian Wright Edelman
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Don't wait for, expect, or rely on favors. Count on earning them by hard work and perseverance.
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.
Marian Wright Edelman
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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.
Marian Wright Edelman
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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.
Marian Wright Edelman
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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.
Marian Wright Edelman