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In trying to make a big difference, don't ignore the small daily differences we can make.

Marian Wright Edelman

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Marian Wright Edelman
Age: 85
Born: 1939
Born: June 6
Activist
Lawyer
Writer
Bennettsville
South Carolina
Trying
Make
Ignore
Daily
Difference
Differences
Small
Bigs

More quotes by 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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There are levels of outrage, and there's a point at which you can't be trespassed upon anymore.
Marian Wright Edelman
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I grew up in a very religious family and it is the motivating force to every thing I do. I am fortunate to have had adults all around me who really lived their faith, in helping other people and doing the best you can do.
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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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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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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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
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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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Learn to be quiet enough to hear the genuine within yourself so that you can hear it in others.
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
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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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You're not obligated to win. You're obligated to keep trying to do the best you can every day.
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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It never occurred to me that I was not going to challenge segregation.
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.
Marian Wright Edelman
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Be a good ancestor. Stand for something bigger than yourself. Add value to the Earth during your sojourn.
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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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.
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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Unless children have strong education and strong families and strong communities and decent housing, it's not enough to go sit in at a lunch counter.
Marian Wright Edelman