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[Martin Luther ] King didn't pick his leadership position. Most movements are not started by single people.

Marian Wright Edelman

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Marian Wright Edelman
Age: 85
Born: 1939
Born: June 6
Activist
Lawyer
Writer
Bennettsville
South Carolina
Single
Martin
Movement
Luther
Position
Movements
Started
Pick
Didn
Picks
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King
Kings
Leadership

More quotes by Marian Wright Edelman

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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.
Marian Wright Edelman
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You can achieve much in life if you don't mind doing the work and giving someone else the credit.
Marian Wright Edelman
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People want to pick the leader, and we are obsessed with celebrity and whoever is on the cover of this or that.
Marian Wright Edelman
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You can't tell parents to teach children the value of work when we don't have jobs and the jobs we have don't pay a decent wage. You can't tell children to achieve and then let them go to broken-down schools with teachers who don't care. We need a consistency of values in our public, corporate, and private lives.
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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Be grateful for good breaks and kind favors but don't count on them.
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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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
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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
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It is [children] who are God's presence, promise and hope for mankind.
Marian Wright Edelman
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The core of the culture is racism and how black men are viewed. They've always been demonized and seen as threats in our culture. Another holdover from slavery. We've got to deal with that core root of racism and demonization of the upbringing of black men. Black women are not exempt by any means.
Marian Wright Edelman
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Luckily, I had incredible parents who, when they saw a problem, didn't say, Why doesn't somebody do something? They would say, Why don't we do something?.
Marian Wright Edelman
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If parents snicker at racial and gender jokes, another generation will pass on the poison adults still have not had the courage to snuff out.
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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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
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Why are guns the only unregulated consumer products in America? We regulate toy guns and teddy bears, but we do not regulate a product that kills 4,600 children a year.
Marian Wright Edelman
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The crisis of children having children has been eclipsed by the greater crisis of children killing children.
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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Children don't vote but adults who do must stand up and vote for them.
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