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Every day I wear my Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth medallions around my neck. When I think I'm having a bad day, I try to think about their day, and I get up.

Marian Wright Edelman

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Marian Wright Edelman
Age: 85
Born: 1939
Born: June 6
Activist
Lawyer
Writer
Bennettsville
South Carolina
Think
Harriet
Thinking
Neck
Necks
Wear
Around
Truth
Trying
Sojourner
Every
Sojourners

More quotes by Marian Wright Edelman

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If you don't like the way the world is, you change it. You have an obligation to change it. You just do it one step at a time.
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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.
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A nation that does not stand for its children does not stand for anything and will not stand tall in the future.
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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.
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Education is a precondition to survival in America today.
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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Be real. Try to do what you say, say what you mean, and be what you seem.
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To all those mothers and fathers who are struggling with teen-agers, I say, just be patient: even though it looks like you can't do anything right for a number of years, parents become popular again when kids reach 20.
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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As I contemplate the kind of future I want for children-my own and other people's-I believe we must look inward to God for guidance and strength and backward to draw on the values and legacies of our families, ancestors, and communities.
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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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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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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Amidst protestations of 'Who can be against the children?' too few people are FOR children when it really matters.
Marian Wright Edelman
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What's wrong with our children? Adults telling children to be honest while lying and cheating. Adults telling children to not be violent while marketing and glorifying violence... I believe that adult hypocrisy is the biggest problem children face in America.
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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History does not pose problems without eventually producing the solutions.
Marian Wright Edelman
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Education is for improving the lives of others and for leaving your community and world better than you found it.
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It's the new slavery. It came out of the drug laws and it really is something we're going to have to confront, but I don't see enough people up in arms about that. We need to be.
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If things are too easy, life is a whole lot less interesting.
Marian Wright Edelman