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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
Necks
Wear
Around
Truth
Trying
Sojourner
Sojourners
Every
Harriet
Think
Neck
Thinking

More quotes by Marian Wright Edelman

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Service is the rent we pay for living.
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.
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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
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I hadn't planned on going to law school. I wanted to study 19th-century Russian literature.
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.
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It is [children] who are God's presence, promise and hope for mankind.
Marian Wright Edelman
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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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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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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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Amidst protestations of 'Who can be against the children?' too few people are FOR children when it really matters.
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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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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
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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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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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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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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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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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Somehow we are going to have to develop a concept of enough for those at the top and at the bottom so that the necessities of the many are not sacrificed for the luxuries of the few.
Marian Wright Edelman
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Whoever said anyone has the right to give up.
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