Marian Wright Edelman quotes - page 3

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)
I need to work outside government, on my own. View quote
Marian Wright Edelman
I'm sure I am impatient sometimes. I sure do get angry sometimes. I think it's outrageous how hard it is to get this country to feed its children and to take care of its children, to give them a decent education. View quote
Marian Wright Edelman
It never occurred to me that I was not going to challenge segregation. View quote
Marian Wright Edelman
The Declaration of Independence was always our vision of who we wanted to be, our ideal of freedom and justice, how we were going to be different, and what the American experiment was going to be about. View quote
Marian Wright Edelman
Semi-automatic weapons have no socially redeeming purpose. View quote
Marian Wright Edelman
I never thought I was breaking a glass ceiling. I just had to do what I had to do, and it never occurred to me not to. View quote
Marian Wright Edelman
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. View quote
Marian Wright Edelman
We have the capacity to make sure that every mother has pre-natal care. Yet, we don't do it. What is it about America? It says we don't value children and families. We are hypocrites. View quote
Marian Wright Edelman
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. View quote
Marian Wright Edelman
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)
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. View quote
Marian Wright Edelman
I hadn't planned on going to law school. I wanted to study 19th-century Russian literature. View quote
Marian Wright Edelman
I've always hated being hemmed in or seeing anybody being hemmed in. Even when I was the smallest child, I couldn't bear being told I couldn't drink at a so-called white drinking fountain. View quote
Marian Wright Edelman
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. View quote
Marian Wright Edelman
I'm tough in the sense that I believe as strongly in what I'm doing as anybody else believes in what they are doing. View quote
Marian Wright Edelman
The question is not whether we can afford to invest in every child it is whether we can afford not to. View quote
Marian Wright Edelman
Amidst protestations of 'Who can be against the children' too few people are FOR children when it really matters. View quote
Marian Wright Edelman