Marian Wright Edelman Quotes

When mothers earn their fair share, young children have greater access to quality health care, educational opportunities, and safe communities. By ending the wage gap, we will help ensure that every child can achieve his or her God-given potential.

Over one in five American children is living in poverty, and the number is rising.

Early childhood education is an urgent educational, economic and moral imperative. Without it, we face a long-term national economic security crisis.

My state has the highest child poverty rate in all of New England, above the national average.

I believe that investing in our children's development from the earliest age is the single most important contribution we can make to the health and wellbeing of our citizens, their capacity and the future prosperity of our state.

One-fourth of the children in this country are poor—and they don't vote.

Too many American families go bankrupt from healthcare expenses, and low wage workers have to hold two or three jobs just to make ends meet, which leaves many young children without any hope of having a pre-K education - the most important start to a good education and a path out of poverty.

The goal of the Head Start program is to give at-risk children all across our Nation a fair chance at succeeding in the educational system.

Youngsters of the age of two and three are endowed with extraordinary strength. They can lift a dog twice their own weight and dump him into the bathtub.

I don't think I have ever done anything for this age of children before, a pre-school audience. Generally speaking, we don't have vivid memories of that age and what influenced us, yet clearly they are hugely formative years and it's really important that we can create television of a high quality for that audience.

By 2030, just a small percentage of the global population will live in poverty.

America stands as a beacon of hope and the possibility of a better life - but it is also a nation where nearly 1 in 4 children live in poverty.

If we cannot provide excellent educational opportunities to all children, safe communities, quality health coverage, or robust and fair avenues towards wealth creation, then our nation will increasingly be in peril.

If we are serious about providing upward mobility and building a skilled workforce, pre-school is the place to begin.

It is imperative to change the way we look at education. We should invest in the foundation of school readiness from birth to age 5.

It's easier to learn things for life by the age of 12 and not the age of 18. This is just my guess.

Early childhood education begins early, even before birth.

Hispanic children now make the largest group of children in poverty.

U.K. welfare cuts are pushing more children into poverty; that is beyond dispute.

I was born on the other side of the tracks, in public housing in Brooklyn, New York. My dad never made more than $20,000 a year, and I grew up in a family that lost health insurance. So I was scarred at a young age with understanding what it was like to watch my parents lose access to the American dream.

It's hard to bring up your children on benefit. It's easier if you can do part- time work, or even full-time work, and actually have a better standard of living, and that's the direction in which we are going.

The United States is a leader across a broad range of scientific disciplines. Our technological prowess is part of our greatness as a nation. Sadly, among the rich industrialized nations, we also lead by a substantial margin in the rate of poverty among children.

Society’s willingness to provide for the poor among them increases when the standard of living is advancing.

We no longer feel that we can be fair to children we bring into this world, unless we can make sure from the start that they shall have capital or education or both, so that they need never compete with those who now fill the lower rungs of the ladder of success.