Marian Wright Edelman Quotes

Unless we labor to help others achieve a reasonable stake in society, we may find ourselves losing the society in which we have too great a stake.

Without an advocate for the poor, without a new state of mind in America, the country lies on the brink of anarchy.

When we see people that are impoverished and people who are dealt an unfair hand, then if we have the power to help them, we should try to do that.

In a competitive world, not everybody can follow the pace; you will leave people out. We now accept that we must take care of these people. You cannot let them die in the streets; people will not accept it. And that is right, too.

The privileged classes today are bothered about petrol and diesel prices while the poor can't afford two meals a day. I am a very small person, but I want us to think beyond personal and regional interests.

My hope is that the corona crisis will help bring us into a new age of cooperation and solidarity and a realization that we're in this together.

I'm not a member of a minority but I can empathize with what's going on.

Always remember: the alleviation of poverty is never a political or economic issue - it is moral.

We are the world.

My sympathies have always been for working-class people.

The media seems to think only abortion and gay marriage are religious issues. Poverty is a moral issue, it's a faith issue, it's a religious issue.

There is also a natural and very, very strong empathy with the underdog, with people who have suffered, people who have been pushed around by foreigners in particular, but also by their own people.

Every social justice movement that I know of has come out of people sitting in small groups, telling their life stories, and discovering that other people have shared similar experiences.

I think the idea that you can go this alone is - was a huge mistake. And unfortunately, there was a price paid in terms of suffering and pain for people in New Orleans.

In America, we take care of each other, we support one another, and we look out for our neighbors.

The cry of the oppressed has entered not only into my ears, but into my soul, so that while I live, I cannot hold my peace.

Freedom is the one value conservatives place above all others, yet time and again, their ideal of freedom ignores the growing imbalance of power in our society that's eroding the freedoms of most people.

The thing about Occupy is that the sentiment the movement embodies is timeless: Don't be greedy, share.

We are privileged. There are poor people out there. We must to do something to make them privileged.

If we all looked out for each other a little bit more, I think we wouldn't have a lot of the crisis that we have in today's society.

Dr. King said, 'We are all tied together in a garment of mutual destiny.' Which says to me no matter how well I may be doing in Hollywood, if a young brother or sister in Louisiana, the South Bronx, the South Side of Chicago, South Central Los Angeles - is not doing well, then I'm not doing very well.

There has to be a social commitment, a social consciousness that joins men together. On the basis of their coming together, they do not transgress against themselves and they do not transgress against others.

It is possible to tolerate anything as long as it only affects you. But the method of collective punishment is bigger than that.

Too often, wealthy people born on third base blithely criticize the poor for failing to hit home runs. The advantaged sometimes perceive empathy as a sign of muddle-headed weakness rather than as a marker of civilization.

It seems to me morally a decent society will try to take some of the increased benefit and use that to alleviate the pain of the few who are bearing the cost that made it possible.