Marian Wright Edelman Quotes

A different world cannot be built by indifferent people.

I can't change everything by myself but I can be one of the people who are trying to change the situation.

You realize you can't change the world but it shouldn't stop you from trying.

Things don’t always get better. Sometimes they get worse. The only way things will get better if people make them better.

Most politicians will not stick their necks out unless they sense grass-roots support ... neither you nor I should expect someone else to take our responsibility.

Progress does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability.

I always go back to the fact that one man can make a difference. No matter what the issue, we always have the power to change it.

We've got to stop crying and start sweating, stop talking and start walking, stop cursing and start praying. The strength we need will not come from the White House, but from every house in America.

Too many of us seem far too fond of narratives of our powerlessness, maybe because powerlessness lets us off the hook... But we don't need everyone on board; we don't need one magic person in office; we need ourselves. To act. It's the wind, not the weathervanes.

Never feel too small or powerless to make a difference.

Most of the time we do nothing, myself included, I think the lesson I learned from [playing humanitarian Tessa in The Constant Gardner] is that a lot of drops make up an ocean. If people would stand up and say what they believe in maybe we can make a difference. Helping one person is better than nothing. Just do something.

The civil-rights movement was completely impossible to achieve. But look at what ordinary people were able to do because they were willing to sacrifice their lives to stay with it. They didn't expect a political process to respond to them. They made the political process respond to them. To say "It's so bad I won't bother" is to give up on your children and give up on your future.

God, please help us remember that all the darkness in the world cannot snuff out the light of one little candle. Help us to keep lighting our little candles until a mighty torch of justice sweeps our nation and the world.

Any of us who work on the task of solving the climate crisis have at times an internal struggle between hope and despair. But that's one of the things that connects this climate movement to the previous great moral revolutions, like the civil rights movement and more recently the gay rights movement. So those who feel despair should be of good cheer, as the Bible says. Have faith, have hope. We are going to win this.

The United States remains the last best hope for a mankind plagued by tyranny and deprivation. America is no stronger than its people -- and that means you and me. Well, I believe in you, and I believe that if we work together, then one day we will say, "We fought the good fight. We finished the race. We kept the faith." And to our children and our children's children, we can say, "We did all what could be done in the brief time that was given us here on earth.".

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.

I never thought we had a chance of impacting anything. I am just starting to realize that we can change things - not just VICE, but all of us. In fact, we have to.

Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.

I don't think everything is going to get peachy ever. But I think we have to fight for what we believe in.

What we can do as individuals may not be very much on the global scale, but we have to start the change by living as we are teaching.

People need to believe they can make a difference - that one person standing strong can turn the tide.

Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not.

What is true of the individual will be tomorrow true of the whole nation if individuals will but refuse to lose heart and hope.

Have a little faith, kick a little dirt.

No man should think himself a zero, and think he can do nothing about the state of the world.