Marian Wright Edelman Quotes

We should be on the forefront on this focus on justice, and do all we can to care about our community, to care about our society, and to make our communities a much better place.

Every one of us must do something to contribute to transforming our community for the better.

Heroes are not giant statues framed against a red sky. They are people who say: This is my community, and it's my responsibility to make it better.

What inspires me most are people who imagine and implement solutions to challenges in their own lives, in their communities, in our country and around the world.

I feel responsible; I feel I've got to do something that will leave the kids a place where they can live healthy, safe, productive, creative and prosperous lives.

I love people. When you're engaged with society and trying to make it a better society, you're an optimist.

When I think about Edmonton, Silver Street and Pymmes Park, the old people whose faces are so unhappy, it pushes me to be better. I want to be better to help places like this.

That's what being a human is about, leaving this place better than we got it.

As long as I can keep one child off the streets or change one child's life for the better, then that's enough for me.

I like talking about it, I like talking about world change. I like talking about things that you want to do in your community.

The ultimate test of any civilization is how we treat the most vulnerable... what we do to our children. Our world has lost its direction.

Each child belongs to all of us and they will bring us a tomorrow in direct relation to the responsibility we have shown to them.

I believe that one of the most important things to learn in life is that you can make a difference in your community no matter who you are or where you live.

So much of America's tragic and costly failure to care for all its children stems from our tendency to distinguish between our own children and other people's children--as if justice were divisible.

A society which abandons children and the elderly severs its roots and darkens its future.

It is not more bigness that should be our goal. We must attempt, rather, to bring people back to...the warmth of community, to the worth of individual effort and responsibility...and of individuals working together as a community, to better their lives and their children's future.

A society is judged by the way it cares for its most vulnerable citizens. As an American, I am ashamed that we have turned out backs on millions of our children. I want to do my part to rectify this terrible situation.

All children are my children.

If I can sit down for freedom, you can stand up for children.

In a world as wrong as this one, all we can do is make things as right as we can.

It's your purpose to leave the world better than how you found it.

I went to bed hungry many nights as a child. It was a Dream that dressed me up when I was ragged, and it was a Dream that filled me up when I was hungry. Now it's my Dream to see that no child in this world ever goes hungry, certainly not here in America, the most bountiful country in the world. We can do better...we must!

The social rights of children must be recognized so that a world suited to their needs may be constructed for them. The greatest crime that society commits is that of wasting the money which it should use for children on things that will destroy them and society itself as well.

There's no such thing as other people's children.