Top 120 Marian Wright Edelman Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “I worry about the kids who have too much. As a parent living in a so-called good neighborhood with children who went to private high school, I found myself spending much time in parent groups worrying about alcohol, unsupervised parties, and parents not being parents.”

— Marian Wright Edelman

102. “If it’s wrong for 13-year-old inner-city girls to have babies without the benefit of marriage, it’s wrong for rich celebrities, and we ought to stop putting them on the cover of People magazine.”

— Marian Wright Edelman

103. “Remember and help America remember that the fellowship of human beings is more important than the fellowship of race and class and gender in a democratic society.”

— Marian Wright Edelman

104. “The old notion that children are the private property of parents dies very slowly. In reality, no parent raises a child alone. How many of us nice middle-class folk could make it without our mortgage reduction.”

— Marian Wright Edelman

105. “Dr. King used to say, ‘I was sitting in the back of the bus, but my mind was always up front.’ Don’t let anybody tell you that you can’t do it. You aim high and you work very hard and now I think it’s clear that you can be anything you want to.”

— Marian Wright Edelman

106. “I think it is important that people who are perceived as liberals not be afraid of talking about moral and community values.”

— Marian Wright Edelman

107. “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.”

— Marian Wright Edelman

108. “This act will leave a moral blot on his presidency.”

— Marian Wright Edelman

109. “We must serve consciously as caring role models, emphasizing the ethic of service, not consumption.”

— Marian Wright Edelman

110. “It is a spiritually impoverished nation that permits infants and children to be the poorest Americans.”

— Marian Wright Edelman

111. “It never occurred to me that I was not going to challenge segregation.”

— Marian Wright Edelman

112. “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

113. “As I contemplate the kind of future I want for children-my own and other people’s-I believe we must look inward to God for guidance and strength and backward to draw on the values and legacies of our families, ancestors, and communities.”

— Marian Wright Edelman

114. “I have always believed that I could help change the world, because I have been lucky to have adults around me who did.”

— Marian Wright Edelman

115. “There are levels of outrage, and there’s a point at which you can’t be trespassed upon anymore.”

— Marian Wright Edelman

116. “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.”

— Marian Wright Edelman

117. “So often we are depressed by what remains to be done and forget to be thankful for all that has been done.”

— Marian Wright Edelman

118. “Children cannot eat rhetoric and they cannot be sheltered by commissions. I don’t want to see another commission that studies the needs of kids. We need to help them.”

— Marian Wright Edelman

119. “Amidst protestations of ‘Who can be against the children?’ too few people are FOR children when it really matters.”

— Marian Wright Edelman

120. “There should not be one new dime in tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires as long as millions of children in America are poor, hungry, uneducated and without health coverage.”

— Marian Wright Edelman

121. “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.”

— Marian Wright Edelman

122. “The crisis of children having children has been eclipsed by the greater crisis of children killing children.”

— Marian Wright Edelman

123. “The legacy I want to leave is a child-care system that says that no kid is going to be left alone or left unsafe.”

— Marian Wright Edelman

124. “We must always refill and ensure there is a critical mass of leaders and activists committed to nonviolence and racial and economic justice who will keep seeding and building transforming movements.”

— Marian Wright Edelman

125. “People who don’t vote have no line of credit with people who are elected and thus pose no threat to those who act against our interests.”

— Marian Wright Edelman

126. “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.”

— Marian Wright Edelman

127. “If you as parents cut corners, your children will too. If you lie, they will too. If you spend all your money on yourselves and tithe no portion of it for charities, colleges, churches, synagogues, and civic causes, your children won’t either. And if parents snicker at racial and gender jokes, another generation will pass on the poison adults still have not had the courage to snuff out.”

— Marian Wright Edelman

128. “I try to act out of faith.”

— Marian Wright Edelman

129. “Service is the rent we pay for the life we have been given.”

— Marian Wright Edelman

130. “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.”

— Marian Wright Edelman

131. “Don’t give anyone the proxy for your conscience.”

— Marian Wright Edelman

132. “I admit I still recoil against a society that has so slipped in caring that ordinary human sharing and thoughtfulness appears to warrant a”humanitarian award” and diligent effort seems too often the exception rather than the rule.”

— Marian Wright Edelman