It was clear to me as a civil rights leader in the '60s that unless we put the social and economic underpinnings beneath the political and the civil rights, we wouldn't go anywhere.
— Marian Wright Edelman
It never occurred to me that I was not going to challenge segregation.
The key is that your children are aware that you love them a lot, and that you are there when they really, really need you. If a kid was ill, I would simply leave a meeting and go home.
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.
I feel very lucky to have grown up having interaction with adults who were making change but who were far from perfect beings. That feeling of not being paralyzed by your incredible inadequacy as a human being, which I feel every day, is a part of the legacy that I've gotten from so many of the adult elders.
The Declaration of Independence was always our vision of who we wanted to be, our ideal of freedom and justice, how we were going to be different, and what the American experiment was going to be about.
If things are too easy, life is a whole lot less interesting.
I try to act out of faith.
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.
Semi-automatic weapons have no socially redeeming purpose.
A nation that does not stand for its children does not stand for anything and will not stand tall in the future.
You just need to be a flea against injustice. Enough committed fleas biting strategically can make even the biggest dog uncomfortable and transform even the biggest nation.
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.
A lot of people are waiting for Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi to come back - but they are gone. We are it. It is up to us. It is up to you.
Learn to be quiet enough to hear the genuine within yourself so that you can hear it in others.
If we don't stand up for children, then we don't stand for much.
You really can change the world if you care enough.
I hadn't planned on going to law school. I wanted to study 19th-century Russian literature.
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.
Our true remembrance to President Kennedy is in our actions to honor the unspoken words and finish the unfinished work today and tomorrow and for as long as it takes.
So much of the deep lingering sadness over President Kennedy's assassination is about the unfinished promise: unspoken speeches, unfulfilled hopes, the wondering about what might have been.
I grew up in a very religious family and it is the motivating force to every thing I do. I am fortunate to have had adults all around me who really lived their faith, in helping other people and doing the best you can do.
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.
Family and moral values are so central to everything that I am.
In every seed of good there is always a piece of bad.
In politics, there are no friends.
Together we can and must fight for justice for our children and protect them from draconian tax cuts and budget choices that threaten their survival, education and preparation for the future. If they are not ready for tomorrow, neither is America.
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.
My faith has been the driving thing of my life. I think it is important that people who are perceived as liberals not be afraid of talking about moral and community values.
You didn't have a choice about the parents you inherited, but you do have a choice about the kind of parent you will be.
Education is for improving the lives of others and for leaving your community and world better than you found it.
You're not obligated to win. You're obligated to keep trying to do the best you can every day.
Education is a precondition to survival in America today.
Service is the rent we pay for being. It is the very purpose of life, and not something you do in your spare time.
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.
I need to work outside government, on my own.
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.
Hunger and malnutrition have devastating consequences for children and have been linked to low birth weight and birth defects, obesity, mental and physical health problems, and poorer educational outcomes.
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.
To all those mothers and fathers who are struggling with teen-agers, I say, just be patient: even though it looks like you can't do anything right for a number of years, parents become popular again when kids reach 20.
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.
Unless children have strong education and strong families and strong communities and decent housing, it's not enough to go sit in at a lunch counter.
It was very clear to me in 1965, in Mississippi, that, as a lawyer, I could get people into schools, desegregate the schools, but if they were kicked off the plantations - and if they didn't have food, didn't have jobs, didn't have health care, didn't have the means to exercise those civil rights, we were not going to have success.
Children under five are the poorest age group in America, and one in four infants, toddlers and preschoolers are poor during the years of greatest brain development.
The future which we hold in trust for our own children will be shaped by our fairness to other people's children.
Far less wealthy industrialized countries have committed to end child poverty, while the United States is sliding backwards. We can do better. We must demand that our leaders do better.
The challenge of social justice is to evoke a sense of community that we need to make our nation a better place, just as we make it a safer place.
No one, Eleanor Roosevelt said, can make you feel inferior without your consent. Never give it.
We do not have a money problem in America. We have a values and priorities problem.
Whoever said anybody has a right to give up?
