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Marian Wright Edelman
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“There are levels of outrage, and there's a point at which you can't be trespassed upon anymore.”
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“Parents have become so convinced that educators know what is best for children that they forget that they themselves are really the experts.”
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“We are willing to spend the least amount of money to keep a kid at home, more to put him in a foster home, and the most to institutionalize him.”
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“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.”
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“... the poor have been sent to the front lines of a federal budget deficit reduction war that few other groups were drafted to fight ...”
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“Democracy is not a spectator sport.”
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“Justice is not cheap. Justice is not quick. It is not ever finally achieved.”
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“We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee.”
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“Failure is just another way to learn how to do something right.”
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“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.”
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“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.”
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“It doesn't matter how many times you fall down. What matters is how many times you get up.”
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“Learn to be quiet enough to hear the sound of the genuine within yourself so that you can hear it in others.”
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“I have always believed that I could help change the world, because I have been lucky to have adults around me who did.”
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“Character, self-discipline, determination, attitude and service are the substance of life.”
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“... service is the rent we pay for living.”
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“It is utterly exhausting being Black in America — physically, mentally, and emotionally. While many minority groups and women feel similar stress, there is no respite or escape from your badge of color.”
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“It is a spiritually impoverished nation that permits infants and children to be the poorest Americans.”
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“It is the responsibility of every adult — especially parents, educators, and religious leaders — to make sure that children hear what we have learned from the lessons of life, and to hear over and over that we love them and that they are not alone.”
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“No time is ever wasted if you have a book along as a companion.”
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“Service to others is the rent you pay for living on this planet.”
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“... the crisis of children having children has been eclipsed by the greater crisis of children killing children.”
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“Hope is the best contraceptive.”
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“It's time for greatness, not greed. Idealism, not ideology. It's a time not just for compassionate words, but compassionate action.”
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“History does not pose problems without eventually producing the solutions.”
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“Don't assume a door is closed; push on it. Do not assume if it was closed yesterday that it is closed today.”
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“Do not feel entitled to anything you do not sweat or struggle for.”
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“Never let us confuse what is legal with what is right. Everything Hitler did in Nazi Germany was legal, but it was not right.”
Marian Wright Edelman, U.S. lawyer, founder of Children's Defense Fund
(1939)