Marian Wright Edelman

“Service is the rent we pay for being. It is the very purpose of life, and not something you do in your spare time.”

“You can't be what you can't see.”

“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.”

“Education is for improving the lives of others and for leaving your community and world better than you found it.”

“Never work just for money or for power. They won't save your soul or help you sleep at night.”

“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.”

“The question is not whether we can afford to invest in every child; it is whether we can afford not to.”

“If we don't stand up for children, then we don't stand for much.”

“You are not obligated to win. You are obligated to keep trying to do the best you can every day.”

“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.”

“It's the action, not the fruit of the action, that's important. You have to do the right thing. It may not be in your power, may not be in your time, that there'll be any fruit. But that doesn't mean you stop doing the right thing.”

“Inclusion is not a matter of political correctness. It is the key to growth.”

“Be a good ancestor. Stand for something bigger than yourself. Add value to the world.”

“When I was a child, there were a lot of times we were hungry. We had no electricity. We had no running water. I grew up in a shack. I'm not saying I had a bad life. I had a good life. But I saw a lot of things that I thought were unjust and unfair.”