233 Quotes by 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.

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

Much of what I do now stems from my rage at segregation and discrimination. I can't stand to see children not able to do anything, anybody not able to do what they can do. The daily lessons of exclusion, having hand-me-down books in schools, of seeing ambulances turn away and not give health care for people lying in the streets who are migrant workers. Everything I do today stems from that segregated existence.

Semi-automatic weapons have no socially redeeming purpose.

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.

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.

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.

Our government has to be held accountable for enforcing the law. Tamir Rice, the fact that they could exonerate that police person [who killed him], and Tamir's family was charged for the ambulance to take him [to the hospital]. It's inhumane.

I hope that people of all faiths will start looking for our too-invisible children who are crying out for help...