Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Learn to be quiet enough to hear the genuine within yourself so that you can hear it in others.
There are levels of outrage, and there's a point at which you can't be trespassed upon anymore.
Don't wait for, expect, or rely on favors. Count on earning them by hard work and perseverance.
No one, Eleanor Roosevelt said, can make you feel inferior without your consent. Never give it.
You can achieve much in life if you don't mind doing the work and giving someone else the credit.
We must serve consciously as caring role models, emphasizing the ethic of service, not consumption.
There comes a time when you roll up your sleeves and put yourself at the top of your commitment list.
It is a spiritually impoverished nation that permits infants and children to be the poorest Americans.
The question is not whether we can afford to invest in every child; it is whether we can afford not to.
Be a good ancestor. Stand for something bigger than yourself. Add value to the Earth during your sojourn.
It is time for every one of us to roll up our sleeves and put ourselves at the top of our commitment list.
So often we are depressed by what remains to be done and forget to be thankful for all that has been done.
[Martin Luther ] King didn't pick his leadership position. Most movements are not started by single people.
The crisis of children having children has been eclipsed by the greater crisis of children killing children.
People want to pick the leader, and we are obsessed with celebrity and whoever is on the cover of this or that.
I hope that people of all faiths will start looking for our too-invisible children who are crying out for help.
A nation that does not stand for its children does not stand for anything and will not stand tall in the future.
The future which we hold in trust for our own children will be shaped by our fairness to other people's children.
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.
Education is for improving the lives of others and for leaving your community and world better than you found it.
Service is the rent we pay for being. It is the very purpose of life, and not something you do in your spare time.
Amidst protestations of 'Who can be against the children?' too few people are FOR children when it really matters.
Understand and be confident that each of us can make a difference by caring and acting in small as well as big ways.
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.
I have always believed that I could help change the world, because I have been lucky to have adults around me who did.
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.
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.
Don't just dream about grandiose acts of doing good. Every day do small ones, that add up over time to positive patterns.
I think it is important that people who are perceived as liberals not be afraid of talking about moral and community values.
Never let us confuse what is legal with what is right. Everything Hitler did in Nazi Germany was legal, but it was not right.
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.
The poor have been sent to the front lines of a federal budget deficit reduction war that few other groups were drafted to fight.
Democracy cannot breathe, indeed will die, if those enjoined to protect it and uphold the laws snuff it out - with no consequences.
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.
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.
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.
None of the candidates are ever perfect, ok? Then you have to get them in there and you have to hold them accountable. You have to make noises.
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.
Parents have become so convinced that educators know what is best for their children that they forget that they themselves are really the experts.
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.
I don't care what my children choose to do professionally, just as long as within their choices they understand they've got to give something back.
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.
We're spending, on average, three times more for prison than for public-school pupils. That's the dumbest investment policy. It doesn't make us safer.
It's time for greatness - not for greed. It's a time for idealism - not ideology. It is a time not just for compassionate words, but compassionate action.
Just because a child's parents are poor or uneducated is no reason to deprive the child of basic human rights to health care, education and proper nutrition.
Don't count out Marian Wright Edelman, because there is talk that President Clinton may want to shock the nation by putting a real black on the Supreme Court.
Luckily, I had incredible parents who, when they saw a problem, didn't say, "Why doesn't somebody do something?" They would say, "Why don't we do something?".
Every day I wear my Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth medallions around my neck. When I think I'm having a bad day, I try to think about their day, and I get up.
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.
I'm doing what I think I was put on this earth to do. And I'm really grateful to have something that I'm passionate about and that I think is profoundly important.