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Embracing a certain quotient of racial bias and discrimination against the poor is an inexorable aspect of supporting capital punishment. This is an immoral condition that makes rejecting the death penalty on moral grounds not only defensible but necessary for those who refuse to accept unequal or unjust administration of punishment.

Bryan Stevenson

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Bryan Stevenson
Age: 65
Born: 1959
Born: November 14
Jurist
Lawyer
Organizational Founder
Professor
Writer
Milton
Delaware
Makes
Aspect
Immoral
Rejecting
Certain
Accept
Unjust
Embracing
Necessary
Discrimination
Grounds
Conditions
Capital
Penalty
Accepting
Punishment
Bias
Defensible
Moral
Condition
Penalties
Quotient
Poor
Administration
Supporting
Unequal
Death
Refuse
Racial
Inexorable

More quotes by Bryan Stevenson

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I think there is a contempt for the human dignity of people who were enslaved. You couldn't see them as fully human and so you didn't respect their desire to be connected to a family and a place. That was the only way you could tolerate and make sense of lynching and the terror that lynching represented.
Bryan Stevenson
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Each of us is more than the worst thing we've ever done.
Bryan Stevenson
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When you come to Montgomery, you see fifty-nine monuments and memorials, all about the Civil War, all about Confederate leaders and generals. We have lionized these people, and we have romanticized their courage and their commitment and their tenacity, and we have completely eliminated the reality that created the Civil War.
Bryan Stevenson
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If you're just the person with power, exercising that power fearfully and angrily, you're going to be an operative of injustice and inequality.
Bryan Stevenson
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Somebody has to stand when other people are sitting. Somebody has to speak when other people are quiet.
Bryan Stevenson
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Are you the sum total of your worst acts?
Bryan Stevenson
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Montgomery's unique role in the domestic slave trade was that it was the first community that had a rail line that connected the Deep South to the mid-Atlantic region.
Bryan Stevenson
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You can't demand truth and reconciliation. You have to demand truth - people have to hear it, and then they have to want to reconcile themselves to that truth.
Bryan Stevenson
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The opposite of poverty is not wealth. I don't believe that. I actually think, in too many places, the opposite of poverty is justice.
Bryan Stevenson
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Why do we want to kill all the broken people?
Bryan Stevenson
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That's what's provocative to me - that we can victimize people, we can torture and traumatize people with no consciousness that it is a shameful thing to do.
Bryan Stevenson
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You don’t change the world with the ideas in your mind, but with the conviction in your heart.
Bryan Stevenson
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My parents, who grew up in terror and dealt with segregation and humiliation, nonetheless taught us to be hopeful and open and loving and not hateful toward anyone.
Bryan Stevenson
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We don't need police officers who see themselves as warriors. We need police officers who see themselves as guardians and parts of the community. You can't police a community that you're not a part of.
Bryan Stevenson
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I love museums, and I think they're fantastic, but they don't touch the people who I frequently think need to be touched with at least some reminder of legacy.
Bryan Stevenson
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The Bureau of Justice reports that one in three black male babies born this century will go to jail or prison - that is an absolutely astonishing statistic. And it ought to be terrorizing to not just to people of color, but to all of us.
Bryan Stevenson
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We've all been acculturated into accepting the inevitability of wrongful convictions, unfair sentences, racial bias, and racial disparities and discrimination against the poor.
Bryan Stevenson
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My parents lived in a poor rural community on the Eastern Shore, and schools were still segregated. And I remember when lawyers came into our community to open up the public schools to black kids.
Bryan Stevenson
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Lynching is an important aspect of racial history and racial inequality in America, because it was visible, it was so public, it was so dramatic, and it was so violent.
Bryan Stevenson
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You ultimately judge the civility of a society not by how it treats the rich, the powerful, the protected and the highly esteemed, but by how it treats the poor, the disfavored and the disadvantaged.
Bryan Stevenson