Quote

Are you the sum total of your worst acts?

Bryan Stevenson

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Bryan Stevenson
Age: 65
Born: 1959
Born: November 14
Jurist
Lawyer
Organizational Founder
Professor
Writer
Milton
Delaware
Worst
Acts
Total

More quotes by Bryan Stevenson

Image
We are all broken by something. We have all hurt someone and have been hurt. We all share the condition of brokenness even if our brokenness is not equivalent.
Bryan Stevenson
Image
Whenever society begins to create policies and laws rooted in fear and anger, there will be abuse and injustice.
Bryan Stevenson
Image
But simply punishing the broken--walking away from them or hiding them from sight--only ensures that they remain broken and we do, too. There is no wholeness outside of our reciprocal humanity.
Bryan Stevenson
Image
We live in a country that talks about being the home of the brave and the land of the free, and we have the highest incarceration rate in the world.
Bryan Stevenson
Image
If you love your country, then you need to be thinking a lot more critically about what justice.
Bryan Stevenson
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Knowing what I know about the people who have come before me, and the people who came before them, and what they had to do, it changes my capacity to stay engaged, to stay productive.
Bryan Stevenson
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Somebody has to stand when other people are sitting. Somebody has to speak when other people are quiet.
Bryan Stevenson
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Always do the right thing even when the right thing is the hard thing
Bryan Stevenson
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
It's that mind-heart connection that I believe compels us to not just be attentive to all the bright and dazzling things but also the dark and difficult things.
Bryan Stevenson
Image
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
Image
Each of us is more than the worst thing we've ever done.
Bryan Stevenson