Quote

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

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
Changes
Capacity
Stay
Came
Knowing
Come
People
Productive
Engaged

More quotes by 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
If we want to be proud of our country, if we want to be proud as Americans, if we want to be proud of our history, then we can't talk about the things that are inconsistent with pride, about which we can have no pride.
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
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
Each of us is more than the worst thing we've ever done.
Bryan Stevenson
Image
Are you the sum total of your worst acts?
Bryan Stevenson
Image
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
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
You don’t change the world with the ideas in your mind, but with the conviction in your heart.
Bryan Stevenson
Image
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
Image
Somebody has to stand when other people are sitting. Somebody has to speak when other people are quiet.
Bryan Stevenson
Image
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
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
Always do the right thing even when the right thing is the hard thing
Bryan Stevenson
Image
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
Image
Whenever society begins to create policies and laws rooted in fear and anger, there will be abuse and injustice.
Bryan Stevenson
Image
Part of the reason why we're only now reaching a point in American society where we can talk about the need for truth and reconciliation and the legacy of slavery is that it was such a dominant part of our history.
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