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.
Interpretation
True wealth is measured not by riches, but by the presence of justice and fairness in society.
In this quote, Bryan Stevenson challenges the conventional notion that wealth is the opposite of poverty. Instead, he emphasizes that true opposition to poverty lies in the pursuit of justice. This perspective highlights that societal inequities and injustices contribute significantly to poverty, and achieving justice can create an environment where everyone has the opportunity to thrive.
In practice
In a speech on social justice, mentioning Stevenson's quote can emphasize the importance of fairness in alleviating poverty.
That's my mission: I really want to get in the heads and hearts of kids and persuade them that they can believe things they haven't seen, they can do things that maybe others haven't done before them, that they are more than their worst acts.
We all have a responsibility to create a just society
One of the things that pains me is we have so tragically underestimated the trauma, the hardship we create in this country when we treat people unfairly, when we incarcerate them unfairly, when we condemn them unfairly.
Somebody has to stand when other people are sitting. Somebody has to speak when other people are quiet.
I grew up in a segregated community: I couldn't go to the public schools, beaches, certain parts of town.
If we had done the work that we should have done in the 20th century to combat our history of racial inequality, no one could win national office after demonizing people because they're Mexican or Muslim. We would be in a place where we would find that unacceptable.
We ask justice, we ask equality, we ask that all the civil and political rights that belong to citizens of the United States, be guaranteed to us and our daughters forever.
In the US the overwhelming majority of those executed are psychotic, alcoholic, drug addicted or mentally unstable. They frequently are raised in an impoverished and abusive environment. Seldom are people with money or prestige convicted of capital offenses, even more seldom are they executed.
I understood at a young age that administrations come and go, but laws stay. So I decided to become a lawyer in order to help create a more just and peaceful world, not just in a fleeting moment but in a way that will endure from one generation to the next.
The love of justice and the love of country plead equally the cause of these people, and it is a moral reproach to us that they should have pleaded it so long in vain.
No matter what his crimes were, Alton Sterling did not deserve to be executed for them. Look, guys, the punishment for resisting arrest shouldn't be death. The punishment for selling bootleg CDs shouldn't be death. The punishment for having a gun in an open-carry state shouldn't be death. The punishment for being a black man shouldn't be death.
One is entitled to say without qualification that the correlation between prior judicial experience and fitness for the Supreme Court is zero.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.