I believe that each person is more than the worst thing they've ever done.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the idea that individuals should not be defined by their worst actions.
Bryan Stevenson asserts that every person has inherent worth that transcends their mistakes or wrongdoings. He believes that our identities cannot be encapsulated by our failures and that everyone deserves compassion and the opportunity for redemption, emphasizing the importance of understanding the complexities of human nature and the potential for change.
In practice
In a speech on criminal justice reform, share this quote to highlight the need for empathy.
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.
I was in the Air Force a while and they had what they call "policing the area." That's where you looked around and if there's anything wrong here, there, anywhere, you took care of your own area. And I think that's a pretty good thing to go by. If everyone just takes care of their own area then we won't have any problems. Be here. Be present. Wherever you are, be there. And look around you and see what needs to be changed.
How I conned the Grand Wizard, David Duke, and his coterie of followers... It has defined me in ways I never could have imagined.
Whether trauma will be a cruel and punishing Gorgon or a vehicle for soaring to the heights of transformation and mastery depends upon how we approach it.
Let me not then die ingloriously and without a struggle, but let me first do some great thing that shall be told among men hereafter.
I didn't want people to know me as a victim.
Violence will prevail over violence, only when someone can prove to me that darkness can be dispelled by darkness
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