Quotes by American Authors - Page 36

So, was the crime lab a reward for almost being killed?''No, it was a reward for not being Bryce,
Beverly Connor
The issue, perhaps, boils down to one of how perceptions or misperceptions of racial difference impact various individuals’, or groups of individuals’, experience of freedom in America. Some would argue that it goes beyond hampering their 'pursuit of happiness' to outright obliterating it.
Aberjhani
Millions of tears have fallen for black sons, brothers, lovers, and friends whose assailants took or maimed their lives and then simply went on their way.
Aberjhani
Sometimes painfully lost people can teach us lessons that we didn't think we needed to know, or be reminded of---the more history changes, the more it stays the same.
Shannon L. Alder
Fair is irrelevant. This is the law – it has nothing to do with justice.
Kenneth Eade
Whenever you deny the hand of Justice, Violence almost always steps in.
Suzy Kassem
You are not for the left or right team, but for what is right against the wrong.
Suzy Kassem
Stand up for what is fair against the unfair.
Suzy Kassem
As a society, we adhere to the belief in a fair trial for a person accused of a serious crime, but some of us struggle when it comes to the business of providing a competent lawyer to guarantee said fair trial. Lawyers like me live with the question “But how do you represent such scum?”I offer a quick “Someone has to” as I walk away.Do we really want fair trials? No, we do not. We want justice, and quickly. And justice is whatever we deem it to be on a case-by-case basis.It’s just as well that we don’t believe in fair trials because we damned sure don’t have them. The presumption of innocence is now the presumption of guilt. The burden of proof is a travesty because the proof is often lies. Guilt beyond a reasonable doubt means if he probably did it, then let’s get him off the streets.
John Grisham
Our power comes from the earth
Luis Alberto Urrea
Walter made me understand why we have to reform a system of criminal justice that continues to treat people better if they are rich and guilty than if they are poor and innocent. A system that denies the poor the legal help they need, that makes wealth and status more important than culpability, must be changed. Walter's case taught me that fear and anger are a threat to justice; they can infect a community, a state, or a nation and make us blind, irrational, and dangerous. I reflected on how mass imprisonment has littered the national landscape with carceral monuments of reckless and excessive punishment and ravaged communities with our hopeless willingness to condemn and discard the most vulnerable among us.
Bryan Stevenson
Everything in life has a yin and yang – an interconnected, complementary and opposite force. Just as we need the light to distinguish it from the dark, we recognize injustice in the world demands justice to provide a balance.
Kenneth Eade
I dealt with people like this for 20 years. They will get up every day. They will kill somebody and go have some chicken at KFC. You will catch them eating chicken and drinking a beer after they just murdered three people. Sean, these people are out there. They're all over the place.
Former LAPD Detective Mark Fuhrman
Political correctness’ is a label the privileged often use to distract from their privilege and hate.
DaShanne Stokes
Whatever you do to the animals, you do to yourself.
Ben Mikaelsen
There is one key area in which Zuma has made no attempt at reconciliation whatsoever: criminal justice and security. The ministers of justice, defence, intelligence (now called 'state security' in a throwback to both apartheid and the ANC's old Stalinist past), police and communications are all die-hard Zuma loyalists. Whatever their line functions, they will also play the role they have played so ably to date: keeping Zuma out of court—and making sure the state serves Zuma as it once did Mbeki.
Mark Gevisser
In preparing the present volume, it has been the aim of the author to do full justice to the ample material at his command, and, where possible, to make the illustrations tell the main story to anatomists. The text of such a memoir may soon lose its interest, and belong to the past, but good figures are of permanent value. [Justifying elaborate illustrations in his monographs.]
Othniel Charles Marsh
When you're taught to love everyone, to love your enemies, what value does that put on love?
Marilyn Manson
Who you are as a person has a lot to do with who you are as meat
Scott Carney
I attained a triumph so complete that it is now rare to meet an American with marks of small pox on his face... Benefits are valuable according to their duration and extent... but the benign remedy Vaccination saves millions of lives every century, like the [gift] of the sun, universal and everla
Benjamin Waterhouse
This work is not easy, and it never goes smoothly. Because we are hopelessly committed to both individual and group effectiveness, groups committed to public or civic value are rarely permanent. Instead, groups need to acquire a culture that rewards their members for doing that hard work. It takes this kind of group effort to get what we need, not just what we want; understanding how to create and maintain is one of the great challenges of our era.
Clay Shirky
Public and civic value require commitment and hard work among the core group of participants. It also requires that these groups be self-governing and submit to constraints that help them ignore distracting and entertaining material and stay focused instead of some sophisticated task.
Clay Shirky
Personal value is the kind of value we receive from being active instead of passive, creative instead of consumptive.
Clay Shirky
I find it very sad that by the time corporate science realizes the value of nature, that it may be too late
Steven Magee
Anything great will only be appreciated if I am given the opportunity to feel the absence of it, or experience the reversal of it. It is only then that I can even begin to understand its majesty and cherish it in the manner I should have all along.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
The garbage can is for things that have no importance. If it did have some value, it no longer has any.
J.R. Rim
The rationalist imagines an imbecile-free society; the empiricist and imbecile-proof one, or even better, a rationalist-proof one.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
To understand why I jumped from the Mormon wagon train requires an understanding of what Mormons are and how they think. While Mormons have some quaint, quirky and fanatical ideas, they really aren't much different from millions of poor, guilt-ridden souls who, throughout the march of human history, have hitched their hopes to mass movements of one sort or another. Eric Hoffer, in his brilliant treatise, "The True Believer," explains the attraction of joining a cause: "A rising mass movement attracts and holds a following 'by the refuge it offers from the anxieties, barrenness and meaninglessness of an individual existence. It cures the poignantly frustrated by freeing them from their ineffectual selves--and it does this by enfolding and absorbing them into a closely knit and exultant corporate whole'. "Of all the cults and philosophies that competed in the Graeco-Roman world, Christianity alone developed from its inception a compact organization."Once I realized this, it wasn't much of a leap out of religion altogether once I flew the Mormon coop. I simply wanted to be free from organizational groupthink. I escaped from the stuffy attic of religion's "pray, pay and obey" mentality into journalism's open laboratory of "who, what, where, when and why.
Steve Benson
Far from being marginalized, as is presently the case, nineteenth-century freethought was a social movement at the core of our national life.
Fred Whitehead
God did not create evolution--evolution created God. The evolution of religion is as follows: animism--polytheism--monotheism--agnosticism--atheism. As history progresses, people worship fewer and fewer gods, and the one God becomes the incredible shrinking god. He shrinks and shrinks until he becomes insignificant. More and more theists go about their business as if God isn't there. Some even become agnostics or atheists.
G.M. Jackson
Some people spend their entire lives devoted to a religion that claims to be the ‘right’ religion... they often deny scientific evidence that contradicts their archaic holy books, they sometimes oppress those who disagree with them, and they always do what they do in the name of an unknowable deity... but sometimes, they wake up. Occasionally, they realize that all religions are man-made and that none of them are ‘right.’ And when they do, they can live happy and fulfilling lives without dogma and without anticipating or fearing an afterlife.
David G. McAfee
Tell me I'm not crazy," He said. I couldn't do that. I was nowhere near sane enough at the moment to advise anyone else on rational behavior.
Cora Carmack
I know it’s hard for you to allow yourself to feel this. You've gone so long training yourself to block the feelings and emotions out any time someone touches you.
Colleen Hoover
Change from despair to joy he made her extremely beautiful.
Margaret Landon
Those who are critical don’t like being criticized, and those who are insensitive have a deficiency in their senses.
Suzy Kassem
If emotions were universal, then in one sense he was not alone, never had been alone, and never could be alone....No pain or happiness was unique. All humanity drank from the same river of emotion; and by drinking, every race, religion, and nationality became one indivisible species.
Dean Koontz
No one is born with equality. We all come here with varying degrees of opportunities, qualities, strengths, weaknesses, IQ, etc.
Brandi L. Bates
The reason why many people remain on the bottom is because they play to 'not lose', as opposed to playing to win at all costs.
Brandi L. Bates
Understand: I don't ever want to be equal to any other being. I always want to be greater...in all things, in all circumstances.
Brandi L. Bates
Isn't it strange how people are selective about the truth the want to see or hear?
E.A. Bucchianeri
Nobody sane loves working in an office, It’s against human nature to be locked up in a cubicle all day long.
Peter Clines
In times of stress and danger such as come about as the result of an epidemic, many tragic and cruel phases of human nature are brought out, as well as many brave and unselfish ones.
William Crawford Gorgas
There are people among us who are biologically human but who are androids in the metaphoric sense.
Philip K Dick
Every person lives bounded by the structural formation of human anatomy and the provincial demands of the human condition.
Kilroy J. Oldster
She felt trapped, but she didn't have to. The world is wide open and ready, waiting for us to escape this bubble and join it.
C.M. Stunich
Say no to everything, so you can say yes to the one thing.
Richie Norton
Your choices and decisions are a reflection of how well you’ve set and followed your priorities.
Elizabeth George
Let your life choices tell others of your wonderful God as you walk through life worshiping Him.
Elizabeth George
When thunderstorms roll in, you make a choice to either succumb with tears to the gloomy downpour, or smile and look for rainbows.
Richelle E. Goodrich
Your body is a temple, not a daily dumping ground for another person’s pain, anger, betrayal, judgment, hypocrisy, denial, games, jealousy or blame. When you are being psychologically, spiritually or emotionally abused by a person, and they don’t care how it hurts you, then it is time to leave what is polluting your relationship with God.
Shannon L. Alder
If you want to know if someone was meant to be in your future, then remove all the worldly things about them from your mind. Don’t think about their looks, the intimate moments or their personality. Now, think about how they made you feel, how they improved your life and what virtues they possess that push you to want to become better. Did they bring you closer to God? Did they bring you to your life mission? Did they ever lie to you, betray you or made it impossible for you to feel comfortable speaking your mind? When you remove all the shine from a diamond, it becomes a glass rock. What value is it then? See beneath the surface and you will know who your future is with.
Shannon L. Alder
Many of our efforts to intentionally craft and subsequently force our limited vision on life has more often than not resulted in some degree of cataclysm or schism or division or any number of other things that aren’t all that savory.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Life is all about choices. Choices define us, sculpt us. What will your choices say about you?
Sheena Hutchinson
When people are vulnerable to control, they feel that they are selfish for deciding what to do with their own property. In reality, deciding for ourselves is the only way we can ever have true love, for then we are giving freely.
Henry Cloud
It may be necessary temporarily to accept a lesser evil, but one must never label a necessary evil as good.
Margaret Mead
If I have refused to risk, I have in the self-same decision refused to love. And if indeed I have refused to love, tragically I have refused to live. And when will I realize that that in and of itself is an unacceptable risk.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Crushes thrive in small spaces. Humans must be programmed to respond positively when faced with a small sampling of other humans in, say, caves. You're stuck in a cave with three other people - all mankind, presumably, was hidden away in such tiny groups during the winters until the thaw - and so, in order for the species to thrive, you must be biologically compelled to fuck at least one person in your cave, despite the fact that, when surrounded by a plenitude of Neanderthals at the Neanderthal summer barbecue, none of them struck your fancy. Without the element of choice, and in conjunction with captivity, you find love, or at least you find lust.
Heidi Julavits
It's not about making the right choice. It's about making a choice and making it right.
J.R. Rim
When you put fear behind the wheel, you're bound to crash, but when you drive in faith the ride will be rough, but preceding into a journey of your lifetime.
Anthony Liccione
To know someone, we must experience him, and that knowing will not exceed our self-knowledge—we cannot know someone else to a greater depth than we know ourselves.
Shepherd Hoodwin