Top 80 Anthony Ray Hinton Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Sometimes it felt like life was more a process of elimination than a series of choices.”

— Anthony Ray Hinton

2. “I chose to forgive. I chose to stay vigilant to any signs of anger or hate in my heart. They took thirty years of my life. If I couldn’t forgive, if I couldn’t feel joy, that would be like giving them the rest of my life. The rest of my life is mine.”

— Anthony Ray Hinton

3. “We weren’t monsters; we were guys trying to survive the best we could.”

— Anthony Ray Hinton

4. “I shouldn’t have had to prove I was innocent – they were supposed to prove I was guilty – but not in this courtroom.”

— Anthony Ray Hinton

5. “When no one believes a word you say, the best thing you can do is stop talking.”

— Anthony Ray Hinton

6. “Everything, I realized, is a choice. And spending your days waiting to die is no way to live.”

— Anthony Ray Hinton

7. “He was a poor man in a criminal justice system that treats you better if you are rich and guilty than if you are poor and innocent.”

— Anthony Ray Hinton

8. “We need to think about the fact that we are all more than the worst thing we have done.”

— Anthony Ray Hinton

9. “No baby is born a murderer. No toddler dreams of being on death row someday. Every killer on death row was taught to be a killer – by parents, by a system, by the brutality of another brutalized person – but no one was born a killer.”

— Anthony Ray Hinton

10. “It’s hard to explain exactly what it feels like to be judged. There’s a shame to it. Even when you know you’re innocent. It still feels like you are coated in something dirty and evil. It made me feel guilty. It made me feel like my very soul was put on trial and found lacking.”

— Anthony Ray Hinton

11. “Every single one wants to matter. We want our lives, and our stories and the choices we made or didn’t make to matter.”

— Anthony Ray Hinton

12. “Innocent men don’t run. Except sometimes innocent men need to run. This is true in Alabama and everywhere. If you’re poor and black, sometimes your best and only chance is to run.”

— Anthony Ray Hinton

13. “Justice only happens when good people take a stand against injustice.”

— Anthony Ray Hinton

14. “It took me thirty years to get to this moment. It may take thirty-one years for you. It may take thirty-two or thirty-three or thirty-five years, but you need to hold on. You need to hold on to your hope. If you have hope, you have everything.”

— Anthony Ray Hinton

15. “Despair was a choice. Hatred was a choice. Anger was a choice. I still had choices, and that knowledge rocked me. I may not have had as many Lester had, but I still had some choices. I could choose to give up or to hang on. Hope was a choice. Faith was a choice. And more than anything else, love was a choice. Compassion was a choice.”

— Anthony Ray Hinton

16. “You going to have people dislike you because of whatever reason they find to dislike you. That’s just how the world is. But you have to be knowing that you are responsible for how you treat others, you’re not responsible for how they treat you. Do you understand? I don’t care what people say about you – you don’t drop down to their level. You always treat someone better than what they treat you. Always.”

— Anthony Ray Hinton

17. “What I didn’t understand was how any killing could be justified. Man didn’t have the right to take a life. The State didn’t have the right to take a life either.”

— Anthony Ray Hinton

18. “We have to make every ending be a happy ending.”

— Anthony Ray Hinton

19. “It all matters. How we live matters. Do we choose love or do we choose hate? Do we help or do we harm? Because there is no way to know the exact second your life changes forever. You can only begin to know that moment by looking in the rearview mirror. And trust me when I tell you when you never, ever see it coming.”

— Anthony Ray Hinton

20. “You need to hold on to your hope. If you have hope, you have everything.”

— Anthony Ray Hinton

21. “I was born with the same gift from God we are all born with – the impulse to reach out and lessen the suffering of another human being. It was a gift, and we each had a choice whether to use this gift or not.”

— Anthony Ray Hinton

22. “It’s hard to explain exactly what it feels like to be judged. There’s a shame to it. Even when you know you’re innocent.”

— Anthony Ray Hinton

23. “Bring in the books. Let every man on the row have a week away inside the world of a book. I knew if the mind could open, the heart would follow.”

— Anthony Ray Hinton

24. “Life is brutal, tragic, unbearable, and inhumane at times. The pain one man can cause another is limitless, but I didn’t see, I couldn’t see, how creating more pain made anything better.”

— Anthony Ray Hinton

25. “A little bit of kindness was amplified on death row, because it was so unexpected. You can scream out in a crowd of voices also screaming out, and no one hears you – but when you yell into the silence, your voice sounds louder. I was going to be that kind voice screaming out on the row, and I was going to make it better for everyone. We were all the same here. We were all discarded like garbage and deemed unworthy to have a life. I was going to prove them wrong.”

— Anthony Ray Hinton

26. “The death penalty is an enemy of grace, redemption and all who value life and recognize that each person is more than their worst act.”

— Anthony Ray Hinton

27. “There’s no sadder place to be in this world than a place where there’s no hope.”

— Anthony Ray Hinton

28. “Time was a funny and strange and fluid thing, and I was going to bend it and shape it so that it wasn’t my enemy.”

— Anthony Ray Hinton

29. “There’s no racism on death row.”

— Anthony Ray Hinton

30. “Because there’s no way to know the exact second your life changes forever. You can only begin to know that moment by looking in the rearview mirror. And trust me when I tell you that you never, ever see it coming.”

— Anthony Ray Hinton

31. “My mama always told me that you get more flies with honey than with vinegar.”

— Anthony Ray Hinton

32. “No one can understand what freedom means until they don’t have it.”

— Anthony Ray Hinton

33. “Number one, you’re black. Number two, a white man gonna say you shot him. Number three, you’re gonna have a white district attorney. Number four, you’re gonna have a white judge. And number five, you’re gonna have an all-white jury.”

— Anthony Ray Hinton

34. “Despair was a choice. Hatred was a choice. Anger was a choice... I could choose to give up or to hang on. Hope was a choice. Faith was a choice. And more than anything else, love was a choice. Compassion was a choice.”

— Anthony Ray Hinton

35. “The death penalty is broken, and you are either part of the Death Squad or banging on the doors. Choose.”

— Anthony Ray Hinton

36. “The good old boys had traded in their white robes for black robes, but it was still a lynching.”

— Anthony Ray Hinton

37. “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons. – FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY.”

— Anthony Ray Hinton

38. “I was afraid every single day on death row. And I also found a way to find joy every single day. I learned that fear and joy are both a choice.”

— Anthony Ray Hinton

39. “Life is brutal, tragic, unbearable, and inhumane at times. The pain one man can cause another is limitless, but I didn’t see – I couldn’t see – how creating more pain made anything better. When you took a life, it didn’t bring back a life. It didn’t undo what was done. It wasn’t logical. We were just creating an endless chain of death and killing, every link connected to the next.”

— Anthony Ray Hinton

40. “But sometimes you have to make family where you find family.”

— Anthony Ray Hinton

41. “There was no past and no future on the row. We only had the moment we were in, and when you tried to survive moment to moment, there wasn’t the luxury of judgment.”

— Anthony Ray Hinton

42. “I’ve been praying to God for the DA, for this judge, and especially for the victims. You got to give an account for what you done, and it don’t matter to me, because if I can recall, Jesus was prosecuted, accused falsely for things he didn’t do, and all he did was try to love and save this world, and he died and suffered. If I have to die for something I didn’t do, so be it. My life is not in this judge’s hands. My life is not in your hands, but it’s in God’s hands.”

— Anthony Ray Hinton

43. “It was a gift to spend time in your mind away from your own reality.”

— Anthony Ray Hinton

44. “Loss and grief and a cold madness that defied words floated in the grime and filth that we were all coated in. Hell was real, and it had an address and a name. Death Row, Holman Prison. Where love and hope went to die.”

— Anthony Ray Hinton

45. “I would still pray for a miracle and try not to criticize it if the miracle didn’t look like what I expected.”

— Anthony Ray Hinton

46. “Freedom is a funny thing. I have my freedom, but in some ways, I am still locked down on the row. I know what day they are serving fish for dinner. I know when it’s visiting day and at what point the guys are walking in the yard. My mind goes back there every single day, and I realize it was easier for my mind to leave the row when I was inside than it is now that I’m free.”

— Anthony Ray Hinton

47. “My mind goes back there every single day, and I realize it was easier for my mind to leave the row when I was inside than it is now that I’m free.”

— Anthony Ray Hinton

48. “Maybe this is the plan. Maybe I was born to live most of my life in a five-by-seven so I could travel the world. I would have never won Wimbledon if I hadn’t gone to death row.”

— Anthony Ray Hinton

49. “How many sunrises and sunsets could one man miss in his life and still have a life?”

— Anthony Ray Hinton

50. “Martin Luther King once said, “A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent.”

— Anthony Ray Hinton