Top 250 Bryan Stevenson Quotes (2026 Update)
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151. “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

152. “Oh, I think we can always do better,” I told him. “The bad things that happen to us don’t define us. It’s just important sometimes that people understand where we’re coming from.” We were both speaking softly to one another. Another officer walked by and stared at us. I went on: “You know, I really appreciate you saying to me what you just said. It means a lot, I really mean that. Sometimes I forget how we all need mitigation at some point.”

— Bryan Stevenson

153. “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

154. “A 2011 poll of Mississippi Republicans found that 46 percent support a legal ban on interracial marriage, 40 percent oppose such a ban, and 14 percent are undecided.”

— Bryan Stevenson

155. “South during the Civil Rights Era. It was during this time that the birthday of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, was added as a holiday in Alabama. Even today, banks, state offices, and state institutions shut down in his honor.”

— Bryan Stevenson

156. “In the 1950s and 1960s, civil rights activism and new federal laws inspired the same resistance to racial progress and once again led to a spike in the use of Confederate imagery. In fact, it was in the 1950s, after racial segregation in public schools was declared unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education, that many Southern states erected Confederate flags atop their state government buildings.”

— Bryan Stevenson

157. “You’ve got to beat the drum for justice.”

— Bryan Stevenson

158. “One of the country’s least-discussed postwar problems is how frequently combat veterans bring the traumas of war back with them and are incarcerated after returning to their communities.”

— Bryan Stevenson

159. “My parents lived in a poor rural community on the Eastern Shore, and schools were still segregated. And I remember when lawyers came into our community to open up the public schools to black kids.”

— Bryan Stevenson

160. “I was uncertain about what I wanted to do with my life, but I knew it would have something to do with the lives of the poor, America’s history of racial inequality, and the struggle to be equitable and fair with one another. It would have something to do with the things I’d already seen in life so far and wondered about, but I couldn’t really put it together in a way that made a career path clear.”

— Bryan Stevenson

161. “In a landscape littered with all of this imagery about the nobility of the Civil War and the Confederate effort and struggle, the absence of markers says something really powerful.”

— Bryan Stevenson

162. “Constantly being suspected, accused, watched, doubted, distrusted, presumed guilty, and even feared is a burden borne by people of color that can’t be understood or confronted without a deeper conversation about our history of racial injustice.”

— Bryan Stevenson

163. “Between 1990 and 2005, a new prison opened in the United States every ten days.”

— Bryan Stevenson

164. “Finally I got to the point where I said, I’d like to start a project where we can actually talk about race and poverty, not through the lens of a particular case, but much more broadly.”

— Bryan Stevenson

165. “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

166. “Finally, I’ve come to believe that the true measure of our commitment to justice, the character of our society, our commitment to the rule of law, fairness, and equality cannot be measured by how we treat the rich, the powerful, the privileged, and the respected among us.”

— Bryan Stevenson

167. “Walter had taught me that mercy is just when it is rooted in hopefulness and freely given. Mercy is most empowering, liberating, and transformative when it is directed at the undeserving. The people who haven’t earned it, who haven’t even sought it, are the most meaningful recipients of our compassion. Walter genuinely forgave the people who unfairly accused him, the people who convicted him, and the people who had judged him unworthy of mercy.”

— Bryan Stevenson

168. “Walter told me that it was working from morning until night, being outdoors, that made him feel normal again. Then one afternoon, tragedy struck. He was cutting a tree when a branch dislodged and struck him, breaking his neck. It was a serious injury that left Walter in very poor condition for several weeks. He didn’t have a lot of care available, so he came to live with me in Montgomery for several months until he recovered.”

— Bryan Stevenson

169. “While these reforms were desperately needed, deinstitutionalization intersected with the spread of mass imprisonment policies – expanding criminal statutes and harsh sentencing – to disastrous effect.”

— Bryan Stevenson

170. “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... 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.”

— Bryan Stevenson

171. “Whenever things got really bad, and they were questioning the value of their lives, I would remind them that each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done. I told them that if someone tells a lie, that person is not just a liar. If you take something that doesn’t belong to you, you are not just a thief. Even if you kill someone, you’re not just a killer. I told myself that evening what I had been telling my clients for years. I am more than broken.”

— Bryan Stevenson

172. “The privatization of prison health care, prison commerce, and a range of services has made mass incarceration a money-making windfall for a few and a costly nightmare for the rest of us.”

— Bryan Stevenson

173. “Thousands of women have been sentenced to lengthy terms in prison for writing bad checks or for minor property crimes that trigger mandatory minimum sentences.”

— Bryan Stevenson

174. “I am more than broken. In fact, there is a strength, a power even, in understanding brokenness, because embracing our brokenness creates a need and desire for mercy, and perhaps a corresponding need to show mercy.”

— Bryan Stevenson

175. “I continue to meet stone catchers along the way who inspire me and make me believe that we can do better than we’ve done for the accused, convicted, and condemned among us – as well as those who are victimized by crime and violence – and that all of us can do better for one another. The work continues.”

— Bryan Stevenson

176. “I thought of the victims of violent crime and the survivors or murdered loved ones, and how we’ve pressured them to recycle their pain and anguish and give it back to the offenders we prosecute. I thought of the many ways we’ve legalized vengeful and cruel punishments, how we’ve allowed our victimization to justify the victimization of others.”

— Bryan Stevenson

177. “They were legally condemned children hidden away in adult prisons, largely unknown and forgotten, preoccupied with surviving in dangerous, terrifying environments with little family support or outside help. They weren’t exceptional. There were thousands of children like them scattered throughout prisons in the United States – children who had been sentenced to life imprisonment without parole or other extreme sentences.”

— Bryan Stevenson

178. “Sometimes I forget how we all need mitigation at some point.”

— Bryan Stevenson

179. “We’re supposed to sentence people fairly after fully considering their life circumstances, but instead we exploit the inability of the poor to get the legal assistance they need – all so we can kill them with less resistance.”

— Bryan Stevenson

180. “I thought of the people who would cheer his death and see it as some kind of victory. I realized they were broken people, too, even if they would never admit it. So many of us have become afraid and angry.”

— Bryan Stevenson

181. “By the late 1980s and early 1990s, the politics of fear and anger sweeping the country and fueling mass incarceration was turning its attention to children.”

— Bryan Stevenson

182. “I frequently had difficult conversations with clients who were struggling and despairing over their situations – over the things they’d done, or had been done to them, that had led them to painful moments. Whenever things got really bad, and they were questioning the value of their lives, I would remind them that each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.”

— Bryan Stevenson

183. “We are all implicated when we allow other people to be mistreated.”

— Bryan Stevenson

184. “Ms. Parks leaned back, smiling. “Oooh honey, all that’s going to make you tired, tired, tired.” We all laughed, I looked down, a little embarrassed. Then Ms. Carr leaned forward and put her finger in my face and talked to me just like my grandmother used to talk to me. She said, “That’s why you’ve got to be brave, brave, brave.”

— Bryan Stevenson

185. “I do what I do because I’m broken, too.”

— Bryan Stevenson

186. “Your Honor, I just want to say this before we adjourn. It was far too easy to convict this wrongly accused man for murder and send him to death row for something he didn’t do and much too hard to win his freedom after proving his innocence. We have serious problems and important work that must be done in this state.”

— Bryan Stevenson

187. “Injustice is easy not to notice when it affects people different from ourselves; that helps explain the obliviousness of our own generation to inequity today.”

— Bryan Stevenson

188. “I didn’t deserve reconciliation or love in that moment, but that’s how mercy works. The power of just mercy is that it belongs to the undeserving.”

— Bryan Stevenson

189. “The fourth institution is mass incarceration. Going into any prison is deeply confusing if you know anything about the racial demographics of America. The extreme overrepresentation of people of color, the disproportionate sentencing of racial minorities, the targeted prosecution of drug.”

— Bryan Stevenson

190. “Presumptions of guilt, poverty, racial bias, and a host of other social, structural, and political dynamics have created a system that is defined by error, a system in which thousands of innocent people now suffer in prison.”

— Bryan Stevenson

191. “I couldn’t help but ask myself, Where were these people when he really needed them? Where were all of these helpful people when Herbert was three and his mother died? Where were they when he was seven and trying to recover from physical abuse? Where were they when he was a young teen struggling with drugs and alcohol? Where were they when he returned from Vietnam traumatized and disabled?”

— Bryan Stevenson

192. “The people who haven’t earned it, who haven’t even sought it, are the most meaningful recipients of our compassion.”

— Bryan Stevenson

193. “The signs gave a silent voice to the crowd: ‘Welcome Home, Johnny D,’ ‘God Never Fails,’ ‘Free at Last, Thank God Almighty, We Are Free at Last.”

— Bryan Stevenson

194. “His struggle to form words and his determination to express gratitude reinforced his humanity for me, and it made thinking about his impending execution unbearable. Why couldn’t they see it, too?”

— Bryan Stevenson

195. “Do you have children?” He looked up at me expectantly. “No, I don’t have children. I have nieces and nephews, though.” “What is your favorite color?” He once again smiled eagerly. I chuckled, since I don’t have a favorite color. But I wanted to respond to him. “Brown.” “Okay, my last question is the most important.” He looked up at me briefly with big eyes and smiled. He then became serious and read his question. “Who is your favorite cartoon character?” He was beaming when he looked at me.”

— Bryan Stevenson

196. “We are all broken by something. We have all hurt someone and have been hurt. We all share the condition of brokenness even if our brokenness is not equivalent. The ways in which I have been hurt – and have hurt others – are different from the ways Jimmy Dill suffered and caused suffering. But our shared brokenness connected us.”

— Bryan Stevenson

197. “The Supreme Court had banned the execution of people with intellectual disability, but states like Alabama refused to assess in any honest way whether the condemned are disabled. We’re supposed to sentence people fairly after fully considering their life circumstances, but instead we exploit the inability of the poor to get the legal assistance they need – all so we can kill them with less resistance.”

— Bryan Stevenson

198. “Today we have the highest rate of incarceration in the world. The prison population has increased from 300,000 people in the early 1970s to 2.3 million people today. There are nearly six million people on probation or on parole. One in every fifteen people born in the United States in 2001 is expected to go to jail or prison; one in every three black male babies born in this century is expected to be incarcerated.”

— Bryan Stevenson

199. “Not that pie in the sky stuff, not a preference for optimism over pessimism, but rather “an orientation of the spirit.” The kind of hope that creates a willingness to position oneself in a hopeless place and be a witness, that allows one to believe in a better future, even in the face of abusive power. That kind of hope makes one strong.”

— Bryan Stevenson

200. “Being close to suffering, death, executions, and cruel punishments didn’t just illuminate the brokenness of others; in a moment of anguish and heartbreak, it also exposed my own brokenness. You can’t effectively fight abusive power, poverty, inequality, illness, oppression, or injustice and not be broken by it.”

— Bryan Stevenson