Just Mercy (Adapted for Young Adults) Quotes

“My work has taught me a vital lesson. Each of us is more than the worse thing we've done. I am persuaded that the opposite of poverty is not wealth; the opposite of poverty is justice.”
― Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy (Adapted for Young Adults): A True Story of the Fight for Justice

“We are all implicated when we allow others to be mistreated. An absence of compassion can corrupt the decency of a community, a state, an entire nation. Fear and anger can make us cruel and abusive. We all suffer from the absence of mercy and we harm ourselves as much as we victimize others.”
― Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy (Adapted for Young Adults): A True Story of the Fight for Justice

“You can't effectively fight abusive power, poverty, inequality, illness, oppression, or injustice and not be broken by it. 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.”
― Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy (Adapted for Young Adults): A True Story of the Fight for Justice

“I've come to believe that the true measure of our commitment to justice, fairness, and equality cannot be measured by how we treat the rich, the respected, and the privileged among us. The true measure of our character is how we treat the poor, the disfavored, the accused, the incarcerated, and the condemned.”
― Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy (Adapted for Young Adults): A True Story of the Fight for Justice

“I decided that I was supposed to be here to catch some of the stones people cast at each other.
...
I told them we have to be stonecatchers.”
― Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy (Adapted for Young Adults): A True Story of the Fight for Justice

“I am more than broken. In fact, there is a strength, a power even, in understanding brokenness. Embracing our brokenness creates a desire for mercy, and perhaps a need to show mercy to others, too. When you experience mercy, you begin to recognize the humanity that resides in each of us.”
― Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy (Adapted for Young Adults): A True Story of the Fight for Justice

“I told the congregation that Walter’s case had taught me that the death penalty is not about whether people deserve to die for the crimes they commit. The real question of capital punishment in this country is Do we deserve to kill?”
― Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy (Adapted for Young Adults): A True Story of the Fight for Justice

“It seems to me that we’ve been quick to celebrate the achievements of the civil rights movement and slow to recognize the lasting damage of marginalization and subordination done in that era.”
― Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy (Adapted for Young Adults): A True Story of the Fight for Justice

“In fact, there is a strength, a power even, in understanding brokenness. Embracing our brokenness creates a desire for mercy, and perhaps a need to show mercy to others, too. When you experience mercy, you begin to recognize the humanity that resides in each of us.”
― Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy (Adapted for Young Adults): A True Story of the Fight for Justice

“We are all implicated when we allow other people to be mistreated. An absence of compassion can corrupt the decency of a community, a state, an entire nation. Fear and anger can make us cruel and abusive. We all suffer from the absence of mercy and we harm ourselves as much as we victimize others. The closer we get to mass incarceration and extreme levels of punishment, the more I believe it’s necessary to recognize that we all need mercy, we all need justice, and—perhaps—we all need some measure of unmerited grace.”
― Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy (Adapted for Young Adults): A True Story of the Fight for Justice

“We’ve sent a quarter million kids, some under the age of twelve, to adult jails and prisons. For years, we’ve been the only country in the world that condemns children to life imprisonment without parole.”
― Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy (Adapted for Young Adults): A True Story of the Fight for Justice

“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. To be clear, these numbers reflect who is being convicted and incarcerated, not who is necessarily committing crimes.”
― Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy (Adapted for Young Adults): A True Story of the Fight for Justice

“You can’t understand most of the important things from a distance, Bryan. You have to get close,” she told me often.”
― Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy (Adapted for Young Adults): A True Story of the Fight for Justice

“It seems to me that we've been quick to celebrate the achievements of the civil rights movement and slow to recognize the lasting damage of marginalization and subordination done...”
― Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy (Adapted for Young Adults): A True Story of the Fight for Justice

“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, Just Mercy (Adapted for Young Adults): A True Story of the Fight for Justice

“The power of just mercy is that it belongs to the undeserving. It's when mercy is least expected that it's most powerful.”
― Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy (Adapted for Young Adults): A True Story of the Fight for Justice