D.E. Stevenson Quotes

Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.

You ultimately judge the civility of a society not by how it treats the rich, the powerful, the protected and the highly esteemed, but by how it treats the poor, the disfavored and the disadvantaged.

We have a system of justice in [the US] that treats you much better if you're rich and guilty than if you're poor and innocent. Wealth, not culpability, shapes outcomes.

You don’t change the world with the ideas in your mind, but with the conviction in your heart.

Somebody has to stand when other people are sitting. Somebody has to speak when other people are quiet.

The opposite of poverty is not wealth. I don't believe that. I actually think, in too many places, the opposite of poverty is justice.

The true measure of our character is how we treat the poor, the disfavored, the accused, the incarcerated, and the condemned.

Each of us is more than the worst thing we've ever done.

We live in a country that talks about being the home of the brave and the land of the free, and we have the highest incarceration rate in the world.

You can give without loving, but you can never love without giving.

I don't think there's been a time in American history with more innocent people in prison.

Always do the right thing even when the right thing is the hard thing

We are all travelers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend.

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.

A friend is a gift you give yourself.

We've all been acculturated into accepting the inevitability of wrongful convictions, unfair sentences, racial bias, and racial disparities and discrimination against the poor.

Whenever society begins to create policies and laws rooted in fear and anger, there will be abuse and injustice.

Do not measure success by today's harvest. Measure success by the seeds you plant today.

Make the most of the best and the least of the worst.

An aim in life is the only fortune worth finding.

I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.

We all have a responsibility to create a just society

Nothing more strongly arouses our disgust than cannibalism, yet we make the same impression on Buddhists and vegetarians, for we feed on babies, though not our own.

It is better to lose health like a spendthrift than to waste it like a miser.

When a torrent sweeps a man against a boulder, you must expect him to scream, and you need not be surprised if the scream is sometimes a theory.

Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm.

I remember the day I found out my draft status. I was really floored and kind of staggered around in a daze. It just hadn't occurred to me that I could end up in Vietnam

To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.

My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.

You are never lost when you can see the temple.

Everybody, soon or late, sits down to a banquet of consequences.

But simply punishing the broken--walking away from them or hiding them from sight--only ensures that they remain broken and we do, too. There is no wholeness outside of our reciprocal humanity.

To love is the great amulet that makes this world a garden.

The person who has stopped being thankful has fallen asleep in life.

Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.

I will make you brooches and toys for your delight Of bird-song at morning and star-shine at night. I will make a palace fit for you and me Of green days in forests and blue days at sea.

A generous prayer is never presented in vain; the petition may be refused, but the petitioner is always, I believe, rewarded by some gracious visitation.

The first two pictures I did, I played a young student in prep school. When I did Lifeguard, everyone was saying, You're so Southern California. It was a surprise to me

Everyone lives by selling something.

The Devil, can sometimes do a very gentlemanly thing.

You can't demand truth and reconciliation. You have to demand truth - people have to hear it, and then they have to want to reconcile themselves to that truth.

You can tell the size of a man by the size of the thing that makes him mad.

You think dogs will not be in heaven? I tell you, they will be there long before any of us.

I have seen wicked men and fools, a great many of both; and I believe they both get paid in the end; but the fools first.

If a man loves the labour of his trade, apart from any question of success or fame, the gods have called him.

Jekyll had more than a father's interest; Hyde had more than a son's indifference.

Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a poor substitute for life.

Fiction is to the grown man what play is to the child; it is there that he changes the atmosphere and tenor of his life.

The cruelest lies are often told in silence.

I could be happy doing something like architecture. It would involve another couple of years of graduate school, but that's what I studied in college. That's what I always wanted to do.