I think my greatest usefulness lies in what I've had the opportunity to demonstrate -that the most "hopeless" criminal in existence can be salvaged; that he's worth salvaging, on both humanitarian and hard-headed social grounds. Retributive justice and the execution chamber aren't the answer. In seeking a solution to the crime problem, I believe that vision can and should be substituted for vengeance. I'm convinced that there is much that is narrow and negative and wrong in society's attitude toward and treatment of the man who is said to be at "war" with it, and who often is at war with himself.
Caryl ChessmanRelated topics
answer believe crime humanitarian justice man narrow opportunity problem seeking should vengeance vision war worth wrong liesRelated quotes
When you were a child, I loved you. I loved your grave face and the confidence with which you came to me, asking me to mend your broken toys. And then, after eight years' absence, you came again and sat here, and brought me the thoughts that were in your mind. And your mind, Renisenb, is not like the minds of the rest of your family. It does not turn in upon itself, seeking to encase itself in narrow walls. Your mind is like my mind, it looks over the River, seeing a world of changes, of new ideas - seeing a world where all things are possible to those with courage and vision...
Agatha Christie
For more than six hundred years-that is, since the Magna Carta in 1215-there has been no clearer principle of English or American constitutional law, than that, in criminal cases, it is not only the right and duty of juries to judge, what are the facts, what is the law, and what was the moral intent of the accused; but that it is also their right, and their primary and paramount duty, to judge the justice of the law, and to hold all laws invalid, that are, in their opinion, unjust, oppressive, and all persons guiltless in violating, or resisting the execution of, such laws.
Lysander Spooner
Man is motion toward the world and toward his like. A movement of aggression, which leads to enslavement or to conquest; a movement of love, a gift of self, the ultimate stage of what by common accord is called ethical orientation. Every consciousness seems to have the capacity to demonstrate these two components, simultaneously or alternatively. The person I love will strengthen me by endorsing my assumption of my manhood, while the need to earn the admiration or the love of others will erect a value-making superstructure on my whole vision of the world.
Frantz Fanon
If we ask how creatures [bees] that act so elaborately against their private advantage can have evolved, the answer lies in their mode of reproduction. Most workers are sterile. The unit of selection is normally the whole community. Its prosperity depends on the efficiency of the workers. An uncooperative strain would simply revert toward the solitary life these insects started from and in which many would still remain.. So it is natural to understand their evolution, as we would that of a plant, without reference to the plans or wishes of the individual bees.
Mary Midgley
Notwithstanding all the honor which this country has bestowed upon the living and all the reverence that has marked its attitude toward the dead who have served us in a military capacity, we are not a warlike Nation. As a people we have not sought military glory. Because of our fortunate circumstances, such wars as we have waged have been for the purpose of securing conditions under which peace would be more permanent, liberty would be more secure, and justice would be more certain. It was this principle that peculiarly characterized the forces who acknowledged as their commander in chief Abraham Lincoln.
Calvin Coolidge