Innocent And Guilty Quotes & Sayings

I think that all of us, as Americans, are due due process and have a right to a fair trial, and have a right to be considered innocent until proven guilty. I think that is the American way and it's the foundation upon which this country was built. — Wesley Snipes

You cannot blame them for using such methods - after all, we all agree that guilty people (at least the dangerous ones) ought to be caught and put behind bars - but the problem is that these methods of calculated deception are too effective. They do not merely work on the guilty. At least some of these methods, it turns out, have proven to be just as effective in getting innocent people to make incriminating statements, and sometimes even outright confessions. Do — James Duane

Forgiveness, not for those who act in malice; those who plot with secrecy between shadows and the soul lost in the carnality of flesh ... but forgiveness for those whose circumstance renders them a slave. Whose life decisions imprisoned their fate; like an assassin sent to murder a wife. Business will always be business, we leave it once we depart this physicality and transcend into the next; however, what we cannot leave behind, is the truth of our intent. For the guilty shall be segregated from the innocent , and of the innocent, the righteous will be few — Alejandro C. Estrada

I worked as a prosecutor watching Catholic priests charged with sex abuse and saw firsthand how the 'circle the wagons' mentality revictimized the innocent, coddled the guilty, and made matters worse for everyone. — Christine Pelosi

Our Voice is our most powerful tool against these evil people who prey on the innocent, we should never be silent and let them continue to harm people. By being silent we are telling them it is "Okay to continue". I firmly believe if you choose to stand with those who wish to keep the victim silent you are yourself guilty of a crime against humanity
- Misty Griffin — Misty Griffin

A monster crosses over into the everyday world. The mortals struggle and show great courage, but it's no use. The monster kills first the guilty, then the innocent, until finally only one remains. The Last Boy, the Last Girl. There is a final battle. The Last One suffers great wounds, but in the final moment vanquishes the monster. Only later does he or she recognize that this is the monster's final trick; the scars run deep, and the awareness of the truth grows like an infection. The Last One knows that the monster isn't dead, only sent to the other side. There it waits until it can slip into the mundane world again. Perhaps next time it will be a knife-wielding madman, or a fanged beast, or some nameless tentacled thing. It's the monster with a thousand faces. The details matter only to the next victims. — Daryl Gregory

The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses. — Malcolm X

To those who abuse: the sin is yours, the crime is yours, and the shame is yours. To those who protect the perpetrators: blaming the victims only masks the evil within, making you as guilty as those who abuse. Stand up for the innocent or go down with the rest. — Flora Jessop

Don't deceive yourself. Everyone is guilty of something, and even the innocent can be a threat. Perhaps it takes small crimes to prevent bigger ones, Colonel West, but it's up to bigger men than us to decide. — Joe Abercrombie

It is significant that, as innocent babies are killed, and capital punishment is withheld from their murderers, the same men who plead for the murderer's life also demand the "right" to abortion. Usually, the same picketers that carry a sign one day, "Abolish Capital Punishment," also carry "Legalize Abortion" another day. When this is called to their attention, their answer is, "There is no contradiction involved." They are right: the thesis is "condemn the innocent and free the guilty. — Rousas John Rushdoony

If I owe a person money, and cannot pay him, and he threatens to put me in prison, another person can take the debt upon himself, and pay it for me. But if I have committed a crime, every circumstance of the case is changed. Moral justice cannot take the innocent for the guilty even if the innocent would offer itself. To suppose justice to do this, is to destroy the principle of its existence, which is the thing itself. It is then no longer justice. It is indiscriminate revenge. — Thomas Paine

Grace just is. Nobody can explain it, and it's not something you can deserve. Whether you recognize it or not, whether you feel grateful for it or not, it just is. Guilty or innocent, condemned or redeemed, when you think that you can't go on, and when you think you've already gone on, grace is wider and deeper than you think, and it can change far more that you ever imagined.
There is no place where anything begins or ends, but by grace, everything comes in it's time. — Maxine Clair

I am a star, a twinkling star. I'm an infant on the edge of a grave and an old man in a cradle, both a fish in the sky and a bird in the sea. I'm a boy on the outside but a girl on the inside, innocent in body, guilty in soul. — Fridrik Erlings

[This is] the basis of the Innocent Woman Defense the Innocent Woman Principle:;: Women are believed when they say they are innocent of violence and most easily doubted when they say they are guilty of violence. — Warren Farrell

Of course innocent mistakes occur but the accumulated insults and indignations caused by racial presumptions are destructive in ways that are hard to measure. Constantly being suspected, accused, watched, doubted, distrusted, presumed guilty, and even feared is a burden born by people of color that can't be understood or confronted without a deeper conversation about our history of racial injustice. — Bryan Stevenson

You cannot lay remorse upon the innocent nor lift it from the heart of the guilty. Unbidden shall it call in the night, that men may wake and gaze upon themselves. — Khalil Gibran

There's a reason survivors choose not to go to the police, and that's because they're treated as the criminals. The rapists are innocent until proven guilty, but survivors are guilty until proven innocent - at least in the eyes of the police. — Emma Sulkowicz

The answers to the human problems of ecology are to be found in economy. And the answers to the problems of economy are to be found in culture and character. To fail to see this is to go on dividing the world falsely between guilty producers and innocent consumers. — Wendell Berry

We are all the judges and the judged, victims of the casual malice and fantasy of others, and ready sources of fantasy and malice in our turn. And if we are sometimes accused of sins of which we are innocent, are there not also other sins of which we are guilty and of which the world knows nothing? — Iris Murdoch

Any government that supports, protects or harbours terrorists is complicit in the murder of the innocent and equally guilty of terrorist crimes. — George W. Bush

[Murder] doesn't concern the victim and the guilty only. It affects the innocent too. You and I are innocent, but the shadow of murder has touched us. We don't know how that shadow is going to affect our lives. — Agatha Christie

The West has to take a critical look at itself and examine the apparent double standards at work that allow it to attack Iraq for possessing weapons of mass destruction but not North Korea, whose leader shared Saddam Hussein's megalomaniacal qualities; that permit it to rail against Iran about nuclear weapons but be silent about Israel's arsenal; that allow it to only selectively demand enforcement of UN resolutions. The West has to own up to the mistakes it has made: such as with Abu Ghraib and the torture in Afghan prisons; in the errant attacks on civilians; in its disregard for the basic precept of a civilized legal system, which maintains that an accused person is innocent until proven guilty. — Kathy Gannon

There were moments when I hated everybody I came across, innocent or guilty, and looked at them as thieves who were robbing me of my life with impunity. The most unbearable misfortune is when you yourself become unjust, malignant, vile; you realize it, you even reproach yourself - but you just can't help it. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Some caricatures suggest that a conservative would be reluctant to represent a convicted murderer. That may be true, if the client is clearly guilty. Although every defendant deserves a lawyer, I've handled too many horrible criminal cases to have any interest in representing violent criminals. But John Thompson was innocent. And critical to supporting the death penalty is ensuring that we vigorously protect the innocent. DNA has enabled many guilty persons to be convicted, and it has proven the innocence of many others. — Ted Cruz

I'm not blessed, or merciful. I'm just me. I've got a job to do, and I do it. Listen: even as we're talking, I'm there for old and young, innocent and guilty, those who die together and those who die alone. I'm in cars and boats and planes; in hospitals and forests and abbatoirs. For some folks death is a release, and for others death is an abomination, a terrible thing. But in the end, I'm there for all of them. — Neil Gaiman

But you shouldn't have let her. That's the only way with these fanciful women that chaw high
innocent or guilty. She'd have come round in time. We all do! Custom does it! It's all the same in the end! However, I think she's fond of her man still
whatever he med be of her. You were too quick about her. I shouldn't have let her go! I should have kept her chained on
her spirit for kicking would have been broke soon enough! There's nothing like bondage and a stone-deaf taskmaster for taming us women. Besides, you've got the laws on your side. Moses knew. — Thomas Hardy

I used to wonder why God used a prop like the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil to inflict guilt on Adam&Eve, until I realized it could have been a steak or a plate of fries or a bagel. Anything. Making people feel guilty is a staple of religion and society in general. It works. And if you can transfer guilt from a real criminal to an innocent bystander, you've really got something going. It's a magic stage trick that can make a career. — Jon Rappoport

Be not the slave of your moods, but their master. But if you are so angry, so depressed and so sore that your spirit cannot find deliverance and peace even in prayer, then quickly go and give some pleasure to someone lowly or sorrowful, or to a guilty or innocent sufferer! Sacrifice yourself, your talent, your time, your rest to another, to one who has to bear a heavier load than you - and your unhappy mood will dissolve into a blessed, contented submission to God. — Rainn Wilson

The Pelagianizing Romanist says, Lust, or concupiscence, brings forth sin, therefore it cannot be sin, because the mother cannot be the child. We reply, Concupiscence brings forth sin, therefore it must be sin, because child and mother must have the same nature. The grand sophism of Pelagianism is the assumption that sin is confined to acts, that guilty acts can be the product of innocent condition, that the effect can be sinful, yet the cause free from sin
that the unclean can be brought forth from the clean. — Charles Porterfield Krauth

Nine of us now seem to feel that the defendant is innocent, but we're just gambling on probabilities. We may be wrong. We may be trying to return a guilty man to the community. No one can really know. But we have a reasonable doubt, and this is a safeguard that has enormous value in our system. No jury can declare a man guilty unless it's sure. We nine can't understand how you three are still so sure. Maybe you can tell us. — Reginald Rose

There is a presumption in favor of every existing institution. Many of these (we will suppose the majority) may be susceptible of alteration for the better; but still the "Burden of proof" lies with him who proposes an alteration; simply, on the ground that since a change is not a good in itself, he who demands a change should show cause for it. No one is called on . . . to defend an existing institution, till some argument is adduced against it; and that argument ought in fairness to prove, not merely an actual inconvenience, but the possibility of a change for the better. — David Potter

If we view our children as stupid, naughty, disturbed, or guilty of their misdeeds, they will learn to behold themselves as foolish, faulty, or shameful specimens of humanity. They will regard us as judges from whom they wish to hide, and they will interpret everything we say as further proof of their unworthiness. If we view them as innocent, or at least merely ignorant, they will gain understanding from their experiences, and they will continue to regard us as wise partners. — Polly Berrien Berends

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. — Bryan Stevenson

I have made the best and happiest ending that I can in this world, made it out of the flax and netting and leftover trim of someone else's life, I know, but made it to keep the innocent safe and the guilty punished, and I have made it as the world should be and not as I have found it. — Amy Bloom

We know the story of the Deluge from the Holy Scripture. Why did the first race of men come to such a tragic end? Because they had abandoned God and must die, guilty and innocent alike. They had only themselves to blame for their punishment. And it is the same today. — Wilm Hosenfeld

Trials are no longer about freeing the innocent, punishing the guilty, and making restitution to the injured. They have devolved into a contest over who will win. — Tammy Bruce

Let the guilty bury the innocent, and let no one change the evidence — Ian McEwan

Daily the Negro is coming more and more to look upon law and justice, not as protecting safeguards, but as sources of humiliation and oppression. The laws are made by men who have little interest in him; they are executed by men who have absolutely no motive for treating the black people with courtesy or consideration; and, finally, the accused law-breaker is tried, not by his peers, but too often by men who would rather punish ten innocent Negroes than let one guilty one escape. — W.E.B. Du Bois

Everything in this book is mostly true but some details have been changed to protect the guilty. I know it's usually about "protecting the innocent" but why would they need protection? They're innocent. And they're also not nearly as fun to write about as the guilty, who always have more fascinating stories and who make you feel better about yourself by comparison. — Jenny Lawson

Women ... They insist on being loving and kind and caring, and why do they do that? To make a man feel guilty, that's why. And then they lure innocent men who are busy with important scientific research into impregnating them, and then said busy men end up caring about said spawn. And these ladies smell good, too. Deliberately. The wenches. — Katie MacAlister

I understand now that the only time black people don't feel guilty is when we've actually done something wrong, because that relieves us of the cognitive dissonance of being black and innocent, and in a way the prospect of going to jail becomes a relief. — Paul Beatty

Martel seems to point to the fact that most people are engaged in forms of self-deception or revisionist history, reworking the narrative of their lives in order to see actions that were motivated by self-interest instead of motivated out of concern for others. ... So what is the "truth"? Martel's message is that it is impossible to ascertain. There is no neat binary. It is always just beyond our grasp - we are all capable of being both victims and victimizers, innocent and guilty, good and bad simultaneously — Melissa A. Fitch

My job as a prosecutor is to do justice. And justice is served when a guilty man is convicted and an innocent man is not. — Sonia Sotomayor

Time for bed. I held my fist out. One by one, my flock stacked theirs on top, and then we headed up into the trees to sleep the sleep of the innocent. Well, okay, maybe not so innocent. But the sleep of the much less guilty than others, for sure. — James Patterson

People make distinction between innocent and not guilty
PLL — Sarah Sheppard

In it's purest form, an act of retribution provides symmetry. The rendering payment of crimes against the innocent. But a danger on retaliation lies on the furthering cycle of violence. Still, it's a risk that must be met; and the greater offense is to allow the guilty go unpunished. — Emily Thorne

There are two kinds of Communists: the arrogant ones, who enter the fray hoping to make men out of the people and bring progress to the nation; and the innocent ones, who get involved because they believe in equality and justice. The arrogant ones are obsessed with power; they presume to think for everyone; only bad can come of them. But the innocents? The only harm they do is to themselves. But that's all they ever wanted in the first place. They feel so guilty about the suffering of the poor, and are so keen to share it, that they make their lives miserable on purpose. — Orhan Pamuk

You know what my father said about innocent clients? ... He said the scariest client a lawyer will ever have is an innocent client. Because if you fuck up and he goes to prison, it'll scar you for life ... He said there is no in-between with an innocent client. No negotiation, no plea bargain, no middle ground. There's only one verdict. You have to put an NG up on the scoreboard. There's no other verdict but not guilty."
Levin nodded thoughtfully.
"The bottom line was my old man was a damn good lawyer and he didn't like having innocent clients," I said. "I'm not sure I do, either. — Michael Connelly

That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer, is a Maxim that has been long and generally approved. — Benjamin Franklin

A bullet has no conscience to consult as it flies from the barrel of a gun. It doesn't feel the wind or the sun or the rain as it speeds toward its target. It penetrates the innocent and the guilty with equal intent and creates victims with the same enthusiasm with which it saves them from the bullets of others. — Bracken MacLeod

A man may commit sin and yet be ignorant of it, and fancy himself innocent when he is guilty ... We shall do well to remember that when we make our own miserably imperfect knowledge and consciousness the measure of our sinfulness, we are on very dangerous ground. — J.C. Ryle

People die of love. I'm one of the few who'll admit it. That doesn't mean it isn't true.
Take all the people who died yesterday, or last week, or last year. Subtract all the suicides and the so-called accidents of the brokenhearted. Take away the men who got blown away for being in the wrong bed at the wrong moment, the women in abusive marriages who died of cancer because they couldn't find any other exit from their lives. All the AIDS deaths except from the needles and the transfusions, the ones they call the innocent victims. Like if you have sex, you're guilty. Deserved just what you got.
Now tell me who all you've got left.
Without love the world would be overpopulated, except that without love it wouldn't be populated at all. Love giveth and love taketh away and all that crap. You'll probably say all those people died from the lack of love, but I say it's two sides of the same coin. So it's the same coin. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

Why, Miss Wyndham," Mr. Kent replied, looking as chaste and good as a debutante at her presentation to the Queen. "I think we can all agree it's fair to punish these guilty people feigning innocence every day of their lives, all while helping a wrongfully accused innocent. I would certainly never ask you, but I suspect you agree."

"You cannot simply blackmail people into liking me! — Tarun Shanker

Ah, I am the judge of dreams, and you are the judge of love. Well, I find you guilty of dreaming good dreams, and sentence you to a lifetime of working and suffering for the sake of your dreams. I only hope that someday you won't declare me innocent of the crime of loving you. — Orson Scott Card

Why should I not love her? Harry, I do love her. She is everything to me in life. Night after night I go to see her play. One evening she is Rosalind, and the next evening she is Imogen. I have seen her die in the gloom of an Italian Tomb, sucking the poison from her lover's lips. I have watched her wandering through the forest of Arden, disguised as a pretty boy in hose and doublet and dainty cap. She has been mad, and has come into the presence of a guilty king, and given him rue to wear, and bitter herbs to taste of. She has been innocent, and the black hands of jealousy have crushed her reed-like throat. I have seen her in every age and in every costume. Ordinary women never appeal to one's imagination. They are limited to their century. No glamour ever transfigures them. One knows their minds as easily as one knows their bonnets. One can always find them. There is no mystery in one of them. — Oscar Wilde

Earlier today Martha Stewart issued a statement saying 'I am innocent and will fight to clear my name.' Yeah, Martha then said 'I look forward to the day when people stop thinking I am guilty and get back to thinking I am cold and arrogant.' — Conan O'Brien

What a web deceit made, its strands strangling the innocent and the guilty alike. — Karleen Koen

Colon in particular had great difficulty with the idea that you went on investigating after someone had confessed. It outraged his training and experience. You got a confession and there it ended. You didn't go around disbelieving people. You disbelieved people only when they said they were innocent. Only guilty people were trustworthy. Anything — Terry Pratchett

Every second of every day, a man is the sum effect of every second that has touched him before; he routinely encounters influences that will produce changes and actions that he cannot begin to predict or understand. And yet to acknowledge the complexity of these causes and motives was not to disallow agency. In that, all men are equal, even the cloistered monk--equally innocent, equally guilty. A man is not wholly responsible for what he becomes, but he is absolutely accountable for who he is. — John Pipkin

Everyone is guilty of something, and everyone still harbors a memory of childhood innocence, no matter how many layers of life wrap around it. Humanity is innocent; humanity is guilty, and both states are undeniably true. — Neal Shusterman

I cannot subscribe to the perverted reasoning that society may advance and strengthen the rule of law by the expenditure of morally innocent lives but that progress in the law may never be made at the price of morally guilty lives. — Robert H. Jackson

She is everything to me in life. Night after night I go to see her play. One evening she is Rosalind, and the next evening she is Imogen. I have seen her the in the gloom of an Italian tomb, sucking the poison from her lover's lips. I have watched her wandering through the forest of Arden, disguised as a pretty boy in hose and doublet and dainty cap. She has been mad, and has come into the presence of a guilty king, and given him rue to wear, and bitter herbs to taste of. She has been innocent, and the black hands of jealousy have crushed her reed-like throat. I have seen her in every age and in every costume. Ordinary women never appeal to one's imagination. They are limited to their century. No glamour ever transfigures them. One knows their minds as easily as one knows their bonnets. One can always find them. There is no mystery in any of them: — Oscar Wilde

A new theory is guilty until proven innocent, and the pre-existing theory innocent until proven guilty ... Continental drift was guilty until proven innocent. — David M. Raup

[T]he guilty as well as the innocent are entitled to due process of law. They are entitled to a fair trial. They are entitled to counsel. They are entitled to fair treatment from the police. The law enforcement officer has the same duty as the citizen-indeed, he has a higher duty-to abide by the letter and spirit of our Constitution and laws. You yourselves must be careful to obey the letter of the law. You yourselves must be intellectually honest in the enforcement of the law. — Harry S. Truman

If being premenstrual is "innocence," does that make those of us with periods guilty? And this really gets to the heart of the matter: These concerns aren't about lost innocence; they're about lost girlhood. The virginity movement doesn't want women to be adults.

Despite the movement's protestations about how this focus on innocence or preserving virginity is just a way of protecting girls, the truth is, it isn't a way to desexualize them. It simply positions their sexuality as "good" - worth talking about, protecting, and valuing - and women's sexuality, adult sexuality, as bad and wrong. The (perhaps) unintended consequences of this focus is that girl's sexuality is sexualized and fetishized even further. — Jessica Valenti

The question in the Simpson case has never been whether he is guilty or not guilty but, given the facts and circumstances of this case, whether it is possible for him to be innocent. And the answer to that question has always been an unequivocal no. — Vincent Bugliosi

Court games aren't fair. They don't judge men by their worth, and they aren't about what's just. Guilty men can hold power their whole lives and be wept for when they pass. Innocent men can be spent like coins because it's convenient. You don't have to have sinned for them to ruin you. If your destruction is useful to them, you'll be destroyed. — Daniel Abraham

Righteous passion is an innocent prisoner
until the day you set it free.
Sinful passion is a guilty prisoner;
lock it up and throw away the key. — Matshona Dhliwayo

Secrets can kill the innocent and enchant the guilty. — Alexis Hurley

I believe that no one should be executed, guilty or innocent. There are appropriate sanctions that protect society and punish wrongdoers without forcing us to stoop to the level of the least among us at his or her worst moment. — Mike Farrell

A law of the Suspected, which struck away all security for liberty or life, and delivered over any good and innocent person to any bad and guilty one; prisons gorged with people who had committed no offence, and could obtain no hearing; — Charles Dickens

It is one thing to die. It is another thing for an innocent person to die for a guilty one. It is something much more that Jesus would take on himself all the curses the world deserved in concentrated form. This meant that his relationship with his Father, the one thing that had sustained him throughout all the previous insults and rejection, was about to be removed. Moses knew he could not lead the people through the wilderness unless God was present. Without his Father's grace and mercy, Jesus had to wonder if he would be able to take one more step, let alone make it all the way to the cross. So he prayed. The result was that he was strengthened. His mission came into full view (John 18:11), and he was able to see the divine plan to the end. From that point on, the gospel accounts communicate two unmistakable points. They press these points until we are undone by them: Jesus experienced incomparable shame, and he experienced it at the hands of everyone. — Edward T. Welch

It is better and more satisfactory to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent one to death. — Maimonides

This life is difficult. We lose fathers, brothers, mothers, songbirds and pieces of ourselves. Whips strike the innocent, honors go to the guilty, and there is too much loneliness. I would be a fool to pray for my children to escape all of that. Ask for too much and it might actually turn out worse. But I can pray for small things, like fertile fields, a mother's love, a child's smile - a life that's less bitter than sweet. — Nadia Hashimi

Until that moment I'd thought I could have it both ways; to be one of them, and also my husband's wife. What conceit! I was his instrument, his animal. Nothing more. How we wives and mothers do perish at the hands of our own righteousness. I was just one more of those women who clamp their mouths shut and wave the flag as their nation rolls off to conquer another in war. Guilty or innocent, they have everything to lose. They are what there is to lose. A wife is the earth itself, changing hands, bearing scars. — Barbara Kingsolver

To cut short the question of the law of retaliation, we must note that even in its primitive form it can operate only between two individuals of whom one is absolutely innocent, and the other absolutely guilty. The victim, to be sure, is innocent. But can the society that is supposed to represent the victim lay claim to innocence? — Albert Camus

For years I supported capital punishment, but I have come to believe that our criminal justice system is incapable of adequately distinguishing between the innocent and guilty. It is reprehensible and immoral to gamble with life and death. — James Frey

When one acts on pity against justice, it is the good whom one punishes for the sake of the evil; when one saves the guilty from suffering, it is the innocent whom one forces to suffer. There is no escape from justice, nothing can be unearned and unpaid for in the universe, neither in matter nor in spirit - and if the guilty do not pay, then the innocent have to pay it. — Ayn Rand

In an extroverted society, the difference between an introvert and an extrovert is that an introvert is often unconsciously deemed guilty until proven innocent. — Criss Jami

It's daft, locking us up," said Nanny. "I'd have had us killed."
"That's because you're basically good," said Magrat. "The good are innocent and create justice. The bad are guilty, which is why they invent mercy. — Terry Pratchett

I think the detective story is by far the best upholder of the democratic doctrine in literature. I mean, there couldn't have been detective stories until there were democracies, because the very foundation of the detective story is the thesis that if you're guilty you'll get it in the neck and if you're innocent you can't possibly be harmed. No matter who you are. — Rex Stout

America is a place of opportunity. It's people-friendly! Very much so, compared to the Muslim countries in the world. People looking for better lives flock to America because we as a society do not mutilate young girls' genitals, do not cut off people's hands for stealing. We do not stone people to death for committing adultery. We do not rape women and men for speaking up against our government. We do not forbid people to go to school and to learn because of their gender. We assume people are innocent until proven guilty. We give people the freedom to criticize our government and even burn our flag as an expression of speech. This is but a partial list of why America is superior in culture and values to many other countries in the world. This type of culture also thrives in Israel, the only Western-style nation in the Middle East, one that Arabs despise, feel threatened by, and vow to destroy. — Brigitte Gabriel

Dumbfounded, I stood before the court, trying to figure out if there was a state of being between "guilty" and "innocent." Why were those my only alternatives? I thought. Why couldn't I be "neither" or "both"? After a long pause, I finally faced the bench and said, "Your Honor, I plead human. — Paul Beatty

An absurd problem came to the surface: 'How COULD God permit that (crucifixion of Jesus Christ)!' ... the deranged reason of the little community found quite a frightfully absurd answer: God gave his Son for forgiveness, as a SACRIFICE ... The SACRIFICE FOR GUILT, and just in its most repugnant and barbarous form - the sacrifice of the innocent for the sins of the guilty! What horrifying heathenism! — Friedrich Nietzsche

When everything you love has been stolen from you, sometimes all you have left is revenge.Sometimes, the innocent get hurt. But one by one, the guilty will pay. Nothing ever goes exactly as you expect. And mistakes are life and death. Collateral damage is inescapable. — Emily Thorne

The children are innocent until proven guilty. For their sake, not ours, we must soldier on, muddling our way toward frugality, simplicity, liberty, community, until some kind of sane and rational balance is achieved between our ability to love and our cockeyed ambition to conquer and dominate everything in sight. No wonder the galaxies recede from us in every direction, fleeing at velocities that approach the speed of light. They are frightened. We humans are the Terror of the Universe. — Edward Abbey

We have no idea any more what it means to feel guilty. The communists have the excuse that Stalin misled them, murdurers have the excuse that their mothers didn't love them. And suddenly you come out and say: there is no excuse. No one could be more innocent in his soul and conscience than Oedipus, and yet he punished himself when he saw what he had done. — Milan Kundera

They [Federal Goverment] don't care if I am guilty or innocent. I serve their purpose in here. Other than what I have mentioned, what fear could they possibly have from a old man with dimming eyesight, arthritis, diabetes, and other health issues that render me hardly a threat to anyone. — Leonard Peltier

There's no blade sharper than the truth under the Sun, it's enlightens the mind, releases the captives, condemns the guilty and spares the innocent; it's the only weapon a hero ever needs to fight a war, the one which is conducted without a need of any Iron blade! — Marcus L. Lukusa

Ladies and gentlemen, Im going to prove to you not only that Freddy Quimby is guilty, but that he is also innocent of not being guilty — Lionel

Thus all civilian officials and military officers in the United States government who either knew or should have known that the Reagan administration intended to assassinate Qaddafi and participated in the bombing operation are "war criminals" according to the U.S. government's own official definition of that term. The American people should not have permitted any aspect of their foreign affairs and defense policies to be conducted by acknowledged "war criminals." They should have insisted upon the impeachment, dismissal, resignation, and prosecution of all U.S. government officials guilty of such war crimes. Nevertheless, U.S. public opinion had been so effectively brutalized by five years of Reaganism that over three-quarters of the American people rallied to the support of their demented leadership over the destruction, injuries, and death it had inflicted upon hundreds of innocent civilians in Tripoli and Benghazi. — Francis A. Boyle

I'm 17 years old. I'm not a straight-A student or anything. Even so, I figured out how to make an Internet that they can't wiretap. I figured out how to jam their person-tracking technology. I can turn innocent people into suspects and turn guilty people into innocents in their eyes. I could get metal onto an airplane or beat a no-fly list. I figured this stuff out by looking at the web and by thinking about it. If I can do it, terrorists can do it. They told us they took away our freedom to make us safe. Do you feel safe? — Cory Doctorow

I shall support the law, for the law gentlemen, is the firm and solid basis of civil society, the guardian of liberty, the protection of the innocent, the terror of the guilty, and the scourge of the wicked. — Charles Lawrence

The Christian is the man who no longer seeks his salvation, his deliverance, his justification in himself, but in Jesus Christ alone. He knows that God's Word in Jesus Christ pronounces him guilty, even when he does not feel his guilt, and God's Word in Jesus Christ pronounces him not guilty and righteous, even when he does not feel that he is righteous at all. The Christian no longer lives of himself, by his own claims and his own justification, but by God's claims and God's justification. He lives wholly by God's Word pronounced upon him, whether that Word declares him guilty or innocent. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I have ever had the single aim of justice in view. No judge who is influenced by any other consideration is fit for the bench. 'Do equal and exact justice,' is my motto, and I have often said to the grand jury, 'Permit no innocent man to be punished, but let no guilty man escape. — Isaac Parker

A "race to innocence" is what occurs when individuals assume that they are innocent of complicity in structures of domination and oppression.25 This concept captures the understandable assumption made by new immigrants or children of recent immigrants to any country. They cannot be responsible, they assume, for what occurred in their adopted country's past. Neither are those who are already citizens guilty, even if they are descendants of slave owners, Indian killers, or Andrew Jackson himself. Yet, in a settler society that has not come to terms with its past, whatever historical trauma was entailed in settling the land affects the assumptions and behavior of living generations at any given time, including immigrants and the children of recent immigrants. — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

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. Walter's case taught me that 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. I reflected on how mass imprisonment has littered the national landscape with carceral monuments of reckless and excessive punishment and ravaged communities with our hopeless willingness to condemn and discard the most vulnerable among us. — Bryan Stevenson

Guilty and innocent alike fell before the firing squads. In the mountains when government troops captured some of the alzados, the alzados would be shot down where they were captured, and doctors of forensic medicine would cut open their abdomens to try to find the rest of the guerrilla groups by seeing what the contents of the dead men's stomachs were and determining where such food might be found. — Armando Valladares

Don't misunderstand me. The terrorist actions of Al-Qaeda were and are unmitigatedly evil. But the astonishing naivety which decreed that America as a whole was a pure, innocent victim, so that the world could be neatly divided up into evil people (particularly Arabs) and good people (particularly Americans and Israelis), and that the latter had a responsibility now to punish the former, is a large-scale example of what I'm talking about - just as it is immature and naive to suggest the mirror image of this view, namely that the western world is guilty in all respects and that all protestors and terrorists are therefore completely justified in what they do. In the same way, to suggest that all who possess guns should be locked up, or (the American mirror-image of this view) that everyone should carry guns so that good people can shoot bad ones before they can get up to their tricks, is simply a failure to think into the depths of what's going on. — N. T. Wright

For years, the Bush Administration eviscerated all the military and legal structures that were designed to separate the innocent from the guilty in the 'Global War on Terror.' — Alex Gibney