Wrongful Quotes & Sayings

And though you know it's wrongful,
there is someone else you long for. — Lang Leav

Given the irreversibility of the death penalty, the possibility of a wrongful conviction can never be overstated — George Gascon

Leaving the criminal law on one side, what is the difference between the liability under the mill acts or statutes authorizing a taking by eminent domain and the liability for what we call a wrongful conversion of property where restoration is out of the question. In both cases the party taking another man's property has to pay its fair value as assessed by a jury, and no more. What significance is there in calling one taking right and another wrong from the point of view of the law? — Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

As president, I watched in wonder as Nelson Mandela had the remarkable capacity to forgive his jailers following 26 years of wrongful imprisonment - setting a powerful example of redemption and grace for us all. — George H. W. Bush

John 8:44 says Satan is a liar and the father of lies. He captures and conquers men's lives through his convincing lies, often nullifying good intentions with wrongful actions that seemed manly in the moment but in the end lacked the balancing power of clarity. — James MacDonald

It is a written fact that our people had warned of all these consequences of wrongful environmental behavior since our very first contact with the non-Indians. There was a time when our elders used to say to us, "You can't function with one foot in the white man's canoe and one foot in the Indian's canoe." With these extreme environmental concerns taking place on the earth, mankind is all in the same boat. Or better be. — Leonard Peltier

Eighty percent of global warming is the result of man's wrongful use of the resources of the planet and the dumping of millions upon millions of tons of nuclear and other waste in the world, creating great toxic areas all over our skies, our oceans, our rivers, and the earth. — Benjamin Creme

Solitude favors the original, the daringly and otherworldly beautiful, the poem. But it also favors the wrongful, the extreme, the absurd, and the forbidden. — Thomas Mann

It is not hateful to say that an immoral action is sinful. On the contrary, the most compassionate thing we can do is help people to turn away from sin. To ignore another person's wrongful actions is a sign of apathy or indifference, while fraternal correction is motivated by love for that person's well-being, as can be seen by the fact that our Lord Jesus himself urged such correction. Indeed, the call to repentance is at the heart of the Gospel, as Jesus proclaimed, "The Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the Good News" (Mark 1:15). — Thomas J. Paprocki

For though a man should be a complete unbeliever in the being of gods; if he also has a native uprightness of temper, such persons will detest evil in men; their repugnance to wrong disinclines them to commit wrongful acts; they shun the unrighteous and are drawn to the upright. — Plato

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

Misidentified eyewitness testimony was a factor in 77 percent of DNA exoneration cases, making it the leading cause of wrongful convictions in the United States. In 40 percent of cases, cross-racial identification was a factor. Studies show that people are less likely to recognize faces of a different race, making race a factor in wrongful convictions. — Cary McNeal

All the mistakes I've made,
That caused others pain,
I could have done without.
All my foolish pride,
The things I want to hide,
Have already been forgot.

They're all behind you,
They'll never find you,
They shall return no more.
... Sins are forgotten,
Sunk to the bottom,
Resting on the ocean floor.

My careless misdeeds,
All my thoughtless greeds,
Can only haunt me now.
They've been wiped away,
By a soul so brave,
And so they are no more.

My memories
My wrongful deeds
Have gone away forever more.
Sins are forgotten
Sunk to the bottom
Resting on the ocean floor. — Jose N. Harris

Have you given any thought to my offer?" Roberta asks her.
"I don't need to. I already gave you my answer."
"It's very noble to stand on principle and refuse an unwound spine," Roberta says. "It does, however, represent a wrongful mind-set that is neither productive nor adaptive. It's backward, actually, and it makes you part of the problem. — Neal Shusterman

In New England enslaved people had the right to sue for wrongful enslavement. — Manisha Sinha

The purpose of whistleblowing is to expose secret and wrongful acts by those in power in order to enable reform. — Glenn Greenwald

When the world is at peace, when all things are tranquil and all men obey their superiors in all their courses, then music can be perfected. When desires and passions do not turn into wrongful paths, music can be perfected. Perfect music has its cause. It arises from equilibrium. Equilibrium arises from righteousness, and righteousness arises from the meaning of the cosmos. Therefore one can speak about music only with a man who has perceived the meaning of the cosmos. — Hermann Hesse

This is not a problem peculiar to Oklahoma, far from it. Wrongful convictions occur every month in every state in this country, and the reasons are all varied and all the same - bad police work, junk science, faulty eyewitness identifications, bad defense lawyers, lazy prosecutors, arrogant prosecutors. — John Grisham

Wrongful convictions happen every week in every state in this country. And they happen for all the same reasons. Sloppy police work. Eyewitness identification is the most - is the worst type almost. Because it's wrong about half the time. Think about that. — John Grisham

There is a growing recognition that the death penalty simply can't work. It's a complex system that arbitrarily selects defendants for death and creates more stress and appeals, even as it is plagued by serious error. Each new exoneration reminds us of the unacceptable possibility of wrongful execution. — Robert Cecil Martin

It is recorded in the monastic rules that a monk once performed an abortion on a girl; the Buddha judged his action seriously wrong, which incurred him the highest offense in the monastic rule. A monk committing this kind of wrongful deed must be expelled from the monastic community. The Buddha considered the embryo to be a person like an adult, so the monk who killed the embryo through abortion was judged by Buddhist monastic rules as having committed a crime equal in gravity to killing an adult. In the commentary on the rule stated above, it is stated clearly that killing a human being means destroying human life from the first moment of fertilization to human life outside the womb. So, even though the Buddha himself did not give a clear-cut pronouncement about when personhood occurs, the Buddhist tradition, especially the Theravada tradition, clearly states that personhood starts when the process of fertilization takes place. — Soraj Hongladarom

Sometimes the facts of the crime are so distracting - there's been some tragic murder or horrific incident, and people aren't required to think as carefully and thoughtfully, and directly, about this legacy of racial inequality and structural poverty. And what it's contributing to these wrongful convictions. — Bryan Stevenson

The prosecution responsible for the many discrepancies in their work must be made to answer for them, for Raffaele's sake, my sake and most especially for the sake of Meredith's family. Our hearts go out to them. No matter what happens, my family and I will face this continuing legal battle as we always have, confident in the truth and with our heads held high in the face of wrongful accusations and unreasonable adversity. — Amanda Knox

Thanks to Edward Snowden and others, the great threat from the NSA surveillance is now more clearly understood. Current attacks on our liberties very greatly infringe the freedoms meant to be protected by the First and Fourth Amendments. If a whistle-blower reveals the truth about wrongful government actions, calls arise to charge him with treason for hating America. Allies become enemies when it becomes known that we spy on them as well, as it has now been revealed. — Ron Paul

Despite being discredited, the studies by Kanin and McDowell named above are still routinely cited on numerous websites dedicated to advancing the notion that American society suffers from an epidemic of spurious rape allegations by malicious women, resulting in the wrongful conviction of many thousands of innocent men. — Jon Krakauer

It finally happened - a lawsuit for wrongful doing unto others as you would have them do unto you. — Robert Breault

If both Gansey and Noah had been dying on the ley line at the same time, why had Gansey been chosen to live and Noah been chosen to die? By all rights, Noah's death was the more wrongful one: He had been murdered for no reason. Gansey had been stung by a death that had been dogging his steps for more than a decade.
"I think ... Cabeswater wanted to be awake," Noah said. "It knew I wouldn't do what needed to be done, and you would."
"It couldn't know that."
Noah shook his head again. "It's easy to know a lot of things when time goes around instead of straight. — Maggie Stiefvater

In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Who knows, perhaps she will think better of such hateful accusations. Perhaps someone will talk some sense into her before it becomes necessary to protect the Minister from her wrongful charges. Perhaps she will even decide that butchering work is not for her, and she will go off to work on a farm, or something. — Terry Goodkind

What is morally wrong can never be advantageous, even when it enables you to make some gain that you believe to be to your advantage. The mere act of believing that some wrongful course of action constitutes an advantage is pernicious. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

And that's the mission of The Innocence Project in New York, is to exonerate people who have been wrongfully convicted, and also work from a policy angle with Congress and state legislatures to prevent future wrongful convictions. — John Grisham

Torture is banned but in two-thirds of the world's countries it is still being committed in secret. Too many governments still allow wrongful imprisonment, murder or 'disappearance' to be carried out by their officials with impunity. — Peter Benenson

Maybe that's what Hell is, in the end. All of your wrongful shit played out there in front of you while you're being pumped from behind by someone you've hurt. That you've screwed over in life. Or worse, worse still...some person who doesn't really love you anymore. No one to ever look at again, make contact with. Just you being fucked as your life splashes out across this big headboard in the Devil's bedroom. Maybe. Even if that's not it, even if Hell is all fire and sulfur and that sort of thing, it couldn't be much worse than that. — Neil LaBute

Your friend Mikey knew what my touch could do, but he didn't tell me. He turned me into a murderer. Worse than a murderer."
"I think," said Nick, "they call that manslaughter or wrongful death, don't they? I mean, when it's an accident or out of ignorance, or something."
Clarence turned to Nick, studying him with his Everlost eye. "You're a lot smarter than you were back in the cage," Clarence said. "You look better too. Back then you were a thing, now you're almost a person."
"Thanks . . . but 'almost' is still 'almost.'"
"Yeah, well, we're all almost something. — Neal Shusterman

The wrongful arrest of tens of thousands of British Muslims after the September 11 attacks can be explained by the very poor intelligence the police had, and, just possibly, excused by the fact that a terrorist action in Britain linked to British Muslims would have been hugely damaging. — Geoff Mulgan

This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is 'actually' innocent. — Antonin Scalia

She'd been conceived as a goddess of justice. But this wasn't just.
It wasn't right.
And her husband's wrongful death would not go unavenged.
Kissing cold lips Bathymaas laid him on the ground and covered his body with her cloak.
Artemis gasped and shrank away from her as she rose to her feet and turned towards Apollo and his mother.
For this, there would be hell to pay.
And hers would be the hand that gathered the payment. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Some suffering is given in order to chastise and correct a person for wrongful patterns of life (as in the case of Jonah imperiled by the storm), some suffering is given not to correct past wrongs but to prevent future ones (as in the case of Joseph sold into slavery), and some suffering has no purpose other than to lead a person to love God more ardently for himself alone and so discover the ultimate peace and freedom. — Timothy Keller

in a democratic society, a wrongful practice persists only when most people don't perceive it to be unjust. — Peter Thiel

There is an hour, a minute - you will remember it forever - when you know instinctively on the basis of the most inconsequential evidence, that something is wrong. You don't know - can't know - that it is the first of a series of "wrongful" events that will culminate in the utter devastation of your life as you have known it. — Joyce Carol Oates

Before you condemn someone else for a wrongful act, check your behavior and see if you too, have committed an act similar or even worse than the act that person has done. Then you won't be in a position to judge. — Ellen J. Barrier

You think because you are born of light that you're somehow better and kinder than those who aren't, but you're not. It merely makes you feel entitled in your wrongful actions against others. But, you're no better than my mother. If anything you're worse because you think your viciousness is justified ... — Sherrilyn Kenyon