Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" I've never met an evil person ever. "

Related Quotes:

" Our best selves tell us that 'there but for the grace of God... ' and that, in the end, there is no distance, really, between us and them. It is just us. Our best and noble hope is to imitate the God we believe in. The God who has abundant room in God's grief and heart for us all. "

" We ought not to demonize a single gang member, and we ought not to romanticize a single gang. "

" I work with gang members, and I feel a kind of affinity and gift, even. But who would've thunk it, you know? I mean, I didn't anticipate it. "

" We lose our right to be surprised that California has the highest recidivism rate in the country if we refuse to hire folks who have taken responsibility for their crimes and have done their time. "

" We are among the handful of countries that has difficulty distinguishing juveniles from adults where crime is concerned. We are convinced that if a child commits an adult crime, that kid is magically transformed into an adult. Consequently, we try juveniles as adults. "

" God seems to be an unwilling participant in our efforts to pigeonhole Him. "

" We are less than honest and commit a grave error if we insist that what happened to Rodney G. King was isolated and an exceptional case. The poor know better. "

" I founded Homeboy Industries in 1988 after I buried my first young person killed in our streets because of gang violence. "

" Anyone who knows gangs knows that lawmakers cannot conceive of a law that would lead a hard-core gang member to 'think twice.' "

" I don't believe in mistakes. Everything belongs, and, as the homies say, 'It's all good.' "

" Kids are different from adults. They are not as developed as far as brain science, controlling impulses, and maturity, and fall prey to all kinds of pressures. "

" Reactive and proactive policing are both necessary. Still, we need to lower expectations that such efforts can ever be responsive to crime. "

" I don't save people. God saves people. I can point them in the right direction. I can say, 'There's that door. I think if you walked through it, you'd be happier than you are.' "

" You are so much more than the worst thing you've ever done. "

" Showing up in the lives of children is everything. "

" We need a pope to oversee not simply a modernization of the church but its total transformation. "

" Delegations from all over the world visit Homeboy Industries and scratch their heads as we tell them of our difficulty in placing our people in jobs after their time with us. Americans' seeming refusal to believe in a person's ability to redeem himself strikes these folks as foreign indeed. "

" We need not wait for further, well-placed home video cameras to see that low-intensity warfare is being waged against low-income minorities. We need only listen to the voices of the poor; they can testify that they are dehumanized, disparaged, and despised by the police. "

" Me wanting a gang member to have a different life would never be the same as that gang member wanting to have one. "

" You stand with the least likely to succeed until success is succeeded by something more valuable: kinship. You stand with the belligerent, the surly and the badly behaved until bad behavior is recognized for the language it is: the vocabulary of the deeply wounded and of those whose burdens are more than they can bear. "

" The margins don't get erased by simply insisting that the powers-that-be erase them. "

" The task of dealing comprehensively with gangs belongs to the city, not to law enforcement. "

Law Enforcement

" Businesses have come and gone at Homeboy Industries. We have had starts and stops, but anything worth doing is worth failing at. We started Homeboy Plumbing. That didn't go so well. Who knew? People didn't want gang members in their homes. I just didn't see that coming. "

" If the Los Angeles Police Department had enough officers, it could focus on one part of the community and stay there long enough to know and respect the people the officers are called on to protect and serve. "

" Dorothy Day, Cesar Chavez - these are people whose thoughts are so important. "

" Homeboy Industries has chosen to stand with the 'demonized' so that the demonizing will stop; it stands with the 'disposable' so that the day will come when we stop throwing people away. "

" We don't need a specialized gang unit. We need patrol officers who specialize in knowing their community. "

" We need the disruption of categories that lead us to abandon the difficult, the disagreeable, and the least likely to go very far. "

" Ours is a God who waits. So who are we not to? "

" People have started to see that 'smart on crime' rather than 'tough on crime' makes sense. "