Maajid Nawaz Quotes

Instead of a man of peace and love, I have become a man of violence and revenge.

Justice is not Healing. Healing cometh only by suffering and patience, and maketh no demand, not even for Justice. Justice worketh only within the bonds of things as they are... and therefore though Justice is itself good and desireth no further evil, it can but perpetuate the evil that was, and doth not prevent it from the bearing of fruit in sorrow.

Ours is a nation that does not seek revenge.

I don't think vengeance is much good.

We do not celebrate the death of our enemies.

To me, I think justice is part of forgiving, if it is well done with love.

For me, forgiveness and compassion are always linked: how do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed?

I had the honor to meet Nelson Mandela, and I heard him explain his forgiveness of his captors of 27 years by saying hatred and bitterness is destructive - the power is in love and forgiveness.

I don't believe in vengeance. Really, when all is said and done, I probably don't believe in punishment.

Let’s open our hearts to [crime] victims and their families and give them something more than vengeance.

Forgiveness is better than revenge

The highest hallmark of a civilized society is not the rapidity by which it exacts vengeance, but its ability to hold victim and victimizer in its compassionate heart.

Too often, we think that, when we have a problem with our lives or our country, that the way to fix it is to take an eye for an eye. That doesn't help anything or anyone.

Today we have to learn all over again that love for the sinner and love for the person who has been harmed are correctly balanced if I punish the sinner in the form that is possible and appropriate.

What is forgiveness? An emotion? A coping mechanism? An element of deepest faith? A way for the heart and soul to combat the type of hate, anger, rage and a thirst for revenge that could ultimately consume a person? All of those and more?

I've learned powerful lessons about the nature of forgiveness from human rights defenders. For example, for the greater good of his country, Kofi Woods emerged from a torture chamber in Liberia to later defend the very men who had brutalized him.

When someone mistreats you, the correct reaction is not to go out and do something to destroy somebody else's property.

An eye for an eye leaves everybody blind.

The potential beauty of human life is constantly made ugly by man's ever recurring song of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever rising tides of revenge. Man has never risen above the injunction of the lex talionis: "Life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot." In spite of the fact that the law of revenge solves no social problems, men continue to follow its disastrous leading. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path.

We are to love our enemies that they might be returned to their right minds.

I am not the only one who did not want revenge. Almost all my colleagues in prison did not want revenge, because there is no time to do anything else except to try and save your people.

there is no glory in punishing

Healing cannot be done by settling a score.

Gandhi was right: if we all live by 'an eye for an eye' the whole world will be blind. The only way out is forgiveness.

There are some duties we owe even to those who have wronged us. There is, after all, a limit to retribution and punishment.