Bryan Stevenson Quotes

What we call wisdom is the result of all the wisdom of past ages. Our best institutions are like young trees growing upon the roots of the old trunks that have crumbled away.

I think the history and the past we have is just an energy we've built up to do what we do now.

It takes an endless amount of history to make even a little tradition.

The dead and past stories that I have told again in divers fashions, are not set down without authority.

I'm trying to get to a deep future, but in order to get to a deep future, I had to think about the deep past.

For Africa to me... is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place.

Read about history, and you become aware that nothing starts with us.

I think a lot of what I was taught, gathered, and learned is worth keeping. Heritage and "wisdom" and simply personal family and local history enrich the one able to tap such information. As it is I wish I had garnered more from my grandparents and parents.

We move through places every day that would never have been if not for those who came before us. Our workplaces, where we spend so much time--we often think they began with our arrival. That's not true.

I want everybody to find meaning in whatever they do. That's the only purpose to life, actually. Let that meaning be so strong that you can't not wake up every day and be like, "Yep, this is what I gotta do, let's keep it moving" and not be disgruntled about it, and start using other people as excuses for why you're not creating a better life for yourself.

Aboriginal people have much to celebrate in this country's British heritage

Tap into people's dignity and they will do anything for you. Ignore it, and they won't lift a finger.

One of the greatest gifts we can give to another generation is our experience, our wisdom.

What disturbs or assures us about race has very little to do with blood or biology. Race is about how you use language, understand your heritage, interpret your history, identify with your kin, figure out what your meaning and worth to a society that places values on you beyond your control. And it's also about what people see you as - or take you to be.

The most unhappy people in the world are those who face the days without knowing what to do with their time. But if you have more projects than you have time for, you are not going to be an unhappy person. This is as much a question of having imagination and curiosity as it is of actually making plans.

If you can't get out of bed for long enough, people come and take your bed away

Just as a tree without roots is dead, a people without history or cultural roots also becomes a dead people.

I love museums, and I think they're fantastic, but they don't touch the people who I frequently think need to be touched with at least some reminder of legacy.

The sad fact is that people are poor because they have not yet decided to be rich. People are overweight and unfit because they have not yet decided to be thin and fit. People are inefficient time wasters because they haven't yet decided to be highly productive in everything they do.

If we as a people realized the greatness from which we came we would be less likely to disrespect ourselves.

Time is an enormous, long river, and I’m standing in it, just as you’re standing in it. My elders are the tributaries, and everything they thought and every struggle they went through and everything they gave their lives to, and every song they created, and every poem that they laid down flows down to me – and if I take the time to ask, and if I take the time to see, and if I take the time to reach out, I can build that bridge between my world and theirs. I can reach down into that river and take out what I need to get through this world

People often say that stress is a motivator. What we're referring to when we say this is really better described as stimulation and engagement.

Power is knowing your past.

If history is really relevant in today's world, the proposition doesn't command much respect. Perhaps the past is a different country, but if so no one much wants to travel there.

A wisdom deficit - fewer elders and even fewer people who listen to them.