"What Are Years?"
The Poems of Marianne Moore (2003)
Source: When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice
1770s, Boston Massacre trial (1770)
Context: It is more important that innocence be protected than it is that guilt be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world that they cannot all be punished.
But if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die, then the citizen will say, "whether I do good or whether I do evil is immaterial, for innocence itself is no protection," and if such an idea as that were to take hold in the mind of the citizen that would be the end of security whatsoever.
Draft for a Statement of Human Obligation (1943), Statement Of Obligations
Context: Whenever a human being, through the commission of a crime, has become exiled from good, he needs to be reintegrated with it through suffering. The suffering should be inflicted with the aim of bringing the soul to recognize freely some day that its infliction was just. This reintegration with the good is what punishment is. Every man who is innocent, or who has finally expiated guilt, needs to be recognized as honourable to the same extent as anyone else.
“The liberties of none are safe unless the liberties of all are protected.”
A Living Bill of Rights (1961), p. 64
Other speeches and writings
Brown : The Last Discovery of America (2003)
Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), Speech about the Orlando Shooting (June 13, 2016)
