
“Conviction is worthless unless it is converted into conduct.”
Nationally syndicated column number 31, A Few Shots of Scopolamin (15 July 1923), after meeting Robert E. House, who had proposed the use of scopolamine as a truth serum, in The Use of Scopolamine in Criminology (1922).
Weekly columns
Context: See they conducted experiments on convicts... I don't know on what grounds they reason a man in jail is a bigger liar than one out of jail... The chances are telling the truth is what got him there... It would be a big aid to humanity, but it will never be, for already the politicians are up in arms against it... It would wreck the very foundation on which our political government is run... If you ever injected truth into politics you'd have no politics … Even the ministers are denouncing it now … Humanity is not yet ready for either real truth or real harmony.
“Conviction is worthless unless it is converted into conduct.”
“Conviction without experience makes for harshness.”
Source: The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor
“Never, "for the sake of peace and quiet," deny your own experience or convictions.”
Markings (1964)
State Department ceremony (2009-01-26), quoted in Robert Burns, "Obama's Mideast envoy brings record of patience," http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5i1hWov8APjI96ba4coEYQeeoavbAD95V7SK80 Associated Press (2009-01-27)
"Presidential Address to the First Indian Statistical Congress" https://www.gwern.net/docs/statistics/decision/1938-fisher.pdf, 1938. Sankhya 4, 14-17.
1930s
“I want to see a white man convicted for raping a black woman.”
«Toni Morrison: 'I want to see a white man convicted for raping a black woman'» by Oliver Laughland, The Guardian (20 April 2015) http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/apr/20/toni-morrison-race-relations-america-criminal-justice-system