Quotes About Innocence

I understand now that the only time black people don't feel guilty is when we've actually done something wrong, because that relieves us from the cognitive dissonance of being black and innocent.

Dumbfounded, I stood before the court, trying to figure out if there was a state of being between "guilty" and "innocent." Why were those my only alternatives? I thought. Why couldn't I be "neither" or "both"? After a long pause, I finally faced the bench and said, "Your Honor, I plead human.

I understand now that the only time black people don't feel guilty is when we've actually done something wrong, because that relieves us of the cognitive dissonance of being black and innocent, and in a way the prospect of going to jail becomes a relief.

Most people would be full of questions," said the youth. "It's the nature of innocence to question, the nature of duty to accept." "And it's the nature of age to be too sure of itself.

Irony is the attendant of hope and the fuel of hope is innocence.

Children are born pantheists. They see reality unshaped by culture or language. The whole world seems divine to them, full of mystery and power.

the heart of a child can take forty-nine blows before it's damaged for ever and what's done can never be undone.

As much as we prize our commitment to the individual and pay lip service to the presumption of innocence, it's the government's courthouse, the government's prosecutor, and the government's judge. Every time you go to trial, you are the Miami Dolphins playing an away game against the Patriots in a January blizzard.

I enjoyed school - although I ran away on the first day. I'd reminded the teacher that it was nearly time for 'Watch With Mother' on TV.

Douglass had to dismantle what Americans have always treasured most: their innocence, and the sense that their history was so exceptional that they had managed to avoid the problems other nations faced.

I think there's something great and generic about goldfish. They're everybody's first pet.

For eventually one gets over reality's affront to one's innocence. One grows accustomed to the melancholy fact that we all sell ourselves at one time or another, that whoring is the dirty little secret of our success as human beings.

There was no denying it. Boys grabbed him. Their loveliness tore him apart. The world was a wonder after all.

In the days before people asked questions of every innocent thing, before this relentless need to name, to label, to categorize. People had understood that life might be rich, complicated, ambiguous.

As children we accept magic as a normal part of life. Everything seems rooted in it, everything conspires in magic terms.

As long as you have capital punishment there is no guarantee that innocent people won't be put to death.

People say a lie is just a lie, but I say why deny the obvious child.

Nous sommes les Ingénues, Aux bandeaux plats, à l'œil bleu, Qui vivons, presque inconnues, Dans les romans qu'on lit peu.

Naivety can be a terrible thing. Jesus wept.

I had come alive here...this was my home, and though one day it would all trickle through my fingers like so much red dust, for as long as childhood lasted it was a heaven fitted exactly to me. A place I knew by heart. The one place in the world I'd been made for.

All I knew of men beyond farm life and work were the warm, confusing thoughts I sometimes had late at night now, about being touched or taken, thoughts that could make my cheeks hot even when I was alone in my hut.

the boy, who

would all trickle through my fingers like so much red dust, for as long as childhood lasted it was a heaven fitted

The small child walks to develop his powers, he is building up his being. He goes slowly. He has neither rhythmic step nor goal. But things around him allure him and urge him forward.