Lynne Stewart quotes:

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  • I don't have any problem with Mao or Stalin or the Vietnamese leaders or certainly Fidel locking up people they see as dangerous. Because so often, dissidence has been used by the greater powers to undermine a people's revolution.

  • I got a job as a children's librarian at PS 175 in Harlem, and that changed everything. That was an epiphany. I didn't know Harlem existed. I didn't know there was such a place, because I grew up in white Queens, where five miles is 100 miles.

  • You're working not for the corporate interest, not for the government interest, not for your own self-interest. You have a higher calling.

  • I would never defend a cop - though I did on a few private cases, when cops were acting not as cops but as private citizens.

  • My anti-authoritarian instincts let me directly to criminal defense work.

  • If you make a mistake as a prosecutor, your mistakes go home, whereas if you make a mistake defending, they go to jail.

  • I couldn't add my talent, which is prodigious, to a defense of someone even accused of hurting a child.

  • I took anything that came across my doorstep. I started getting a reputation.

  • I would never take a case that had to do with abusing children. They're the true innocents.

  • I'm particularly committed to the political people who needed defense. I understand that they're fighting a bigger war than just, "Let me go get some money for cocaine tonight."

  • Lawyering is very individualistic. There are lawyers who are going to be that persistent birddog, they're never going to give up on the client, they're going to defend people.

  • Put the strong, masculine figure in a school with tough kids and you have a certain control. It's very demeaning to the kids and very demeaning to the tough, black guy, but that's how they worked it.

  • The only thing we have is each other.

  • The only way not to be afraid is to join with other people who are also afraid.

  • The prosecution makes all the important decisions: what's charged, how much is charged, whether you can get a decent offer. Every defendant becomes an informant today.

  • There are lawyers who believe in client-centered representation and who are dedicated on the same level I feel I was dedicated.

  • There's a lot of active radical thought today but not much action.

  • Your goal is to make a better world through the work you do. It's not always possible, and you have to earn a living.

  • You've got to learn to handle the press because god knows the government does all the time.

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