10 of the Best Quotes From The Truths We Hold by Kamala Harris

The Truths We Hold by Kamala Harris is Kamala Harris’s memoir. It is one of the most interesting books I’ve read recently. Here are some of my favorite excerpts. I hope you find them as thought-provoking as I did.

1. “Local officials don’t have the ability to make national policy. They have no authority beyond their jurisdiction. But when they land on good ideas, even on a small scale, they can create examples that others can replicate.”
2. “But when you can’t sleep at night, how can you dream?”
3. “A patriot is not someone who condones the conduct of our country whatever it does. It is someone who fights every day for the ideals of the country, whatever it takes.”
4. “Democracy just cannot flourish amid fear. Liberty cannot bloom amid hate. Justice cannot take root amid rage. America must get to work. . . . We must dissent from the indifference. We must dissent from the apathy. We must dissent from the fear, the hatred, and the mistrust.”
5. “In the years to come, what matters most is that we see ourselves in one another’s struggles. p 120”
6. “My daily challenge to myself is to be part of the solution, to be a joyful warrior in the battle to come. My challenge to you is to join that effort. To stand up for our ideals and our values. Let’s not throw up our hands when it’s time to roll up our sleeves. Not now. Not tomorrow. Not ever.
7. “In this country, you are innocent until proven guilty and — unless you are a danger to others or highly likely to flee the jurisdiction — you shouldn’t have to sit in jail waiting for your court date. This is the basic premise of due process: you get to hold on to your liberty unless and until a jury convicts you and a judge sentences you. It’s why the Bill of Rights explicitly prohibits excessive bail. That’s what justice is supposed to look like. What it should not look like is the system we have in America today. The median bail in the United States is $10,000. But in American households with an income of $45,000, the median savings account balance is $2,530. The disparity is so high that at any given time, roughly nine out of ten people who are detained can’t afford to pay to get out. By its very design, the cash bail system favors the wealthy and penalizes the poor. If you can pay cash up front, you can leave, and when your trial is over, you’ll get all of your money back. If you can’t afford it, you either languish in jail or have to pay a bail bondsman, which costs a steep fee you will never get back.”
8. “For too long, we’d been told there were only two options: to be either tough on crime or soft on crime — an oversimplification that ignored the realities of public safety. You can want the police to stop crime in your neighborhood and also want them to stop using excessive force. You can want them to hunt down a killer on your streets and also want them to stop using racial profiling. You can believe in the need for consequence and accountability, especially for serious criminals, and also oppose unjust incarceration. I believed it was essential to weave all these varied strands together.”
9. “For as long as ours has been a nation of immigrants, we have been a nation that fears immigrants. Fear of the other is woven into the fabric of our American culture, and unscrupulous people in power have exploited that fear in pursuit of political advantage.”
10. “The cases were as easy to prove as they were tragic to charge. In the rush to clean up the streets, we were criminalizing a public health crisis. And without a focus on treatment and prevention, the crack epidemic spread like a deadly virus, burning through city after city until it had stolen a generation of people.”