About this quote

There is no clean line dividing the decent from the worst among us. Treating humanity as one family means you cannot fully disown even the person who has done terrible things, because their failing implicates the whole and their possible change belongs to the same shared story. Distance is comforting but false.

When to use it

• A volunteer works with incarcerated men, treating each as a person capable of change rather than a lost cause.
• After a public scandal you resist the urge to cast the person out entirely and ask what led them there.
• A neighborhood responds to one resident's crime by asking how everyone missed the warning signs.