Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.

“Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done” is both a claim about human identity and a test of how a community treats people it condemns. Developed through close work with poor and incarcerated people, the expression insists that a person cannot be exhausted by the worst act associated with them. Its force lies not in denying harm, but in refusing to make punishment the whole measure of a human being.

Meaning and Moral Claim

The statement rejects the reduction of a person to a single label or act. The speaker explains the distinction through concrete examples: telling a lie does not make someone only a liar; taking what belongs to another does not make someone only a thief; even killing someone does not make that person only a killer. The repeated word “only” is central to the claim. It does not erase what someone did; it denies that the act can contain the entirety of the person.

The expression also turns the question of judgment back toward the society doing the judging. The measure of a community, the speaker argues, is not how it treats the rich, powerful, privileged, and respected, but how it treats the poor, disfavored, accused, incarcerated, and condemned. In this formulation, dignity is not a reward reserved for the respectable. It is most clearly tested where a person has little power and is easiest to dismiss.

From Principle to Practice

The phrase emerged from the speaker’s proximity to people whose lives had been shaped by abuse, neglect, imprisonment, and condemnation. That work brought him close not only to incarcerated people but also to victims of violent crime and their families, and to prison staff affected by the harsh conditions of mass incarceration. These encounters widened the principle beyond a defense of defendants: the effects of an unjust and unmerciful system reach people across the prison’s boundaries.

The expression became practical counsel in difficult conversations with clients who were despairing over what they had done or what had been done to them. When clients questioned the value of their lives, the speaker returned to the distinction between a person and the worst thing associated with that person. The principle was therefore not offered as an abstract pardon. It was a way to resist despair and to recognize a life as larger than its most painful act or circumstance.

Brokenness, Mercy, and Recognition

One evening, after years of saying the principle to clients, the speaker applied it to himself: “I am more than broken.” The inward turn matters. The claim is not that only incarcerated people are broken while the person offering mercy stands whole; rather, acknowledging one’s own brokenness can create both a need for mercy and a corresponding capacity to show it.

The speaker describes mercy as a way of learning to see and hear what would otherwise remain inaccessible. It makes possible the recognition of humanity in other people, including those who have caused grave harm. Brokenness, in this account, is not a justification for violence or a substitute for accountability. It is the shared condition that makes a response based solely on condemnation morally inadequate.

Social Consequences and Recurrence

The statement leads from personal recognition to a critique of public policy. If people acknowledge their weaknesses, biases, fears, and deficits, the speaker suggests, they may be less willing to kill people who have killed others, and more willing to seek care for the disabled, abused, neglected, and traumatized. He connects that possibility to refusing pride in mass incarceration, executions, and deliberate indifference to vulnerable people.

The expression also belongs to a broader argument that poverty’s opposite is not wealth but justice, and that allowing people to be mistreated implicates the wider community. Fear and anger can produce vindictiveness and abuse; the resulting absence of mercy harms both those punished and the society that permits their mistreatment. Repeated as guidance to clients and then turned inward, the phrase holds together individual dignity and collective responsibility: no one is reducible to a worst act, and no community can claim justice while treating its most vulnerable people as if they were.