Rash Judgments a la Dostoyevsky

“Remember particularly that you cannot be a judge of anyone. For no one can judge a criminal, until he recognizes that he is just such a criminal as the man standing before him, and that he perhaps is more than all men to blame for that crime. When he understands that, he will be able to be a judge. Though that sounds absurd, it is true. If I had been righteous myself, perhaps there would have been no criminal standing before me. If you can take upon yourself the crime of the criminal your heart is judging, take it at once, suffer for him yourself, and let him go without reproach.” [Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (Tr. Constance Garrett), New York: Signet Classic, 1999, p.311.]