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Notes on Quotes #17: Prosecutor and Candidate Rich Finneran
Welcome to Notes on Quotes, an interview series in which Stephen Harrison chats with interesting people about a quote that’s meaningful to them.
Rich Finneran is a former federal prosecutor based in St. Louis who is running for Attorney General in Missouri. During his time as a federal prosecutor, Finneran handled two of the largest financial fraud cases ever prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Missouri. He was also a constitutional and appellate law instructor at Washington University School of Law.
This print interview has been edited and condensed. The podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and other platforms.
Stephen Harrison: So what quote are we chatting about today?
Rich Finneran: I’ve selected a quote from the Bible. Ecclesiastes, chapter 9, verse 11,
“I returned and saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to men of understanding, nor favor to men of skill, but time and chance happen to them all.”
The is the first quote from scripture that we’ve had on the series. Out of all the verses in the Bible, why did you pick this one?
I’ll tell you, it’s a hard thing to come up with one quote to select! But ultimately, I picked this one because it captures something about my view of the world, as well my thinking on personal and political issues. The way you see and understand your circumstances and other people’s circumstances is inevitably going to have an effect on what sort of policies you think you should have in place in government.
I appreciate this quote for what it says about how often there are things that may happen to us that are not our fault, or not things that we have direct control over. We’re painfully aware of that right now with the coronavirus — there’s a lot that we are dealing with that is outside our control.
