11 Samuel Johnson Quotes on Justice

Samuel Johnson quotes on justice

2. This mournful truth is ev'rywhere confessed - Slow rises worth, by poverty depressed.

6. A lawyer has no business with the justice or injustice of the cause which he undertakes, unless his client asks his opinion, and then he is bound to give it honestly. The justice or injustice of the cause is to be decided by the judge. Consider, sir; what is the purpose of courts of justice? It is, that every man may have his cause fairly tried, by men appointed to try causes. A lawyer is not to tell what he knows to be a lie: he is not to produce what he knows to be a false deed; but he is not to usurp the province of the jury and of the judge, and determine what shall be the effect of evidence - what shall be the result of legal argument.

7. If lawyers were to undertake no causes till they were sure they were just, a man might be precluded altogether from a trial of his claim, though, were it judicially examined, it might be found a very just claim.

49. It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.

56. No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority.

    Attribution disputed; shown as originally published.

65. EXCISE - A hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid.

104. The law is the last result of human wisdom acting upon human experience for the benefit of the public.

130. Why, Sir, it is difficult to settle the proportion of iniquity between them.

137. A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization.

155. Here's to the next insurrection of the negroes in the West Indies.

156. It must be agreed that in most ages many countries have had part of their inhabitants in a state of slavery; yet it may be doubted whether slavery can ever be supposed the natural condition of man. It is impossible not to conceive that men in their original state were equal; and very difficult to imagine how one would be subjected to another but by violent compulsion. An individual may, indeed, forfeit his liberty by a crime; but he cannot by that crime forfeit the liberty of his children.