1,511 Justice Quotes

Who made the world I cannot tell; 'Tis made, and here am I in hell. My hand, though now my knuckles bleed, I never soiled with such a deed.

Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the world?

I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me. Now, at the end of three years struggle the nation's condition is not what either party, or any man devised, or expected. God alone can claim it. Whither it is tending seems plain. If God now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills also that we of the North as well as you of the South, shall pay fairly for our complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein new cause to attest and revere the justice and goodness of God.

The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.

The man who barely abstains from violating either the person, or the estate, or the reputation of his neighbours, has surely very little positive merit. He fulfils, however, all the rules of what is peculiarly called justice, and does every thing which his equals can with propriety force him to do, or which they can punish him for not doing. We may often fulfil all the rules of justice by sitting still and doing nothing.

But now, instead of discussion and argument, brute force rises up to the rescue of discomfited error, and crushes truth and right into the dust. 'Might makes right,' and hoary folly totters on in her mad career escorted by armies and navies.

I believe in Providence and I believe Providence to be just. Therefore I believe that Providence always rewards the strong, the industrious, and the upright.

I, for my part, acknowledge another precept which says that man must deal the final blow to those whose downfall is destined by God.

The travesty of slavery wasn't physical abuse. It was the moral abuse of looking at a human being as if they are an animal.

I will stand against those who see terrorism when Americans die, but who see suicide bombers who kill Israelis and believe that that is just part of the negotiating process.

When the imagination sleeps, words are emptied of their meaning: a deaf population absent-mindedly registers the condemnation of a man. ... there is no other solution but to speak out and show the obscenity hidden under the verbal cloak.

Does the end justify the means? That is possible. But what will justify the end? To that question, which historical thought leaves pending, rebellion replies: the means.

If you keep on excusing, you eventually give your blessing to the slave camp, to cowardly force, to organized executioners, to the cynicism of great political monsters; you finally hand over your brothers.

The current motto for all of us can only be this: without giving up anything on the plane of justice, yield nothing on the plane of freedom.

There is merely bad luck in not being loved; there is misfortune in not loving. All of us, today, are dying of this misfortune. For violence and hatred dry up the heart itself; the long fight for justice exhausts the love that nevertheless gave birth to it.

An autocratic system of coercion, in my opinion, soon degenerates. For force always attracts men of low morality, and I believe it to be an invariable rule that tyrants of genius are succeeded by scoundrels. For this reason I have always been passionately opposed to systems such as we see in Italy and Russia to-day.

The tribunal here and your American newspapers talk so much about our sharp Nazi methods, but do you realize that within the past year, since the defeat of Germany, 1 million Germans have been evicted from what was originally German territory and which has now been given to Poland? No League of Nations or other body intervened.

Accordingly, death is a harbor of peace for the just, but is believed a shipwreck for the wicked.

Going to where the silence is. That is the responsibility of a journalist: giving a voice to those who have been forgotten, forsaken, and beaten down by the powerful.

These decrees of yours are no different from spiders' webs. They'll restrain anyone weak and insignificant who gets caught in them, but they'll be torn to shreds by people with power and wealth.

The wisdom of man never yet contrived a system of taxation that would operate with perfect equality.

Peace, above all things, is to be desired, but blood must sometimes be spilled to obtain it on equable and lasting terms.

We must never lose sight of the fact that the law has a moral foundation, and we must never fail to ask ourselves not only what the law is, but what the law should be.

Man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all.

When people are friends, they have no need of justice, but when they are just, they need friendship in addition.

Equality consists in the same treatment of similar persons.

It is in justice that the ordering of society is centered.

The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the law.

The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.

The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.

Those who excel in virtue have the best right of all to rebel, but then they are of all men the least inclined to do so.

To give a satisfactory decision as to the truth it is necessary to be rather an arbitrator than a party to the dispute.

The moment that justice must be paid for by the victim of injustice it becomes itself injustice.

The more innocent they are, the more they deserve to be shot.

The headlong stream is termed violent But the river bed hemming it in is Termed violent by no one.

Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.

In this rat-race everybody's guilty till proved innocent!

Justice without force is powerless; force without justice is tyrannical.

I believe in freedom for everyone, not just the black man.

Of all forms of slavery there is none that is so harmful and degrading as that form of slavery which tempts one human being to hate another by reason of his race or color. One man cannot hold another man down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch with him.

People in the Pentagon had colleagues killed and maimed by bin Laden. They're trying to find bin Laden and kill him and his cult. Naturally they consider that a legitimate thing to do, but they're having mixed success at the job.

We still leave unblotted in the leaves of our statute book, for the reverence and admiration of successive ages, the just and wholesome law which declares that the sturdy felon shall be fed and clothed, and that the penniless debtor shall be left to die of starvation and nakedness. This is no fiction.

Remorse for what? You people have done everything in the world to me. Doesn't that give me equal right?

I can so clearly distinguish between the criminal and his crime; I can so sincerely forgive the first while I abhor the last.

The objector and the rebel who raises his voice against what he believes to be the injustice of the present and the wrongs of the past is the one who hunches the world along.

The Constitution is a delusion and a snare if the weakest and humblest man in the land cannot be defended in his right to speak and his right to think as much as the strongest in the land.

There is no such thing as justice - in or out of court.

No other offense has ever been visited with such severe penalties as seeking to help the oppressed.

The trouble with law is lawyers.

True patriotism hates injustice in its own land more than anywhere else.

When are we going to stop making excuses for the terrorists and saying that somebody is making them do it? No, these are simply evil people who want to kill.

The United States government does not authorise or condone torture of detainees. Torture, and conspiracy to commit torture, are crimes under US law, wherever they may occur in the world.

There is no kind of harassment that a man may not inflict on a woman with impunity in civilized societies.

Justice is the first virtue of those who command, and stops the complaints of those who obey.

What a hell of an economic system! Some are replete with everything while others, whose stomachs are no less demanding, whose hunger is just as recurrent, have nothing to bite on. The worst of it is the constrained posture need puts you in. The needy man does not walk like the rest; he skips, slithers, twists, crawls.

If you're going to condemn a people based on the actions of the worst of its ranks; take a good look at the worst of your people first and judge yourself.

The question is not whether the good outweighs the bad. The question is whether or not the good excuses the bad. And, in my opinion, it doesn't. It never does. As long as wrongs are being commited, in any quantity, and in any ratio to the amount of good that is being done, it is both irresponsible and wrong not to bring awareness to it, and struggle to put an end to it.

We pay for the mistakes of our ancestors, and it seems only fair that they should leave us the money to pay with.

Some people obtain fame, others deserve it.

Borrowing is not much better than begging; just as lending with interest is not much better than stealing.

It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.

Life and liberty can be as much endangered from illegal methods used to convict those thought to be criminals as from the actual criminals themselves.

The police must obey the law while enforcing the law.

You sit up there, and you see the whole gamut of human nature. Even if the case being argued involves only a little fellow and $50, it involves justice. That's what is important.

Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.

Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.

Tyrants seldom want pretexts.

It is the function of a judge not to make but to declare the law, according to the golden mete-wand of the law and not by the crooked cord of discretion.

When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

It looks to me to be narrow and pedantic to apply the ordinary ideas of criminal justice to this great public contest. I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people.

Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all.

No man can mortgage his injustice as a pawn for his fidelity.

Free trade is not based on utility but on justice.

The only thing that counts is the right to know, to speak, to think - that, and the sanctity of the courts. Otherwise it's not America.

A God all mercy is a God unjust.

I have observed in foolish awe The dateless mid-days of the law And seen indifferent justice done By everyone on everyone.

I believe in salvation through economic, social, and spiritual freedom.

When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?

The drug war has nothing to do with making communities livable or creating a decent future for black kids. On the contrary, prohibition is directly responsible for the power of crack dealers to terrorize whole neighborhoods. And every cent spent on the cops, investigators, bureaucrats, courts, jails, weapons, and tests required to feed the drug-war machine is a cent not spent on reversing the social policies that have destroyed the cities, nourished racism, and laid the groundwork for crack culture.

Do not give sentence in another tribunal till you have been yourself judged in the tribunal of Justice.

It is doubtful if the oppressed ever fight for freedom. They fight for pride and power - power to oppress others. The oppressed want above all to imitate their oppressors; they want to retaliate.

A just society must strive with all its might to right wrongs even if righting wrongs is a highly perilous undertaking. But if it is to survive, a just society must be strong and resolute enough to deal swiftly and relentlessly with those who would mistake its good will for weakness.

Fairness means not to use fraud and trickery in the exchange of commodities and services and the exchange of feelings.

There is no human law or law of God or national law that states that any healthy being has to permit the snake to eat the mouse - but on the other hand, it is perfectly justified to defend the mouse.

For me, soldiers are all equal. Those black people wore your same uniform, fought on your side, and so you will be in the same jail.

Manners are especially the need of the plain. The pretty can get away with anything.

The victor belongs to the spoils.

It's time for America to get right.

I always said if I lived to get grown and had a chance, I was going to try to get something for my mother and I was going to do something for the black man of the South if it would cost my life; I was determined to see that things were changed.

Condemn me, it does not matter: history will absolve me.

The revolution is a dictatorship of the exploited against the exploiters.

I'd wish the government took honest people into consideration, it shows enough consideration for scoundrels.