Quotes about justice
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“I am about to take a rapid review of the history of the French Revolution, which began the era of new societies in Europe, as the English Revolution had begun the era of new governments. This revolution not only modified the political power, but it entirely changed the internal existence of the nation. The forms of the society of the Middle Ages still remained. The land was divided into hostile provinces, the population into rival classes. The nobility had lost all their powers, but still retained all their distinctions: the people had no rights, royalty no limits; France was in an utter confusion of arbitrary administration, of class legislation and special privileges to special bodies. For these abuses the revolution substituted a system more conformable with justice, and better suited to our times. It substituted law in the place of arbitrary will, equality in that of privilege; delivered men from the distinctions of classes, the land from the barriers of provinces, trade from the shackles of corporations and fellowships, agriculture from feudal subjection and the oppression of tithes, property from the impediment of entails, and brought everything to the condition of one state, one system of law, one people.”

François Mignet (1796–1884) French historian and journalist

History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 http://clc-library-org-docs.angelfire.com/hfrr.html, Introduction

Men, Hostility, People, Age

“The problem of the twenty-first century, then, is the problem of the color-blind. This problem is simple: it believes that to redress racism, we need to not consider race in social practice, notably in the sphere of governmental action. The state, we are told, must be above race. … We are led to believe that racism is prejudicial behavior of one party against another rather than the coagulation of socioeconomic injustice against groups. If the state acts without prejudice (this is, if it acts equally), then that is proof of the end of racism. Unequal socioeconomic conditions of today, based as they are on racisms of the past and of the present, are thereby rendered untouchable by the state. Color-blind justice privatizes inequality and racism, and it removes itself from the project of redistributive and anti-racist justice. This is the genteel racism of our new millennium.”

Vijay Prashad (1967) Indian historian and journalist

Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting: Afro-Asian Connections and the Myth of Cultural Purity (2002), p. 38

Color, Behavior, Problem, Past

“Took a stranger to teach me to look into justice's beautiful face, and to see an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Infidels (1983), I and I

Beauty

“The notion that the Constitution of the United States, designed, among other things, 'to establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility,... and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,' prohibits the States from simply banning this visibly brutal means of eliminating our half-born posterity is quite simply absurd.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Stenberg v. Carhart (2000) (dissenting).
2000s

“This changed attitude toward slavery was, however, part of a changed attitude toward morality in general that was sweeping over Western civilization. This change was marked by the apotheosis of "change" itself. What had heretofore been regarded as moral absolutes came to be regarded as merely relative to a particular time and place—to History or Progress—with no enduring claim upon our consciences. Lincoln praised Jefferson for embodying in the Declaration "an abstract truth applicable to all men and all times." But the idea of such truth, and of the correlation of such truth with justice, was increasingly repudiated by the most educated and influential minds in the Western world. Representative of this triumph of historicism and moral relativism was historian Carl Becker's assertion in a landmark 20th-century work that "To ask whether the natural rights philosophy of the Declaration of Independence is true or false is essentially a meaningless question."”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, God Bless America (2008), Slavery and the American Cause

Men, Truth, World, Education

“Justice is peculiarly stringent. Its demands may not be modified. Judges and rulers must 'do justice though the heavens fall', not allow family connections, friendship, or even personal worth to turn them aside.”

Alan Ryan (1940) British philosopher

Justice (1993)

Friendship, Family, Personality

“There are earth-shattering events going on around you, Lydia. men are scheming, debating, plotting, intriguing for the future of our country but, despite all their talk, it is the little children who are really creating the future. While these big men spend hours talking and arguing, you and your friends are busy building a nation. I don't exaggerate: all societies must be based on justice, love, trust and sharing. Though only 3, you are already practising them in your playgroup. Left to yourselves, you black and white children are actually doing that, while the politicians nervously insert clauses into bills to guard their investments and vested interest, or to protect people from people. You don't need to be protected from children of other races, because to you they are simply your friends, and you accept them totally for what they are. Your playgroup is based on trust. That is a precious commodity. I hope you never lose it. When men in Namibia act on that lesson we too, like you, can begin to build a nation.”

Colin Winter (1928–1981) Bishop of Damaraland noted for opposing apartheid; exiled Bishop of Namibia; Irish-British Anglican bishop

"An Open Letter to Lydia Morrow" Pro Veritate, V.15, No. 4 (September 1976) http://disa.nu.ac.za/articledisplaypage.asp?filename=PVSep76&articletitle=An+open+letter+to+Lydia+Morrow+from+Colin+Winter%2C+Bishop+of+Damaraland+in+exile+++++++++&searchtype=browse. Pro Veritate http://disa.nu.ac.za/journals/jourpvexpand.htm was a Christian monthly journal published in South Africa from 1962 to 1977. Lydia Morrow was the small daughter of Winter's friends and associates, Edward and Laureen Morrow.

Love, Men, Children, People

“Tis only from the selfishness and confin'd generosity of men, along with the scanty provision nature has made for his wants, that justice derives its origin.”

David Hume book A Treatise of Human Nature

Part 2, Section 2
A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), Book 3: Of morals

Men, Nature, Selfishness

“Thank God justice has prevailed I have been vindicated.”

Anwar Ibrahim (1947) Malaysian politician

In response to Judge Zabidin Mohamad Diah not finding Anwar guilty of sodomy, after finding the DNA evidence submitted by the prosecution unreliable, in January 9, 2012, quoted on BBC News, "Anwar Ibrahim acquitted of sodomy in Malaysia" http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-16463989, 9 January 2012.

God

“It is true that Courts of equity, in administering justice, sometimes go further than the Courts of law.”

Richard Arden, 1st Baron Alvanley (1744–1804) British judge and politician

Houghton v. Matthews (1803), 3 Bos. & Pull. 497.

Law

“Almost everywhere and at all times the saying of St. Augustine aptly described the situation: "et paupera et inops est ecclesia — the Church is poor and helpless." The Church was powerful only when the state wanted it to be so or when pious laymen had a burning desire to make it so. In the Middle Ages especially the Church was sedulously oppressed: Popes were frequently imprisoned, made the pawns of secular rulers, persecuted, ridiculed, besieged, plundered, exiled, imprisoned and insulted. What about Canossa? People forget how the story ended, and the words of Gregory VII on his death-bed in exile: "Dilexi iustitiam et odi iniquitatem, propterea morior in exilio [I loved justice and hated injustice, therefore I die in exile]." Finally there came the Babylonian Captivity at Avignon. It is true that all of this looks quite different in the elementary schools of Kazachstan, in McKinley High and to our intellectuals, whose grasp of history is almost nil.
The situation altered very little in the nineteenth century. Once again there was a prisoner in the Vatican, Pius IX, whose body the mob yelling "Al fiume la carogna!" wanted to throw into the Tiber. This brings us to the twentieth century: Mexico City, Moabit, Dachau, Plötzensee, Auschwitz, Struthof, Carcel Modelo, Andrássy-út 66, Sremska Mitrovica, Vorkuta, Karaganda, Magadan, Lubyanka, Ocnele Mare — these are the modern Stations of the Cross of our clergy. (Pg 128)”

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) Austrian noble and political theorist

The Timeless Christian (1969)

Love, Death, Hate, People

“Laws are confusing documents. They get in the way of justice.”

Paolo Bacigalupi book The Windup Girl

Source: The Windup Girl (2009), p. 55

Law, Way

“The watchword is only one, categorical and challenging for everyone. It already flies across and lights the hearts from the Alps to the Indian Ocean: Winning! And we will win, in order to finally give a long period of peace with justice to Italy, to Europe, to the world. **From the declaration of war's announce, 10 June 1940”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

1940s

War, World, Peace, Light

“We are divided not only about political facts and social values, but also about what the Constitution itself means. The crusaders on this issue choose to ignore these problems and are proposing to deny the will of 64 million voters by appealing to five Supreme Court Justices (since no one is delusional enough to think that the four liberal justices are going to take the presidency away from Obama). What kind of conservatism is this?”

David Horowitz (1939) Neoconservative activist, writer

Horowitz speaks about Obama birth certificate doubters. [David, Horowitz, http://www.nationalreview.com/article/226474/obama-derangement-syndrome-david-horowitz, "Shut up about the birth certificate.", nationalreview.com, December 8, 2008, 2016-30-03]
2008

Problem, Thinking

“He used to define justice as "a virtue of the soul distributing that which each person deserved."”

Diogenes Laërtius (180–240) biographer of ancient Greek philosophers

Aristotle, 9.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 5: The Peripatetics

Soul, Personality

“Everybody, I think, who hopes to become a judge would aspire to be able to write as well as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. None are going to be able to attain that. But I’ll try at least — if confirmed to be as brief and pithy as he is.”

Merrick Garland (1952) American judge

[Merrick Garland, Confirmation hearing on nomination of Merrick Garland to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, United States Senate, December 1, 1995]; quote excerpted in:
[March 18, 2016, http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2016/03/16/judge-merrick-garland-in-his-own-words/, Judge Merrick Garland, In His Own Words, Joe Palazzolo, March 16, 2016, The Wall Street Journal]
Confirmation hearing on nomination to United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (1995)

Hope, Thinking

“The country has great and imperative obligations to the weak, the sick, the unfortunate. It must give to them all the sustenance and support it can. We look forward to social and unemployment insurances, to improved health services, to a wiser control of our economy to avert if possible all booms and slumps which tend to convert labour into a commodity, to a better distribution of wealth, to a keener sense of social justice and social responsibility. We not only look forward to these things, we shall demand and obtain them.”

Robert Menzies (1894–1978) Australian politician, 12th Prime Minister of Australia

Freedom from Want radio talk, July 10, 1942 (the fifth of "The Forgotten People" series)
Wilderness Years (1941-1949)
Source: http://menziesvirtualmuseum.org.au/transcripts/the-forgotten-people/63-chapter-5-freedom-from-want

Health, Support, Sense, Country

“I've been struck by the upside-down priorities of the juvenile justice system. We are willing to spend the least amount of money to keep a kid at home, more to put him in a foster home and the most to institutionalize him.”

Marian Wright Edelman (1939) American children's rights activist

Reported in Margie Casady, "Society's Pushed-Out Children", Psychology Today (June 1975).

Money, Home

“My father's moral inculcations were at all times mainly those of the "Socratici viri;" justice, temperance (to which he gave a very extended application), veracity, perseverance, readiness to encounter pain and especially labour; regard for the public good; estimation of persons according to their merits, and of things according to their intrinsic usefulness; a life of exertion in contradiction to one of self-indulgent sloth. These and other moralities he conveyed in brief sentences, uttered as occasion arose, of grave exhortation, or stern reprobation and contemp. But though direct moral teaching does much, indirect does more; and the effect my father produced on my character, did not depend solely on what he said or did with that direct object, but also, and still more, on what manner of man he was.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)
Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/47/mode/1up p. 47

Life, Pain, Time, Dependency

“It is the duty of a king to enforce, if he can, those royal laws which have become proverbial owing to their principles of justice and mercy. But if owing to change of time and circumstances he is unable to enforce the laws of the ancients (i. e. ancient Muslim rulers), he should, with the counsel of wise men… frame laws suited to his time and circumstances and proceed to enforce them. Much reflection is necessary in order that laws, suited to his reign, are properly framed.”

Ziauddin Barani (1285–1357) Indian Muslim historian and political thinker (1285–1357)

Fatawa-i-Jahandari, p.64. quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 4
Fatawa-i-Jahandari

Men, Law, Change, Time

“The cruel man is of misanthropic temperament, and is a man of moods, oscillating from quiet brooding to sudden explosions. If a man like this does not fight this unhappy provision of his soul during his youth, under no circumstances could he avoid becoming furious - and foolish. There are those who would leave it up to God, but to ensure justice on the earth, and not fob it off to the Divinity, it is mandatory that people know both virtue and its benefits, since the virtues lead to unity among them, not the war of all against all. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary to conserve them, and show that crime can only return misfortunes and destruction, including of the criminal himself. Who is the last victim of his crimes.”

Frederick II of Prussia book Anti-Machiavel

Source: Anti-Machiavel, Chapter VIII

God, War, People, Youth

“Many if not most of Kissinger's partners in crime are now in jail, or are awaiting trial, or have been otherwise punished or discredited. His own lonely impunity is rank; it smells to heaven. If it is allowed to persist then we shall shamefully vindicate the philosopher Anacharsis, who mantained that laws were like cobwebs; strong enough to detain only the weak, and too weak to hold the strong. In the name of innumerable victims known and unknown, it is time for justice to take a hand.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

[The Trial of Henry Kissinger, 2002, 1859846319, 46240330, [E840.8.K58 H58 2001]]
2000s, 2002

Law, Strong, Time

“A system designed to protect individual liberty will have no punishments for any group and no privileges. Today, I think inner-city folks and minorities are punished unfairly in the war on drugs.
For instance, blacks make up 14% of those who use drugs, yet 36 percent of those arrested are Blacks and it ends up that 63% of those who finally end up in prison are Blacks. This has to change.
We don’t have to have more courts and more prisons. We need to repeal the whole war on drugs. It isn’t working. We have already spent over $400 billion since the early 1970s, and it is wasted money. Prohibition didn’t work. Prohibition on drugs doesn’t work. So we need to come to our senses. And, absolutely, it’s a disease. We don’t treat alcoholics like this. This is a disease, and we should orient ourselves to this. That is one way you could have equal justice under the law.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

GOP Presidential Forum at Morgan State University http://www.tigerdroppings.com/rant/p/30724045/Stands-on-race-Paul-can-not-deny.aspx, September 27, 2007 2000s, 2006-2009

Money, War, Alcohol, Disease

“If we are to keep our democracy, there must be one commandment: Thou shalt not ration justice.”

Learned Hand (1872–1961) American legal scholar, Court of Appeals judge

To The New York Legal Aid Society (16 February 1951).
Extra-judicial writings

Democracy

“Look to the day when we can say goodbye to all out heroes because their work is done. Justice is alive, independent, unassailable.”

Martin Firrell (1963) British artist and activist

"Complete Hero" (2009)

“We have a right to expect that the Negro community will be responsible, will uphold the law, but they have a right to expect that the law will be fair, that the Constitution will be color blind, as Justice Harlan said at the turn of the century.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1963, Civil Rights Address

Law, Color, Communication

“Most Christians desire nonviolence, yes; but they are not talking about a nonviolent struggle for justice. They mean simply the absence of conflict. … The church says to the lion and the lamb, "Here, let me negotiate a truce," to which the lion replies, "Fine, after I finish my lunch."”

Walter Wink (1935–2012) American biblical scholar

Jesus and Nonviolence: A Third Way (2003), p. 4

“I arrived at as an undergraduate with two driving passions: a consuming interest for a politics of justice grounded in a Christian theology and acting, as a ‘revelation of the treasures of the human soul’ not as a form of exhibitionism. My search for justice grew out of the pain I experienced when I saw the ridicule my malformed brother elicited. I became aware of the evil that is prejudice, a form of injustice. My urge to redress this prejudice took a more social dimension during my years as a boarder at St Dominic’s Convent, where the great Barbara Hogan matriculated a year later than me though I only got acquainted with her at Wits.”

Angelique Rockas South African actress and founder of Internationalist Theatre, London

The South African Interview (August 8, 2011)

Pain, Soul, Search, Passion

“I take the liberty of asserting that there is one valid reason, and only one, for either punishing a man or rewarding him in this world; one reason, which ancient piety could well define: That you may do the will and commandment of God with regard to him; that you may do justice to him. This is your one true aim in respect of him; aim thitherward, with all your heart and all your strength and all your soul, thitherward, and not elsewhither at all! This aim is true, and will carry you to all earthly heights and benefits, and beyond the stars and Heavens. All other aims are purblind, illegitimate, untrue; and will never carry you beyond the shop-counter, nay very soon will prove themselves incapable of maintaining you even there. Find out what the Law of God is with regard to a man; make that your human law, or I say it will be ill with you, and not well!”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), Model Prisons (March 1, 1850)

God, World, Law, Soul

“Of course it is true that the public benefit, along with justice, is an objective of the law. And of course laws have value in and of themselves, even bad laws: the value, namely, of securing the law against uncertainty.”

Gustav Radbruch (1878–1949) German politician

"Five Minutes of Legal Philosophy" (1945)

Law

“To be sure, one value comes with every positive-law statute without reference to its content: Any statute is always better than no statute at all, since it at least creates legal certainty. But legal certainty is not the only value that law must effectuate, nor is it the decisive value. Alongside legal certainty, there are two other values: purposiveness and justice. In ranking these values, we assign to last place the purposiveness of the law in serving the public benefit.”

Gustav Radbruch (1878–1949) German politician

"Statutory Lawlessness and Supra-Statutory Law" (1946)

Law, Decision

“While acknowledging our mutual affection by publicly assuming the relationship of husband and wife, yet in justice to ourselves and a great principle, we deem it a duty to declare that this act on our part implies no sanction of, nor promise of voluntary obedience to such of the present laws of marriage, as refuse to recognize the wife as an independent, rational being, while they confer upon the husband an injurious and unnatural superiority, investing him with legal powers which no honorable man would exercise, and which no man should possess.”

Lucy Stone (1818–1893) American abolitionist and suffragist

Marriage protest (1855)

Marriage, Law, Exercises, Parting

“I don't involve myself in politics, my daily life is devoted to charity and social work. Apart from that I help my loved ones to live better, that's true. I never wanted to harm anyone. I deplore the fact that people have forgotten that for 23 years their lives improved greatly … and Tunisia became a modern country. I hope that my compatriots will render me justice by remembering the journey we undertook together. I hope that in the twilight of my life I will retain my honour.”

Leila Ben Ali (1956) Wife of Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali

1 July, 2012. http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=53148

Love, Life, People, Hope

“Those illustrious men, who, like torches, have consumed themselves, in order to enlighten others, have often lived unrewarded, and died unlamented. But the tongues of aftertimes have done them justice in one sense, but injustice in another. They have honoured them with their praise, but they have disgraced them with their pity. They pity them forsooth, because they missed of present praise, and temporal emolument; things great indeed to the little, but little to the great.”

Charles Caleb Colton (1777–1832) British priest and writer

Vol. I; DLXXV
Lacon (1820)

Men, Sense

“The two principles on which our conduct towards the Indians should be founded, are justice and fear. After the injuries we have done them, they cannot love us….”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to Benjamin Hawkins (13 August 1786) Lipscomb & Bergh ed. 5:390
1780s

Love, Fear

“… mankind has no right to employ its genius in the creation of another intelligent species, then treat it like property. If we've come so far that we can create as God creates, then we have to learn to act with the justice and mercy of God.”

Dean Koontz book Watchers

Part 1, Chapter 7.8; Garrison Dilworth on the responsibility to help keep Einstein free
Watchers (1987)

God, Intelligence, Learning

“Only the prosecutors' witnesses were admitted, those of the defence were chucked out … Can there be worse justice than this? I am treated like a criminal.”

Silvio Berlusconi (1936) Italian politician

As quoted in "Silvio Berlusconi says judges out to 'destroy' him" in The Telegraph (16 February 2012) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/silvio-berlusconi/9086144/Silvio-Berlusconi-says-judges-out-to-destroy-him.html 2012

“As a painter I am beginning to see more clearly how to work from Nature... But I still can't do justice to the intensity unfolding before my eyes.”

Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) French painter

Quote in Cezanne's letter to his son Paul, a few months before his death; as quoted in The Private Lives of the Impressionists Sue Roe; Harper Collins Publishers, New York, 2006, p. 268
Quotes of Paul Cezanne, after 1900

Nature

“In sum, the accommodation of the Republic is not to the spokesmen for the many, which is to say that it is not political. Instead, the accommodation is to the few, or the few as they were in their youth, like Glaucon and Adeimantus, who must be tested by the conversation in order to determine their fitness for philosophy. This is the peculiarity of the Republic: to speak out on the most dangerous of things and to exercise restraint or a rhetoric of indirection in the discussion of that which seems least likely to endanger the city, real or imagined. In slightly different terms, what Socrates calls dialectic enters the city surreptitiously, and it must do so in order to make the city safe for philosophy. In exchange for this safety, philosophy offers to the city a foundation for justice that is exaggerated in the account of the beautiful city but in its more sober version is verified by the course of Western history.”

Stanley Rosen (1929–2014) American philosopher

Plato's Republic: A Study (2005), Introduction

Youth, Beauty, Exercises, Imagination

“Among the many symbols used to frighten and manipulate the populace of the democratic states, few have been more important than “terror” and “terrorism.” These terms have generally been confined to the use of violence by individuals and marginal groups. Official violence, which is far more extensive both in scale and destructiveness, is placed in a different category altogether. The usage has nothing to do with justice, causal sequence, or numbers abused. Whatever the actual sequence of cause and effect, official violence is described as responsive or provoked (“retaliation,” “protective reaction,” etc.), not the active and initiating source of abuse. Similarly, the massive long-term violence inherent in the oppressive social structures that U. S. power has supported is typically disregarded. The numbers tormented and killed by official violence – wholesale as opposed to retail terror – during recent decades have exceeded those of unofficial terrorists by a factor running into the thousands. But this is not “terror,” although one terminological exception may be noted: while Argentinian “security forces” only retaliate and engage in “police action,” violence carried out by unfriendly states (Cuba, Cambodia) may be designated “terroristic.””

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

The status of proper usage is settled not merely by the official or unofficial status of the perpetrators but also by their political affiliations.
Source: The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism, with Noam Chomsky, 1979, p. 6.

Support

“I did not hate the author of my misfortunes — truth and justice acquit me of that; I rather pitied the hard destiny to which he seemed condemned. But I thought with unspeakable loathing of those errors, in consequence of which every man is fated to be, more or less, the tyrant or the slave. I was astonished at the folly of my species, that they did not rise up as one man, and shake off chains so ignominious, and misery so insupportable. So far as related to myself, I resolved — and this resolution has never been entirety forgotten by me — to hold myself disengaged from this odious scene, and never fill the part either of the oppressor or the sufferer.”

William Godwin book Things as They Are; or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams

Caleb Williams (1794)

Hate, Fate, Truth, Error

“Children learn the fundamental principles of natural law at a very early age. Thus they very early understand that one child must not, without just cause, strike or otherwise hurt, another; that one child must not assume any arbitrary control or domination over another; that one child must not, either by force, deceit, or stealth, obtain possession of anything that belongs to another; that if one child commits any of these wrongs against another, it is not only the right of the injured child to resist, and, if need be, punish the wrongdoer, and compel him to make reparation, but that it is also the right, and the moral duty, of all other children, and all other persons, to assist the injured party in defending his rights, and redressing his wrongs. These are fundamental principles of natural law, which govern the most important transactions of man with man. Yet children learn them earlier than they learn that three and three are six, or five and five ten. Their childish plays, even, could not be carried on without a constant regard to them; and it is equally impossible for persons of any age to live together in peace on any other conditions.

It would be no extravagance to say that, in most cases, if not in all, mankind at large, young and old, learn this natural law long before they have learned the meanings of the words by which we describe it. In truth, it would be impossible to make them understand the real meanings of the words, if they did not understand the nature of the thing itself. To make them understand the meanings of the words justice and injustice before knowing the nature of the things themselves, would be as impossible as it would be to make them understand the meanings of the words heat and cold, wet and dry, light and darkness, white and black, one and two, before knowing the nature of the things themselves. Men necessarily must know sentiments and ideas, no less than material things, before they can know the meanings of the words by which we describe them.”

Lysander Spooner (1808–1887) Anarchist, Entrepreneur, Abolitionist

Section IV, p. 9–10
Natural Law; or The Science of Justice (1882), Chapter I. The Science of Justice.

Men, Children, Truth, Age

“The learned counsel has very properly avoided all political discussions unconnected with the subject, and I shall follow his example. Courts of justice have nothing to do with them.”

Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon (1732–1802) British Baron

Trial of John Vint and others (1799), 27 How. St. Tr. 640.

Learning

“Trade unions and strikes cannot help in times of crisis when there is no demand for this “commodity”, they cannot change the conditions which, convert labour-power into a commodity and which doom the masses of working people to dire need and unemployment. To change these conditions, a revolutionary struggle against the whole existing social and political system is necessary; the industrial crisis will convince very many workers of the justice of this statement.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Collected Works, Vol. 5, pp. 25–30.
Collected Works

People, Change, Time, Help

“I don't have a problem with someone using their talents to become successful, I just don't think the highest calling is success. Things like freedom and the expansion of knowledge are beyond success, beyond the personal. Personal success is not wrong, but it is limited in importance, and once you have enough of it it is a shame to keep striving for that, instead of for truth, beauty, or justice.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

"Free Software as a Social Movement" on Znet (18 December 2005) https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/free-software-as-a-social-movement-by-richard-stallman/ 2000s

Truth, Beauty, Knowledge, Problem

“Regarding the controversial article “Society consists of people”, it is a fact that negroes or negroid, Sub-Saharan persons live in something resembling a western society only in places where order is kept by a white system of violent dominance (police, army and the justice system). It is likewise a fact that the so-called western structures start to crumble and sinking towards the typical African state of being starts immediately as blacks reach a majority or dominant position. Examples of this include post-independence Haiti and post-apartheid South Africa.”

Jussi Halla-aho (1971) Finnish Slavic linguist, blogger and a politician

Jussi Halla-aho (2007), published in the blog Scripta Lisäyksiä edelliseen http://www.halla-aho.com/scripta/lisayksia_edelliseen.html, May 9, 2007 2005-09

People, Personality

“I think the first duty of society is justice.”

Wendell Phillips (1811–1884) American abolitionist, advocate for Native Americans, orator and lawyer

Disunion (21 January 1861).
1860s

Thinking

“In order to win this war Hitler must destroy Great Britain. He may carry havoc into the Balkan States; he may tear great provinces out of Russia; he may march to the Caspian; he may march to the gates of India. All this will avail him nothing. It may spread his curse more widely throughout Europe and Asia, but it will not avert his doom. With every month that passes the many proud and once happy countries he is now holding down by brute force and vile intrigue are learning to hate the Prussian yoke and the Nazi name as nothing has ever been hated so fiercely and so widely among men before. And all the time, masters of the sea and air, the British Empire—nay, in a certain sense, the whole English-speaking world—will be on his track bearing with them the swords of justice.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Broadcast (9 February 1941), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Finest Hour: Winston S. Churchill, 1939–1941 (London: Heinemann, 1983), p. 1009
The Second World War (1939–1945)

Men, Hate, War, Happiness

“I regularly see constituents, speak to people who feel let down by the justice system quite fundamentally, and these are people who don't make the headlines. These are people who have felt that their sense their grief, their sense of injustice has been compounded by a system that just doesn't work, that just doesn't listen to victims, that effectively disempowers them all too often.”

Nick Xenophon (1959) Australian politician

Legal eagles discuss justice system, 13 May 2005, Stateline (ABC), 2009-11-17 http://www.abc.net.au/stateline/sa/content/2005/s1369386.htm,

People, Feeling, Sense

“The caring person is the carrier of radical middle politics. … To see this clearly, it helps to look at three competing archetypes of the Good American. … Self-aggrandizers are ambitious strivers. They get their primary identity from their occupation and the social status associated with that. … Self-sacrificing individuals are not personally ambitious – and when they are they try to hide it. They get their primary identity from their ethnic, racial, or religious affiliation or sexual orientation. … Caring persons may or may not be personally ambitious, but they want their jobs to provide them with opportunities for personal growth and social relevance. They get their primary identity from the lifestyle choices they make and the values they consciously choose. They are equally committed to personal freedom and social justice, self-development and social change.”

Mark Satin (1946) American political theorist, author, and newsletter publisher

Source: Radical Middle (2004), Chapter 2, "The Caring Person," pp. 17–18.

Freedom, Change, Help, Personality

“Prudence and justice tell me that in electricity and steam there is more love for man than in chastity and abstinence from meat.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

Letter to A.S. Suvorin (March 27, 1894)
Letters

Love

“Peace is what today’s world needs most urgently, in Egypt, in Syria, in the Middle East, in Africa. Peace and reconciliation. Peace with rehabilitation of victims. Peace with understanding of causes. Peace with a plan for reconstruction – but not only material reconstruction. Moral reconstruction, value reconstruction, commitment to human dignity, faith in the future – this is essential to achieve peace with justice.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

Peace and reconciliation in the Egypt and Syria uprisings http://dezayasalfred.wordpress.com. 2013

World, Peace, Faith, Understanding

“So great is the ascendancy of the Law of Actions in the infancy of Courts of Justice, that substantive law has at first the look of being gradually secreted in the interstices of procedure; and the early lawyer can only see the law through the envelope of its technical forms.”

Henry James Sumner Maine (1822–1888) British comparative jurist and historian

‘Dissertations on Early Law and Custom’ (1883) ch. 11.

Secret, Law

“If there was any justice in this world, I would have been a dead man at least two times over. By this, I mean simply that many times in my life the statistical probabilities of a fatal outcome have been overwhelming – thanks to my sins of excess and poor judgment and my inability to say no to anything that sounded as if it might have been fun. … [When I die], I will decidedly not be regretting missed opportunities for a good time. My regrets will be more along the lines of a sad list of people hurt, people let down, assets wasted and advantages squandered.”

Anthony Bourdain (1956–2018) Chef and food writer

Kitchen Confidential (2000)

Life, People, World, Sadness

“Do not all theists insist that there can be no morality, no justice, honesty or fidelity without the belief in a Divine Power? Based upon fear and hope, such morality has always been a vile product, imbued partly with self-righteousness, partly with hypocrisy. As to truth, justice, and fidelity, who have been their brave exponents and daring proclaimers? Nearly always the godless ones: the Atheists; they lived, fought, and died for them. They knew that justice, truth, and fidelity are not conditioned in heaven, but that they are related to and interwoven with the tremendous changes going on in the social and material life of the human race; not fixed and eternal, but fluctuating, even as life itself.”

Emma Goldman (1868–1940) anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches

The Philosophy of Atheism (1916)

Life, Truth, Fear, Hope

“The increasing influence of the Bible is marvelously great, penetrating everywhere. It carries with it a tremendous power of freedom and justice guided by a combined force of wisdom and goodness.”

Thomas More (1478–1535) English Renaissance humanist

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 34.

Wisdom, Freedom

“Interestingly, Islam acknowledges the reality of sin and hell, and the justice of God, but the hope it offers is that sinners can escape God’s justice if they do religious works. God will see these, and because of them, hopefully he will show mercy—but they won’t know for sure. Each person’s works will be weighed on the Day of Judgment and it will then be decided who is saved and who is not—based on whether they followed Islam, were sincere in repentance, and performed enough righteous deeds to outweigh their bad ones. So Islam believes you can earn God’s mercy by your own efforts. That’s like jumping out of the plane and believing that flapping your arms is going to counter the law of gravity and save you from a 10,000-foot drop. And there’s something else to consider. The Law of God shows us that the best of us is nothing but a wicked criminal, standing guilty and condemned before the throne of a perfect and holy Judge. When that is understood, then our “righteous deeds” are actually seen as an attempt to bribe the Judge of the Universe. The Bible says that because of our guilt, anything we offer God for our justification (our acquittal from His courtroom) is an abomination to Him, and only adds to our crimes. Islam, like the other religions, doesn’t solve your problem of having sinned against God and the reality of hell.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

The Origin of Species: 150th Anniversary Edition (2009)

God, Religion, Law, Hope

“20 years on I'm not that interested in charity. I'm interested in justice. There's a difference. Africa needs justice as much as it needs charity.
Equality for Africa is a big idea. It's a big expensive idea.”

Bono (1960) Irish rock musician, singer of U2

PENN Address (2004)

Idea

“The fact is, and the thing that is so appalling to me, is that the President, when this whole idea was suggested to him, didn't in righteous indignation rise up and say "get out of here. You are in the office of the President of the United States. How can you talk about blackmail and bribery and keeping witnesses silent? This is the Presidency of the United States!", and throw them out of his office, and pick up the phone and call the Department of Justice and tell them "there is obstruction of justice going on, someone is trying to buy the silence of a witness."But my President didn't do that. He sat there, and he worked and worked to try to cover this thing up so it wouldn't come to light.”

Lawrence Hogan (1928–2017) Maryland politician

Opening statement of Hon. Lawrence J. Hogan in the Debate on Articles of Impeachment, Committee on the Judiciary, July 24, 1974.
Hearings of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, Ninety-Third Congress, CIS-NO: 74-H521-56, p. 65.

Idea, Light, Silence

“Political philosophy seems often to reside at a distance from the world. Principles are one thing, politics another, and even our best efforts to ‘live up’ to our ideals typically founder on the gap between theory and practice.But if political philosophy is unrealizable in one sense, it is unavoidable in another. This is the sense in which philosophy inhabits the world from the start; our practices and institutions are embodiments of theory.... for all our uncertainties about ultimate questions of political philosophy — of justice and value and the nature of the good life — the one thing we know is that we live some answer all the time.”

Michael J. Sandel (1953) American political philosopher

The Procedural Republic and the Unencumbered Self, 1984

Life, World, Question, Nature

“Men are excessively ruthless and cruel not as a rule out of malice but from outraged righteousness. How much more is this true of legally constituted states, invested with all this seeming moral authority of parliaments and congresses and courts of justice! The destructive capacity of an individual, however vicious, is small; of the state, however well-intentioned, almost limitless. Expand the state and the destructive capacity necessarily expands too. Collective righteousness is far more ungovernable than any individual pursuit of revenge. That was a point well understood by Woodrow Wilson, who warned: 'Once lead this people into war and they'll forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance.”

Paul Johnson (1928) journalist, historian and speechwriter from England

Modern Times (1983).

Men, War, People, Revenge

“Justice Blackmun begins his statement [declaring Blackmun's opposition to capital punishment] by describing with poignancy the death of a convicted murderer by lethal injection. He chooses, as the case in which to make that statement, one of the less brutal of the murders that regularly come before us, the murder of a man ripped by a bullet suddenly and unexpectedly, with no opportunity to prepare himself and his affairs, and left to bleed to death on the floor of a tavern. The death-by-injection which Justice Blackmun describes looks pretty desirable next to that. It looks even better next to some of the other cases currently before us, which Justice Blackmun did not select as the vehicle for his announcement that the death penalty is always unconstitutional, for example, the case of the 11-year-old girl raped by four men and then killed by stuffing her panties down her throat. See McCollum v. North Carolina.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

How enviable a quiet death by lethal injection compared with that!
Callins v. Collins 510 U.S. 1141 (1994) (Scalia, J., concurring in denial of cert).
1990s

Death, Men, Penalty, Girl

“I still hear people say that I should not be talking about the rights of lesbian and gay people and I should stick to the issue of racial justice. But I hasten to remind them that Martin Luther King Jr. said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream to make room at the table of brother- and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people.”

Coretta Scott King (1927–2006) American author, activist, and civil rights leader. Wife of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Reuters (31 March 1998)

People, Dreams

“Only with a burning patience can we conquer the splendid City which will give light, justice and dignity to all mankind. In this way the song will not have been sung in vain.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Sólo con una ardiente paciencia conquistaremos la espléndida ciudad que dará luz, justicia y dignidad a todos los hombres. Así la poesía no habrá cantado en vano. Nobel lecture, Hacia la ciudad espléndida (Towards the Splendid City) http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1971/neruda-lecture.html (13 December 1971). In the passage directly preceding these words, Neruda identified the source of his allusion:"It is today exactly one hundred years since an unhappy and brilliant poet, the most awesome of all despairing souls, wrote down this prophecy: 'À l'aurore, armés d'une ardente patience, nous entrerons aux splendides Villes.' 'In the dawn, armed with a burning patience, we shall enter the splendid Cities.' I believe in this prophecy of Rimbaud, the Visionary." (Hace hoy cien años exactos, un pobre y espléndido poeta, el más atroz de los desesperados, escribió esta profecía: "À l'aurore, armes d'une ardente patience, nous entrerons aux splendides Villes". "Al amanecer, armados de una ardiente paciencia, entraremos a las espléndidas ciudades." Yo creo en esa profecía de Rimbaud, el Vidente.)The quotation is from Arthur Rimbaud's poem "Adieu" http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Une_saison_en_Enfer#Adieu from Une Saison en Enfer (1873).

Way, Light, Patience

“Here's what we shouldn't do. We shouldn't import failed criminal justice policies from the United States. Mega prisons and mandatory minimums have failed in the United States, we've got to learn from the failure of the American criminal justice policy. Get tough on guns, invest in crime prevention and invest in victim services”

Michael Ignatieff (1947) professor at Harvard Kennedy School and former Canadian politician

English Language Leaders' Debate, April 12, 2011, http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20110413/main-election-110413/20110413?s_name=election2011

Failure, Learning

“Either Germanic ideals or Anglo-Saxon ones must prevail. Justice, freedom, honor, and virtue will triumph, or the worship of money. There can be only one victor in this struggle. German ideals are at stake!”

Wilhelm II, German Emperor (1859–1941) German Emperor and King of Prussia

Speech in the aftermath of the Spring Offensive (18 July 1918), quoted in Fritz Fischer, World Power or Decline (New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 1974), p. 92
1910s

Money, Freedom

“Remember Marxism? It used to be a sour sort of fun to tease Marxists about the contradictions in some of their pet ideas. The revolution of the proletariat was inevitable, good Marxists believed, but if so, why were they so eager to enlist us in their cause? If it was going to happen anyway, it was going to happen with or without our help. But of course the inevitability that Marxists believe in is one that depends on the growth of the movement and all its political action. There were Marxists working very hard to bring about the revolution, and it was comforting to them to believe that their success was guaranteed in the long run. And some of them, the only ones that were really dangerous, believed so firmly in the rightness of their cause that they believed it was permissible to lie and deceive in order to further it. They even taught this to their children, from infancy. These are the "red-diaper babies," children of hardline members of the Communist Party of America, and some of them can still be found infecting the atmosphere of political action in left-wing circles, to the extreme frustration and annoyance of honest socialists and others on the left.Today we have a similar phenomenon brewing on the religious right: the inevitability of the End Days, or the Rapture, the coming Armageddon that will separate the blessed from the damned in the final day of Judgment. Cults and prophets proclaiming the imminent end of the world have been with us for several millennia, and it has been another sour sort of fun to ridicule them the morning after, when they discover that their calculations were a little off. But, just as with the Marxists, there are some among them who are working hard to "hasten the inevitable," not merely anticipating the End Days with joy in their hearts, but taking political action to bring about the conditions they think are the prerequisites for that occasion. And these people are not funny at all. They are dangerous, for the same reason that red-diaper babies are dangerous: they put their allegiance to their creed ahead of their commitment to democracy, to peace, to (earthly) justice — and to truth. If push comes to shove, some of the are prepared to lie and even to kill…”

Daniel Dennett book Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

Breaking the Spell (2006)

Children, People, Truth, Lie

“Political science, by which I mean nothing more abstruse or academic than consideration of a foreign country as a country in its own right, seems to have been almost completely supplanted by a preoccupation with international relations. What is thought irrelevant to that side of things (often wrongly) is considered beneath notice. This can be seen by the reflexiveness with which journalists now contact I. R. professors or nuclear specialists for comment on North Korea’s motivations, party conferences, personality cult, etc — and the perfect confidence with which that comment is supplied.This is not to say that discussion of the current crisis does justice to international relations as a discipline. Usually it is conducted in a very simplistic, moralizing, America-centric fashion, with no apparent sense of history. Much of the stuff on Twitter or in op-ed pieces is all the more embarrassing for having been written from a presumed position of great intellectual superiority to Donald Trump. For all his unsuitedness to be president, the fellow is no more ignorant of North Korea’s political nature than most of his critics are.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, And Then What? (June 2018)

Confidence, History, Motivation, Fashion

“I listened to a panel of judges and I'll comment on that — I will not comment on the statements made by, um, certainly one judge — but I have to be honest that if these judges wanted to, in my opinion, help the court, in terms of respect for the court, they'd do what they should be doing. I mean it's so sad, they should be, you know, when you read something so simple, and so beautifully written, and so perfectly written — other than the one statement, of course, having to do with "he" or "she" — but when you read something so perfectly written, and so clear to anybody, and then you have lawyers and you watched, I watched last night in amazement, and I heard things that I couldn't believe, things that really had nothing to do with what I just read, and I don't ever want to call a court biased, so I won't call it biased, and we haven't had a decision yet, but courts seem to be so political, and it would be so great for our justice system if they would be able to read a statement and do what's right.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2017, February

Sadness, Decision, Reading, Help

“When we speak of Empire, it is in no spirit of flag-wagging…we feel that in this great inheritance of ours, separated as it is by the seas, we have yet one home and one people…great as the material benefits are, we do not look primarily to them. I think deep down in all our hearts we look to the Empire as the means by which we may hope to see that increase of our race which we believe to be of such inestimable benefit to the world at large; the spread abroad of people to whom freedom and justice are as the breath of their nostrils, of people distinguished, as we would fain hope and believe, above all things, by an abiding sense of duty. If ever the day should come when an appeal to that sense of duty falls on deaf ears among our own kin, that day indeed would be the end of our country and of our Empire, to which you and I have dedicated our very lives.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech at the Albert Hall (4 December 1924), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 71-72.
1924

People, World, Hope, Feeling

“There are two important truths to understand here. First: God will not 'torture' anyone. He will give them 'justice'. A criminal may believe that his being thrown into a cold prison because he viciously raped three teenage girls is torture. The judge rather knows better. He calls it 'justice'. Sinners are not God's children. The Bible makes that clear. We are children of Satan, and it's his will we gladly run to do. Isn't it true that we love the darkness and hate the light”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

see John 3:19
You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think (2009)

Love, God, Hate, Children

“[A certain Italian judge] declared in an interview that at night he has no need of sleeping pills since, with regards to the Law, his conscience is at peace. We believe him without further ado. But if he asked himself the same question with regards to Justice, I ask myself if his sleep would be equally untroubled. And we are after all aware that he'll never ask himself this question, and on the contrary it would seem to him totally odd. Because, for an Italian judge, the Law and Justice have nothing to do with each other.”

Indro Montanelli (1909–2001) Italian journalist

Il testimone, p. 386.
2000s - 2010s

Peace, Law, Question, Sleep

“The problems of this country are not going to be solved by one actor or even 10 actors. The problems are far too big. On the screen we get poetic justice in three hours. Poetic justice doesn’t come in a lifetime.”

Amitabh Bachchan (1942) Indian actor

Quotable quotes by Amitabh Bachchan.

Problem, Country

“For children are innocent and love justice, while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy.”

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English mystery novelist and Christian apologist

The Coloured Lands (1938)

Love, Children, Nature

“If states do not act according to principles of justice, the injustices they perpetrate will harm not just other states but ultimately also their own national interest.”

Nayef Al-Rodhan (1959) philosopher, neuroscientist, geostrategist, and author

Source: Neo-statecraft and Meta-geopolitics (2009), p.117

“‘Justice,’” he said, his breath coming out raggedly as he quoted another Nobel laureate—at that precise moment, he couldn’t remember which one—“‘is always delayed and finally done only by mistake.’”

Robert J. Sawyer book Frameshift

Source: Frameshift (1997), Chapter 41 (p. 326; apparently quoting George Bernard Shaw)

Quotes

“The first principle of a Keyes administration, it will apply in foreign policy, it will apply in domestic policy, it will apply everywhere. There is a God, and we are not him! I will not join the Clinton Democrats who worship government as their god! I will not join the Dole Republicans who worship power as their god! I will not join the Forbes Republicans who worship money as their god! I will stand where the founders of this nation stood, and I will give my respect and allegiance to the creator God who is the ground of justice and who is the ground of all our human rights!”

Alan Keyes (1950) American politician

Miscellaneous Source: Alan Keyes, January 27, 1996 at the Louisiana Republican Convention. http://www.renewamerica.us/archives/speeches/96_01_27lagop.htm.

Money, God

“I suppose I remain.... a believer in Art for Art's sake rather than in Art for the sake of religion, of social justice or of national glory. Nothing is more alien to me than an art which sets out to serve other purposes than those implied in the work of art in itself..”

Giorgio Morandi (1890–1964) Italian painter

Source: 1945 - 1964, Interview, 1960, p. 107

Religion, Art

“He [Jesus] claims that not the observance of outer civil or statutory churchly duties but the pure moral disposition of the heart alone can make man well-pleasing to God (Matthew V, 20-48); … that injury done one’s neighbor can be repaired only through satisfaction rendered to the neighbor himself, not through acts of divine worship (V, 24). Thus, he says, does he intend to do full justice to the Jewish law (V, 17); whence it is obvious that not scriptural scholarship but the pure religion of reason must be the law’s interpreter, for taken according to the letter, it allowed the very opposite of all this. Furthermore, he does not leave unnoticed, in his designations of the strait gate and the narrow way, the misconstruction of the law which men allow themselves in order to evade their true moral duty, holding themselves immune through having fulfilled their churchly duty (VII, 13). He further requires of these pure dispositions that they manifest themselves also in works (VII, 16) and, on the other hand, denies the insidious hope of those who imagine that, through invocation and praise of the Supreme Lawgiver in the person of His envoy, they will make up for their lack of good works and ingratiate themselves into favor (VII, 21). Regarding these works he declares that they ought to be performed publicly, as an example for imitation (V, 16), and in a cheerful mood, not as actions extorted from slaves (VI, 16); and that thus, from a small beginning in the sharing and spreading of such dispositions, religion, like a grain of seed in good soil, or a ferment of goodness, would gradually, through its inner power, grow into a kingdom of God (XIII, 31-33).”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Book IV, Part 1, Section 1, “The Christian religion as a natural religion”
Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (1793)

Men, God, Religion, Law

“America has never been an empire. We may be the only great power in history that had the chance, and refused — preferring greatness to power and justice to glory.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

1990s, A Distinctly American Internationalism (November 1999)

History, Chance

“Society should treat all equally well who have deserved equally well of it, that is, who have deserved equally well absolutely. This is the highest abstract standard of social and distributive justice; towards which all institutions, and the efforts of all virtuous citizens, should be made in the utmost degree to converge.”

John Stuart Mill book Utilitarianism

Source: Utilitarianism (1861), Ch. 5

Effort

“Hate came in a maelstrom, and we called it several things—racism, pedophilia, justice, righteousness—but all those words were just ribbons and wrapping paper on a soiled gift that no one wanted to open.”

Dennis Lehane book A Drink Before the War

Prologue.
A Drink Before the War (1994)

Hate

“Honor, justice and humanity call upon us to hold and to transmit to our posterity, that liberty, which we received from our ancestors. It is not our duty to leave wealth to our children; but it is our duty to leave liberty to them. No infamy, iniquity, or cruelty can exceed our own if we, born and educated in a country of freedom, entitled to its blessings and knowing their value, pusillanimously deserting the post assigned us by Divine Providence, surrender succeeding generations to a condition of wretchedness from which no human efforts, in all probability, will be sufficient to extricate them; the experience of all states mournfully demonstrating to us that when arbitrary power has been established over them, even the wisest and bravest nations that ever flourished have, in a few years, degenerated into abject and wretched vassals.”

John Dickinson (1732–1808) American politician

From ‘A Duty to Posterity’, as contained in A Library of American Literature From the Earliest Settlement to the Present Time, Volume 3, ed. Edmund Clarence Stedman, C. L. Webster (1892), pp. 177-178

Children, Education, Effort, Freedom

“For the first time I understood the haunting beauty of the song. It was the song of a killer who longed to die. It was the song of justice yearned for but not yet done.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Treason (1988)

Beauty, Time

“Look at the facts of the world. You see a continual and progressive triumph of the right. I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.”

Theodore Parker (1810–1860) abolitionist

This portion of Parker's sermon is thought to have inspired Martin Luther King, Jr.‎'s famous assertion of similar sentiments: "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice". Ten Sermons of Religion (1853), III : Of Justice and the Conscience https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ten_Sermons_of_Religion/Of_Justice_and_the_Conscience

World, Way, Understanding, Universe

“Justice discards party, friendship, kindred, and is therefore always represented as blind.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

No. 99.
The Guardian (1713)

Friendship

“We need somebody to put rat poisoning in Justice Stevens's creme brulee. That's just a joke, for you in the media.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

Remarks at Philander Smith College (26 January 2006), as quoted in "Coulter Jokes About Poisoning Supreme Court Justice" at Fox News (27 January 2006) http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,183006,00.html. 2006

“To summarize: Americans have one of the greatest legal systems, but not a monopoly of the sense of justice, which is universal; nor have we a permanent copyright on the means of securing justice, for it is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.”

Earl Warren (1891–1974) United States federal judge

In "The Law and the Future," in The public papers of Chief Justice Earl Warren (1959) edited by Henry M. Christman .

Law, Sense, Universe

“Violence breeds violence. Acts of violence committed in “justice” or in affirmation of “rights” or in defense of “peace” do not end violence. They prepare and justify its continuation.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

Citizenship Papers (2003), The Failure of War

Peace

“I’m constantly searching for right roles, trying to find what suits me the best. Once I find my metier, I’ll elaborate on that, polish my act and then move on. Some actors quickly find a genre they’re comfortable with and then they perfect it. Others do diverse things until they find what suits them. I’m doing the latter. I still haven’t found the role that I can do full justice to. I’m discovering myself as an actor.”

Abhishek Bachchan (1976) Indian actor

His "peer review" on acting, Deccan Chronicle (February 7, 2016), "Still haven’t found a role I can do justice to: Abhishek Bachchan" http://www.deccanchronicle.com/entertainment/bollywood/070216/still-haven-t-found-a-role-i-can-do-justice-to-abhishek-bachchan.html

Search, Perfection

“In his opinion, neither justice nor mercy were very closely related to love, let alone being identical with it—otherwise, why have three words instead of one? A metaphor is not a tautology.”

James Blish (1921–1975) American author

Source: Short fiction, A Style in Treason (1970), Chapter 5 (p. 144)

Love

“Peace is the gift of God who through the death and resurrection of Christ, reconciled humans with himself and with one another. However, peace is also a human achievement since it is to be ushered in through the practice of love and justice.”

Kurien Kunnumpuram (1931–2018) Indian theologian

Kunnumpuram, K. (ed) (2007) World Peace: An Impossible Dream? , Mumbai: St Pauls
On Peace

Love, Death, God, Peace

“Reporter: Do you want bin Laden dead?
Bush: I want justice. And there's an old poster out West, I recall, that says, "Wanted: Dead or Alive."”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

America's New War: President Bush Talks with Reporters at Pentagon, CNN.com, 17 September 2001, 2007-01-24 http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0109/17/se.09.html, 2000s, 2001

Dead