Source: What is Property? (1840), Chapter One
“Justice is moral temperance in the world of men. It keeps just relations between men; one man, however little, must not be sacrificed to another, however great, to a majority, or to all men.”
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
Context: Justice is moral temperance in the world of men. It keeps just relations between men; one man, however little, must not be sacrificed to another, however great, to a majority, or to all men. It holds the balance betwixt nation and nation, for a nation is but a larger man; betwixt a man and his family, tribe, nation, race; between mankind and God. It is the universal regulator which coordinates man with man, each with all, — me with the ten hundred millions of men, so that my absolute rights and theirs do not interfere, nor our ultimate interests ever clash, nor my eternal welfare prove antagonistic to the blessedness of all or any one. I am to do justice, and demand that of all, — a universal human debt, a universal human claim.
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Theodore Parker 31
abolitionist 1810–1860Related quotes
“Men who prefer any load of infamy, however great, to any pressure of taxation, however light.”
On American Debts, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000)
"What Is Justice?" (1952), published in What is Justice? (1957)
“A knife is sharpened on stone, steel is tempered by fire, but men must be sharpened by men.”
Source: The Walking Drum (1984), Ch. 57
1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero As King