“Justice is the backbone of a fair society. Laws alone cannot ensure equality; it takes courage, integrity, and vigilance from individuals. True justice protects the vulnerable and holds power accountable.”

2013, "Let Freedom Ring" Ceremony (August 2013)
Context: To dismiss the magnitude of this progress -- to suggest, as some sometimes do, that little has changed -- that dishonors the courage and the sacrifice of those who paid the price to march in those years. Medgar Evers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, Martin Luther King Jr. -- they did not die in vain. Their victory was great. But we would dishonor those heroes as well to suggest that the work of this nation is somehow complete. The arc of the moral universe may bend towards justice, but it doesn’t bend on its own. To secure the gains this country has made requires constant vigilance, not complacency. Whether by challenging those who erect new barriers to the vote, or ensuring that the scales of justice work equally for all, and the criminal justice system is not simply a pipeline from underfunded schools to overcrowded jails, it requires vigilance. And we'll suffer the occasional setback. But we will win these fights. This country has changed too much. People of goodwill, regardless of party, are too plentiful for those with ill will to change history’s currents.

Source: From Freedom to Slavery (1996), Ch. 6 : The New King : Tyranny of the Corporate Core, p. 90

Book I, section 42; Translation by C.D. Yonge)
De Legibus (On the Laws)
Context: For there is but one essential justice which cements society, and one law which establishes this justice. This law is right reason, which is the true rule of all commandments and prohibitions. Whoever neglects this law, whether written or unwritten, is necessarily unjust and wicked.

I Think I'll Sit This One Out (1939)
Context: Justice alone knows liberty, equality, and fraternity, and justice is a human virtue arising from man's human capacity to reason. We cannot make sense out of justice by looking at the moon or taking dope or building battleships. We can make sense out of justice by using our reason to discover that justice, like wisdom, is better than rubies.

Ch. 1 Marchamont Nedham : The Right Constitution of a Commonwealth Examined http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/print_documents/v1ch16s15.html &lt;!-- The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States vol. VI (1851) p. 9 --&gt; <br class="br">1780s, A Defence of the Constitutions of Government (1787) <br class="br">Context: The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If &quot;Thou shall not covet,&quot; and &quot;Thou shall not steal,&quot; are not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society, before it can be civilized or made free.

Source: The Best That Money Can't Buy: Beyond Politics, Poverty, & War (2002), p. 33.

Source: Philosophy and Real Politics (2008), pp. 81-82.

Source: Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex and Politics (1982), Ch. 3 : The Ethics of Magic, p. 41
Context: To live with integrity in an unjust society we must work for justice. To walk with integrity through a landscape strewn with beer cans, we must stop and pick them up.