quotes, quotations and passages on justice

Never forget that justice is what
love looks like in public.

Cornel West

If one really wishes to know how justice is administered in a country, one does not question the policemen, the lawyers, the judges, or the protected members of the middle class. One goes to the unprotected–-those, precisely, who need the law’s protection most!–and listens to their testimony. James Baldwin

Justice is justly represented blind, because she sees no difference in the parties concerned. She has but one scale and weight, for rich and poor, great and small. William Penn

The need for justice grows out of the conflict of human interests. That is to say, if there were no conflict of interests among humankind we should never have invented the word justice, nor conceived the idea for which it stands. Thomas Nixon Carver

Justice has always evoked ideas of equality, of proportion of compensation. Equity signifies equality. Rules and regulations, right and righteousness are concerned with equality in value. If all men are equal, then all men are of the same essence, and the common essence entitles them of the same fundamental rights and equal liberty… In short justice is another name of liberty, equality and fraternity. B.R. Ambedkar Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are. Benjamin Franklin

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.

Marcus Tullius Cicero
On the Laws

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In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign
of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a
thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach
evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are
thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
The Gulag Archipelago

People often mistake killing and revenge for justice.
They seldom have the stomach for justice.

Robert Jordan

Justice, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Some see an innocent victim.
Others will see evil incarnate getting exactly what’s deserved.

Emily Thorne

Justice, sir, is the great interest of man on earth. It is the
ligament which holds civilized beings and civilized nations
together. Wherever her temple stands, and so long as it is
duly honored, there is a foundation for general security,
general happiness, and the improvement
and progress of our race.

Daniel Webster

There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice,
but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.

Elie Wiesel

Justice should remove the bandage from her eyes long enough
to distinguish between the vicious and the unfortunate.

Robert G. Ingersoll

Justice will not be served until those who are
unaffected are as outraged as those who are.

Benjamin Franklin

Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the
conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly
recognize the voice of their own conscience usually
recognize also the voice of justice.

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

I agree that those of us who believe we are pursuing justice must always
ask ourselves about our own methods. It also occurs to me that, although
we must strive to pursue justice in ways that win over even those who
initially disagree with us, we must continue to pursue justice
even when we are vilified.

Arik Ascherman

Only one thing will create peace and the end of terrorism — the creation
of a just world. If there is no justice, there will never be peace. If there is
no justice, there is no hope for any of us. . . There is only one way to
establish justice and that is to share the resources of the world more
equitably. It is so simple and yet we refrain from doing it. Without sharing
there will never be justice. Without justice there will never be peace.
Without peace there is no future for us.

Benjamin Crème
The World Teacher for All Humanity

Justice is indiscriminately due to all, without regard to numbers, wealth, or rank.

John Jay
Georgia v. Brailsford

The legal system doesn't work. Or more accurately, it doesn't
work for anyone except those with the most resources. Not
because the system is corrupt. I don't think our legal system
(at the federal level, at least) is at all corrupt. I mean simply
because the costs of our legal system are so astonishingly high
that justice can practically never be done.

Lawrence Lessig
Free Culture

Human justice is very prolix, and yet at times quite mediocre; divine justice
is more concise and needs no information from the prosecution, no legal
papers, no interrogation of witnesses, but makes the guilty one his own
informer and helps him with eternity’s memory.

Søren Kierkegaard
Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses

True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

There is another side called justice. And justice is really love in calculation. Justice is love correcting that which revolts against love.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.

H. L. Mencken

Justice of the world is in its creativity, in solving problems, in our
activity and struggle. While I am alive there is the possibility
to act, to strive for happiness, this is justice.

Simon Soloveychik
Parenting for Everyone

What the marchers on Washington knew, what the marchers in Selma knew, what folks like Julian Bond knew, what the marchers in this room still know, is that justice is not only the absence of oppression, it is the presence of opportunity. Justice is giving every child a shot at a great education no matter what zip code they’re born into. Justice is giving everyone willing to work hard the chance at a good job with good wages, no matter what their name is, what their skin color is, where they live. Justice is living up to the common creed that says, I am my brother’s keeper and my sister’s keeper. Justice is making sure every young person knows they are special and they are important and that their lives matter--not because they heard it in a hashtag, but because of the love they feel every single day not just love from their parents, not just love from their neighborhood, but love from police, love from politicians. Love from somebody who lives on the other side of the country, but says, that young person is still important to me. That’s what justice is.

Barack Obama

Law and justice are not always the same. When they aren't,
destroying the law may be the first step toward changing it.

Gloria Steinem
Open Secrets

Justice, under capitalism, works not from a notion of obedience to moral
law, or to conscience, or to compassion, but from the assumption of a duty
to preserve a social order and the legal “rights” that constitute that order,
especially the right to property. . . It comes to this: that decision will seem
most just which preserves the system of justice even if
the system is itself routinely unjust.

Curtis White
“The Spirit of Disobedience"

Salvation for a race, nation, or class must come from within. Freedom is
never granted; it is won. Justice is never given; it is exacted. Freedom
and justice must be struggled for by the oppressed of all lands and races,
and the struggle must be continuous, for freedom is never a final fact, but
a continuing evolving process to higher and higher levels of human,
social, economic, political and religious relationships.

A. Philip Randolph