Justice quotes
3.9K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside justice — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"The gentleman holds justice to be of highest importance. If a gentleman has courage but neglects justice, he becomes insurgent. If an inferior man has courage but neglects justice, he becomes a thief."
"Heaven gives long life to the just and the intelligent."
"You can be a career professional as a judge, a prosecutor, sometimes as a defense attorney, and never insist on fairness and justice. That's tragic and that's what we have to change."
"The absolute pacifist is a bad citizen; times come when force must be used to uphold right, justice and ideals."
"As there is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it, so reasonable arguments, challenges to magnanimity, and appeals to sympathy or justice, are folly when we are dealing with human crocodiles and boa-constrictors."
"Someone must show that the Afro-American race is more sinned against than sinning, and it seems to have fallen to me to do so. The awful death roll called every week is appalling, not only because of the lives taken, the cruelty and outrage to the victims, but because of the prejudice it fosters."
"All the public systems – administration, justice, education and political are designed to keep people with knowledge out. Such a system promotes mediocrity."
"Ugly deeds are taught by ugly deeds."
"We must learn to be honest with ourselves, and know our shortcomings. We will acquire cohesion but we will pay dearly for being a slow pupil."
"Let us give practical recognition to the injustices of the past,by building a future based on equality&social justice"
"Those who become incoculated with the virus of race hatred are more unfortunate than the victim of it. Race hatred is the most malignant poison that can afflict the mind. It freezes up the fount of inspiration and chills the higher faculties of the soul."
"The Obama administration's agenda of maximizing dependency involves political favoritism cloaked in the raiment of "economic planning" and "social justice" that somehow produce results superior to what markets produce when freedom allows merit to manifest itself, and incompetence to fail. The administration's central activity - the political allocation of wealth and opportunity - is not merely susceptible to corruption, it is corruption."
"Let judges secretly despair of justice: their verdicts will be more acute. Let generals secretly despair of triumph; killing will be defamed. Let priests secretly despair of faith: their compassion will be true."
"What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: A day that reveals to him, more than all other days of the year, the gross injustices and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham."
"In regard to the colored people, there is always more that is benevolent, I perceive, than just, manifested towards us. What I ask for the negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice."
"Let me say no more. Words do no justice to the hidden meaning. Everything immediately becomes slightly different when it is expressed in words, a little bit distorted, a little foolish...It is perfectly fine with me that what for one man is precious wisdom for another sounds like foolery."
"And Heaven, that every virtue bears in mind, E'en to the ashes of the just is kind."
"The moral arc of the universe bends at the elbow of justice."
"Prejudice comes from being in the dark; sunlight disinfects it."
"The profoundest of all sensualities is the sense of truth and the next deepest sensual experience is the sense of justice."
