quotations about justice
The safety of the people requireth further from him or them that have the sovereign power, that justice be equally administered to all degrees of people, that is, that as well the rich and mighty as poor and obscure persons may be righted of the injuries done them, so as the great may have no greater hope of impunity when they do violence, dishonor, or any injury to the meaner sort than when one of these does the like to one of them. For in this consisteth equity, to which, as being a precept of the law of Nature, a sovereign is as much subject as any of the meanest of his people.
THOMAS HOBBES
Leviathan
If justice must be dealt, then let it be dealt, but don't poison yourselves with vengeance.
DAVID WEBER
By Schism Rent Asunder
In order to protect himself from force, man was obliged to submit to justice. Justice or force: he was compelled to choose between the two masters, so little are we made to be independent.
LUC DE CLAPIERS
MARQUIS DE VAUVENARGUES, Reflections and Maxims
Partial justice may exist with hatred; full justice requires charity.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Justice ... is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it judges sharply what is right and what is wrong. On the other hand, judgment based on justice naturally calls forth a counter-judgment as a reaction from the side so-judged. Accordingly, we fall into an endless conflict and struggle between judge and the judged.
MASAO ABE
Buddhism and Interfaith Dialogue
What is justice in one place is injustice in another.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Justice is a knee in the gut from the floor on the chin at night sneaky with a knife brought up down on the magazine of a battleship sandbagged underhanded in the dark without a word of warning. Garroting. That's what justice is.
JOSEPH HELLER
Catch-22
Justice is in subjects as well as in rulers.
THOMAS AQUINAS
Justice
While craving justice for ourselves, it is never wise to be unjust to others.
LEW WALLACE
Ben Hur
Justice is immortal, eternal, and immutable, like God himself; and the development of law is only then a progress when it is directed towards those principles which, like him, are eternal; and whenever prejudice or error succeeds in establishing in customary law any doctrine contrary to eternal justice.
LOUIS KOSSUTH
Select Speeches
Justice is a machine that, when someone has once given it the starting push, rolls on of itself.
JOHN GALSWORTHY
Justice: A Tragedy in Four Acts
Justice? You get justice in the next world. In this one you have the law.
WILLIAM GADDIS
A Frolic of His Own
Justice is often the wind that blows the criminal to his punishment.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Justice and mercy
Are human dreams, they do not concern the birds nor the fish nor eternal God.
ROBINSON JEFFERS
"Birds and Fishes"
Show the jury pictures of the violated body of a dead child, tender as a fledgeling, and some atavistic voice within always whispered, "Someone ought to pay for this." The need for vengeance, so easy to confuse with the imperatives of justice, always worked for the prosecution. The jury didn't want to convict the wrong man, but they did need to convict someone.
P. D. JAMES
A Certain Justice
Justice is a rare illness in a world that is otherwise a picture of health.
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON
The Angel's Game
There's no justice like angry-mob justice.
PRINCIPAL SKINNER
The Simpsons
Justice is the most "political" or institutional of the virtues. The legitimacy of a state rests upon its claim to do justice.
ALAN RYAN
Justice
Justice in the hands of the powerful is merely a governing system like any other. Why call it justice? Let us rather call it injustice, but of a sly effective order, based entirely on cruel knowledge of the resistance of the weak, their capacity for pain, humiliation and misery. Injustice sustained at the exact degree of necessary tension to turn the cogs of the huge machine-for-the-making-of-rich-men, without bursting the boiler.
GEORGES BERNANOS
The Diary of a Country Priest
There's no surer justice in the world than that which makes the rich thief hang the poor one.
PEIRE CARDENAL
Songs of the Troubadours