Quotes About Justice

The Duke lacrosse case put North Carolina in a bad light, internationally. It was important that we go in and right the wrongs of that case, and I think we did.

If two wrongs don't make a right, then what do three wrongs make? What about four?

When I wrote the song, The Way It Is, I wanted to move people to take a stand on civil rights in this country.

If you wrote a novel in South Africa which didn't concern the central issues, it wouldn't be worth publishing.

I wrote a great deal about the Civil Rights Movement when I was writing for 'The Nation' in the '60s, and also for Esquire magazine. Reading the biography of Coffin, it just reminded me that in those days, when you saw the term 'Christian,' it usually meant people for civil rights and for justice.

A lot of black men get in desperate situations because they don't see any other avenues to make it. You make a couple of mistakes today, that's all she wrote. You're not going to get a good job; nobody's gonna hire a felon. You can't even vote. They just want to silence you.

That's why I wrote 'Fighter'. I have that need in me to help people. I am all about the underdog.

Raymond Chandler once wrote that Dashiell Hammett gave murder back to the people who really committed it.

And there had to be a dagger thrust in the heart of the left to tell them that you are no longer gonna give five years for a Smith Act prosecution or one year for Contempt of Court, but we're gonna kill ya!

How do we make sure that rising tides lift all boats and not just the yachts?

Let me start with Yahoo. As we meet today, a Chinese citizen who had the courage to speak his mind on the Internet is in prison because Yahoo chose to share his name and address with the Chinese Government.

After Yale Law School, I was proud to try to live up to my parents' example and began my career working for The Urban Justice Center in the streets of Newark, organizing residents to fight for better housing conditions.

I am a product of affirmative action. I am the perfect affirmative action baby. I am Puerto Rican, born and raised in the south Bronx. My test scores were not comparable to my colleagues at Princeton and Yale. Not so far off so that I wasn't able to succeed at those institutions.

I was fortunate that Yale has a very open and creative law school. I took many courses outside the law school, and every semester, the students had a literature reading group. I was asked to lead one on 'Dante and the Concept of Justice,' and it was around that time that I began writing the novel.

We don't know who John Brown was, and in many ways, his work shaped where we are today. He was a Pennsylvanian. He was the prototypical Yankee who fought back and suffered in doing so.

If somebody dumps something noxious in my back yard, the dumper is the last one I would call on to repair the damage.

I think people need to watch 'Chi-Raq' because you need to know what's happening in your back yard.

Prison service vans that travel 90 miles to take a prisoner 90 yards; paedophiles free to leer at children in the very parks where they have committed horrific crimes.

The predominant yardstick of your government is not human rights but national interests.

A lot of my friends are gangsters. Not like gangsters - well, yeah, all sorts of levels of criminality - but not the types that are preying on innocent people. I have no interest in the type of criminality that has no respect for collateral damage.

Yeah, I lost court cases and misdemeanor juries, but of felony jury trials I was successful 105 of 106 times.

It take many a year, mon, and maybe some bloodshed must be, but righteousness someday prevail.

The blood of the just will be demanded of London, burnt by fire in the year '66. The ancient Lady will fall from her high place, and many of the same sect will be killed.

No matter how corrupt and unjust a convict may be, he loves fairness more than anything else. If the people placed over him are unfair, from year to year he lapses into an embittered state characterized by an extreme lack of faith.