Quotes About Justice

And this is true of all terrible crimes; it's the victims who must be respected and honoured, not the murderers

We're the police, we don't thump people.

gap between rich and poor was not just one of wealth but of accountability

Those of us who are most genuinely repelled by war and violence are also those who are most likely to decide that some things, after all, are worth fighting for.

You can't have occupation and human rights.

As Shakespeare put it in 'King Lear,' the policeman who lashes the whore has a hot need to use her for the very offense for which he plies the lash.

As the cleansing ocean closes over bin Laden's carcass, may the earth lie lightly on the countless graves of those he sentenced without compunction to be burned alive or dismembered in the street.

T]hose who willed the means and wished the ends are not absolved from guilt by the refusal of reality to match their schemes.

In effect, nobody who is not from the losing classes has ever been thrust into a death cell in these United States.

Some say that because the United States was wrong before, it cannot possibly be right now, or has not the right to be right. (The British Empire sent a fleet to Africa and the Caribbean to maintain the slave trade while the very same empire later sent another fleet to enforce abolition. I would not have opposed the second policy because of my objections to the first; rather it seems to me that the second policy was morally necessitated by its predecessor.)

The point of protesting about 'moral equivalence' is surely not to blur moral choices on 'our side'. Is it?

Rights have to be asserted. Animals cannot make such assertions. We have to make representations to ourselves on their behalf.

Those who worry about the treatment of animals are often accused of sentimentality or of putting the plight of beasts before the immense problems of humanity. But it is quite rare to find a humanitarian who is indifferent to animals and surprisingly common to find that those who belittle animal rights are the same ones who find the pain of humans easy to bear.

Those who say that I am being punished are saying that god can't think of anything more vengeful than cancer for a heavy smoker.

A consciousness of rectitude can be a terrible thing, and in those days I didn't just think that I was right: I thought that "we" (our group of International Socialists in particular) were being damn well proved right. If you have never yourself had the experience of feeling that you are yoked to the great steam engine of history, then allow me to inform you that the conviction is a very intoxicating one.

The deficit, then, is not the difference between what America spends and what America earns; it is, to a striking extent, the difference between what the rich owe and what the rich pay.

The two things he most valued, which is to say liberty and equality, were not natural allies.

Thomas Jefferson said, "I tremble for my country when I remember that god is just.

Christopher Hitchens

Corruptio optimi pessima: no greater cruelty will be devised than by those who are sure, or are assured, that they are doing good.

Cuanto peor es el infractor, más devoto resulta ser.

Very often in my experience, the extraneous or irrelevant complexities are inserted when a matter of elementary justice or principle is at issue.

Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. This was, for centuries, the warrant for the Christian torture and burning of women who did not conform.

So there are laws that are defensible but unenforceable, and there are laws impossible to infringe. But in the New York of Mayor Bloomberg, there are laws that are not possible to obey, and that nobody can respect, and that are enforced by arbitrary power. The essence of tyranny is not iron law. It is capricious law. Tyranny can be petty. And "petty" is not just Bloomberg's middle name. It is his name.