Quotes About Justice

The French Revolution, which is nothing more nor less than the ideal armed with the sword, rose abruptly, and by that very movement, closed the door of evil and opened the door of good. It released the question, promulgated truth, drove away miasma, purified the century, crowned the people. We can say it created man a second time, in giving him a second soul, his rights. Page 997 Saint-Denis chapter 7 Argot part III

À ceux qui ignorent, enseignez-leur [...] Le coupable n'est pas celui qui y fait le péché, mais celui qui y a fait l'ombre.

Terminar este duelo, amalgamar la idea pura con la realidad humana, hacer penetrar pacíficamente el derecho en el hecho y e hecho en el derecho, es el trabajo de los sabios.

The prosperity of right is that it is always beautiful and pure.

We may be indifferent to the death penalty and not declare ourselves either way so long as we have not seen a guillotine with our own eyes. But when we do, the shock is violent, and we are compelled to choose sides, for or against... Death belongs to God alone.

in our civilization there are fearful hours - such are those when the criminal law pronounces shipwreck upon a man. What a mournful moment is that in which society withdraws itself and gives up a thinking being forever.

The guilty one is not the person who has committed the sin, but the person who has created the shadow.

Le sens révolutionnaire est un sens moral. Le sentiment du droit, développé, développe le sentiment du devoir. La loi de tous, c'est la liberté, qui finit où commence la liberté d'autrui, selon l'admirable définition de Robespierre.

God gives air to men; the law sells it to them.

The just man frowns, but never sneers. We understand anger, not malice.

Release is not the same as liberation. You get out of jail, all right, but you never stop being condemned.

Liberation is not deliverance. One gets free from the galleys, but not from the sentence. That

Ordinarily it ends in that ocean: revolution. Sometimes, however, coming from those lofty mountains which dominate the moral horizon, justice, wisdom, reason, right, formed of the pure snow of the ideal, after a long fall from rock to rock, after having reflected the sky in its transparency and increased by a hundred affluents in the majestic mien of triumph, insurrection is suddenly lost in some quagmire, as the Rhine is in a swamp.

Aie dans les veines le doux lait de ta mère, et le généreux esprit de ton père ; sois bon, sois fort, sois honnête, sois juste ! Et reçois, dans le baiser de ta grand-mère, la bénédiction de ton grand-père.

Au-dessus de l'absolu révolutionnaire, il y a l'absolu humain.

Proper distribution does not imply an equal share but an equitable share. Equity is the essence of equality.

The faults of women, of children, of the feeble, the indigent, and the ignorant, are the fault of the husbands, the fathers, the masters, the strong, the rich, and the wise.

Part 1 A Just Man

Do you permit it? Enjolras

It is sad to tell, but after having tried society, which had caused his misfortune, he tried Providence which created society, and condemned it also.

Equality does not mean that all plants must grow to the same height - a society of tall grass and dwarf trees, a jostle of conflicting jealousies. It means, in civic terms, an equal outlet for all talents; in political terms, that all votes will carry the same weight; and in religious terms that all beliefs will enjoy equal rights.

Jean Valjean disconcerted him. All the axioms which had served him as points of support all his life long, had crumbled away in the presence of this man. Jean Valjean's generosity towards him, Javert, crushed him.

He asked himself whether human society could have the right also to subject its members,on the one hand,to its crazy lack of foresight and,on the other,to its pitiless foresight,and to hold a poor man forever between a lack and an excess-lack of work and excess of punishment

One may feel a certain indifference to the death penalty, one may refrain from pronouncing upon it, from saying yes or no, so long as one has not seen a guillotine with one's own eyes: but if one encounters one of them, the shock is violent; one is forced to decide, and to take part for or against. Some