Quotes About Justice

Remember what John Carlos said: "There is no partial commitment to justice. You are either in or you're out." Trust me: if you're willing to be uncomfortable, you will also feel blessed, if you can see it through and make it to the other side.

If I can't forgive birth mother, how can I be out in the world arguing for love, justice, and community? How can I hold her hostage away from my heart for something she did when she was so young? My instincts are to stay angry, but my heart says that anger is the road to ruin.

That's what is happening every time we kill an Iraqi, every time we kill anyone, we are creating a large number of people who are going to want vengeance. And, you know, when are we ever going to learn that that doesn't work?

society is at the mercy of a murderer without a motive

My father, a bookkeeper who never earned more than $11,000 a year in his life, sat there, writing out a $25 check to the NAACP. When I asked him why, he said discrimination against anyone is discrimination against us all. And I never forgot that. Indeed, his philanthropy was a gift, not just to that organization, but to me.

When you come in to court as a plaintiff or as a defendant, it is terribly important that you look up at the bench and feel that that person represents you and will understand you, that that person is reflective of our community and of our society.

This society cannot go forward, the way we have been going forward, where the gap between the rich and the poor keeps growing. It's not politically viable it's not morally right it's just not going to happen.

The progress of LGBT rights is often directly tied to—sometimes through indirect routes—multiple fights for human dignity and freedom.

Punishments included hanging by the thumbs, toes barely touching the ground; bucking and gagging, being trussed like a turkey with a bit cutting the mouth; spread-eagling on a spare wheel, mocking crucifixion; flogging; and branding.

he'd read the Bible, the Torah, the Koran, and heard the Upanishads were no different—it was clear the battle for justice was in the heart; each soul was precious. "The great religions teach us," he said through tears, "that the loss of one soul affects us all." Whispers

My father was right. There is no client as scary as an innocent man.

The trick if you are sitting at the defense table is to be patient. To wait. Not just for any lie. But for the one you can grab on to and forge like hot iron into a sharpened blade. You then use that blade to rip the case open and spill its guts on the floor.

There is no client as scary as an innocent man. " J. Michael Haller, Criminal Defense Attorney, Los Angeles, 1962.

I view people two ways. They're either eye-for-an-eye people or they are turn-the-cheek people.

In the long run, all wrongs are righted, every minus is equalized with a plus, the columns are totaled and the totals are found correct. But that's in the long run. We must live in the short run and matters are often unjust there. The compensating for us of the universe makes all the accounts come out even, but they grind down the good as well as the wicked in the process.

If the system turns away from the abuses inflicted on the guilty, then who can be next but the innocents?

several of the clerks would look up from their work from time to time, and direct apprehensive glances over towards the seated figure, as if, sitting there tapping his foot impatiently as he waited for Jukes to return, he was about to weigh the feather of truth in the scales of justice against their sinful hearts.

God's mercy for mankind is limitless," Elijah continued, "but He will not permit evil to go on devouring the good forever. That would not be mercy.

Imagine living in a country where the cops are all people who're cut out for the job.

Here are two facts that should not both be true: - There is sufficient food produced in the world every year to feed every human being on the planet. - Nearly 800 million people literally go hungry every day, with more than a third of the earth's population -- 2 billion men and women -- malnourished one way or another, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

Black bodies have been killed and progress has been stalled to provide white comfort.

Maleness has functioned in our race much like whiteness has in the larger culture: its privileges have been rendered normal, its perspectives natural, its biases neutral, its ideas superior, its anger wholly justifiable, and its way of being the gift of God to the universe.

O! save us, we pray thee, thou God of Heaven and of earth, from the devouring hands of the white Christians!!! . . . The whites have murder'd us, O God! . . . We believe that, for thy glory's sake, Thou wilt deliver us; But that thou may'st effect these things, Thy glory must be sought. —David Walker

The black church is quite literally a sounding board for vetting ideas and voicing frustrations so black folk can stay sane in the midst of America's denial of black humanity.