Quotes About Justice

From Plato to Kant, the substance of what is known as the Golden Rule—one common to the world's religious and moral traditions—has occupied philosophers across the ages. Lincoln's own sensibility—both moral and political—was founded on this injunction. "As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master," he once wrote. "This expresses my idea of democracy.

religion. "I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy," Paine wrote. "I do not believe…in the creed of any church I know of.

In a democracy, the pursuit of power for power's sake, devoid of devotion to equal justice and fair play, is tempting but destructive

Right is of no sex—Truth is of no color—God is the father of us all, and all we are brethren.

The task of history was to secure advances in a universe that tends to disappoint. Goodness would not always be rewarded. The innocent would suffer. Violence would at times defeat virtue. Such was the way of things, but to Lincoln the duty of the leader and of the citizen was neither to despair nor to seek solace and security with the merely strong, but to discern and to pursue the right.

In his closing remarks, King spoke from a mountaintop, a prophet bringing word from on high. Lewis spoke more simply, from the valley, among the people whose burdens he knew because they were his burdens too.

day, another takes to-morrow," Volney wrote. "Let us establish judges, who shall arbitrate our rights, and settle our differences. When the strong shall rise against the weak, the judge shall restrain him…and the life and property of each shall be under the guarantee and protection of all.

Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the world? —Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address

It will then have been proved that, among free men, there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and that they who take such appeal are sure to lose their case, and pay the cost.

To seek vindication in the world but to suspect

It would not take much to have the throats of every Abolitionist cut. —Preston Brooks of South Carolina, 1856 Judge Taney can do many things, but he cannot perform impossibilities….He cannot change the essential nature of things—making evil good, and good evil. —Frederick Douglass, on the Dred Scott decision, 1857 I clearly see, as I think, a powerful plot to make slavery universal and perpetual in this nation. —Abraham Lincoln, 1858

God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, 'the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.

the people are intelligent, the people are just, and in time these characteristics must have an effect on their Representatives.

Black people, Taney went on, "had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.

To Lincoln, God whispered His will through conscience, calling humankind to live in accord with the laws of love. Lincoln believed in a transcendent moral order that summoned sinful creatures, in the words of Micah, to do justice, to love mercy

As Thoreau wrote in his 1849 essay "Civil Disobedience," "Unjust laws exist; shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?

Alluding to the construction, at the Tidal Basin, of a memorial to Thomas Jefferson (it was to be dedicated in 1943), Ickes linked past and present. "Genius, like justice, is blind

And the tragedy of America is that we can imagine justice but cannot finally realize it.

constitutional amendment. It backed

George Washington and Patrick Henry had resorted to arms to win their liberty—so, Malcolm X argued, why shouldn't African Americans be able to draw on that example in the face of fear, intimidation, and brutality?

As Goldwater would put it, capturing the conservative credo, "…extremism in defense of liberty—is—no—vice." (He added: "…moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!")

And you know, my friends," King said, "there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression. There comes a time, my friends, when people get tired of being plunged across the abyss of humiliation, where they experience the bleakness of nagging despair. There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life's July, and left standing amid the piercing chill of an Alpine November.

The message of Martin Luther King, Jr.—that we should be judged on the content of our character, not on the color of our skin

A true patriot salutes the flag but always makes sure it's flying over a nation that's not only free but fair, not only strong but just.