Quotes About Justice

But even a nation of laws must understand the limits of legalism.

What conveys a right, and why should humans, alone on all the planet, have them?

I'll sue for everything they're worth . But all the rights and privileges of fair practice are theirs. Humankind is a thug. The law is a goon.

The proposal is bound to sound odd or frightening or laughable. This is partly because until the rightless thing receives its rights, we cannot see it as anything but a thing for the use of "us"—those who are holding rights at the time.

the ill, insane, and disabled: all changed, unthinkably, over the centuries, into persons by the law.

But the need for justice is like ownership or love. Feeding it only makes it grow.

I was born at a time when the idea of a chimpanzee getting a hearing in a court of law seemed totally absurd. By the time you're my age, we'll wonder how we ever denied such animals their standing as intelligent creatures.

just one small step up from the belief that the Creator of the Universe would care to dole out sentences like a judge in federal court.

May all sentient beings be free from needless suffering.

He wanted drama and showdown and righteous calls for justice from concerned citizens. Instead, he got America.

Children, women, slaves, aboriginals, the ill, insane, and disabled: all changed, unthinkably, over the centuries, into persons by the law. So why shouldn't trees and eagles and rivers and living mountains be able to sue humans for theft and endless damages? (p. 250)

is no answer to say that streams and forests cannot have standing because streams and forests cannot speak. Corporations cannot speak, either; nor can states, estates, infants, incompetents, municipalities, or universities. Lawyers speak for them.

It is no answer to say that streams and forests cannot have standing because streams and forests cannot speak. Corporations cannot speak, either; nor can states, estates, infants, incompetents, municipalities, or universities. Lawyers speak for them.

If nobody's losing money or getting hurt, the law doesn't give a fuck.

Humankind is a thug. The law is a goon.

There is also a thirty-ton monument to him in the "Champions of Justice" Gallery in Oakland, California, along with Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

From personal experience as well as professional study, Athens strongly rejects linking community malignancy with race. Violentization has nothing to do with race—or with poverty, for that matter.)

There are two ways of being a prophet. One is to tell the enslaved that they can be free. It is the difficult path of Moses. The second is to tell those who think they are free that they are in fact enslaved. This is the even more difficult path of Jesus.

I have often wondered why people never want to put a stone monument of the Eight Beatitudes on a courthouse lawn. Then I realize that the Eight Beatitudes of Jesus would probably not be very good for any war, any macho worldview, the wealthy, or our consumer economy.

With the exception of Leviticus and Numbers, written by the priestly classes, most of the Bible is written by or about people who are occupied, enslaved, poor or disenfranchised in some way!

If religion cannot find a meaning for human suffering, humanity is in major trouble. All healthy religion shows you what to do with your pain. Great religion shows you what to do with the absurd, the tragic, the nonsensical, the unjust. If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it. If

As Dorothy Day once wisely said, "What the Gospel forever takes away from Christians is the right to judge between the worthy and the unworthy poor.

Governments encourage this pacification by various distractions, what used to be called "bread and circuses." They know it will keep us small, content, and uninterested in those "weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, and good faith" (Matthew 23:23) that have attracted all great souls. A

The lie was that we believed that we believed all people were created equal! What made us think we were this great free society? Those at the top believed it then, and we at the top believe it two hundred years later. That's the power of myth.