Quotes About Justice

Patriotism is best exemplified through auto-critique. When you're willing to stand up within the group and say, 'It is wrong for Black people to be anti-Semitic,' or 'It is wrong for America to discriminate against persons of African descent and made them slaves and based its wealth upon free labor,' it's crucial to say that.

A defence in the Inquisition is of little use to the prisoner, for a suspicion only is deemed sufficient cause of condemnation, and the greater his wealth the greater his danger.

I think that something is fundamentally wrong if a person of his great wealth is only paying 13.9 percent effective tax rate and most of Americans are paying 28, 30 percent and they make far less.

'Nobody goes to jail.' This is the mantra of the financial-crisis era, one that saw virtually every major bank and financial company on Wall Street embroiled in obscene criminal scandals that impoverished millions and collectively destroyed hundreds of billions, in fact, trillions of dollars of the world's wealth - and nobody went to jail.

Americans assume that we never go to war to sustain our wealth, because war must be understood as a moral enterprise commensurate with our being a democracy.

Socialism is about claims of justice, and it is also about money: about wealth, income, physical and financial capital. It is an ideology based on allocating economic resources. It may try to achieve that goal by nationalizing assets, by command-and-control regulation, or by taxation and redistribution.

Market forces and capitalism by themselves aren't sufficient to ensure the common good and to limit the concentration of wealth at levels that are compatible with democratic ideals.

Democracy is not compatible with capitalism but is congruent with a version of democratic socialism in which the wealth, resources, and benefits of a social order are shared in an equitable and just manner.

To see poor people, their benefits being cut, to see pensions of Americans who have worked like my father, all their lives, and taken away, to see the rich just accumulating more and more wealth. I mean, it seems to me that there has to be a point where you have to say, 'No, this has to stop.'

I charge my wealthy clients a lot and put 10 per cent in a fund which I use to pay the expenses of my poorer clients. When the government gangs up on the poor schnook in the street, someone has to stand up for him.

The problem with money bail, for those who aren't familiar with it, is that it puts a price tag on freedom. It says to someone who is wealthy that no matter how dangerous you are, you can buy your way out.

In San Francisco, I am proud to say that one of my first mandates as district attorney was that my staff would never ask the court to impose money bail. If we believe someone is too dangerous to be released, then it doesn't matter how wealthy they are - we should ask the court to detain them.

Rather than working for all, power and public policy is increasingly influenced by wealthy elites that are able to bend the rules - and hijack democratic institutions - to their favour.

Inherently, I have a social conscience which my late father inculcated in me. He was not exactly a very wealthy man, but he was very concerned about the underprivileged, about the people who didn't have equal opportunities.

One must not confuse the fight against corruption with the persecution of the rich or wealthy families.

Helping the poor doesn't mean redistributing the wealth. It means removing the breaks that give the wealthy an advantage so huge that big chunks of the nation's income are automatically removed from individual economic competition.

How unfair the fate which ordains that those who have the least should be always adding to the treasury of the wealthy.

The laws are stacked for the wealthy.

We should not allow wealthy people, including corporate criminals, to hide their assets and avoid paying their bills.

The wealthy have never liked to pay for the labor that enriches them. Ever since slavery was eliminated, they have been trying to keep it as close to slavery as they can without violating the slave laws.

Wealthy people don't even pay taxes. But everybody must pay taxes.

Juries are the constitutional institution designed to protect ordinary citizens against the wealthy and powerful.

I try to deal with the poverty gap - to do policies for all of us rather than only for the wealthy.

Democratic socialism means that we must create an economy that works for all, not just the very wealthy.