Quotes About Justice

If you take God out of it, then right and justice become small, human things. And weak things too.

All suspects should be given the chance to telephone their lawyers or their mothers, and it would not be surprising if they chose to call their mothers. After all, your mother is fall more likely to believe in your innocence than your lawyer.

Mma Ramotswe was right: evil repaid with retribution, with punishment, had achieved half its goal; evil repaid with kindness was shown to be what it really was, a small, petty thing, not something frightening at all, but something pitiable, a paltry affair.

The trouble with the world today, she thought, was that people were not prepared to stand up to bad behaviour. They looked away

I do not think this is so, because there is no difference between white men and black men; we are all the same; we are just people.

If we were all responsible for the misdeeds of the governments that represent us, thought Isabel, then the moral burden would be just too great.

If people came at you and started to scratch you, then of course you had the right to sit on them.

We were all people—men and women—and you could never say that one group of people was less important than another.

They should get another lawyer," he said. "Surely there are better people around. That man with the big nose—you know the one—they say that he's very good. The judges can't take their eyes off his nose, and so they always decide in his favour.

If we let the men talk about them and decide them, then suddenly we wake up and find out that the men have made all the decisions, and these decisions all suit men.

Truth had a way of coming out on top—and it was just as well for everybody that it did. If there ever came a day when truth was so soundly defeated that it never emerged, but sank, instead, under the sheer volume of untruth that the world produced, then that would be a sad day for Botswana, and for the people who lived in Botswana. It would be a sad day for the whole world, that day.

but then where would one end if one started to compose a list of the wrongs that this world had seen? Better perhaps, thought Mma Ramotswe, to make a list of those things that were right with the world, of people who had made life better for other people, or who had done what they had been called to do with honour and without complaint. Her

But if you do not forgive, and you think all the time about getting even, or punishing somebody who has done you a wrong, what are you achieving?

To be free Is often to be lonely. He would unite The unequal moieties fractured By our own well-meaning sense of justice Would restore to the larger the wit and will The smaller possess but can only use For arid disputes, would give back to The son the mother's richness of feeling …

You can't condemn the present for the wrongs of the past.

She liked such stories because it helped people to believe in justice, which we had to believe in if we were not simply to give up in the face of adversity.

but then where would one end if one started to compose a list of the wrongs that this world had seen? Better perhaps, thought Mma Ramotswe, to make a list of those things that were right with the world, of people who had made life better for other people, or who had done what they had been called to do with honour and without complaint.

The more that people are in the wrong, she thought, the louder their protestations on being brought to book.

Sometimes wickedness prevails.

One day Felix came to me and complained that somebody had whipped him very badly. He took off his shirt and I saw the skin covered with wheals. I asked him who had done this and he replied that it had been the supervisor at a local mission. I drove with Felix to make a complaint to the missionary, who interrogated his supervisor. The supervisor admitted that he had whipped Felix, but said that this was because Felix had gone round the mission station biting his enemies.

She had brought all of this on herself, and so she had, in a sense, got what she deserved. But, even so, she had a soul like everyone else, and one should not crow over the defeat even of those who richly deserve to be defeated. That was dangerous, because then you yourself might get what you deserve for reveling in the misfortunes of another.

She had brought all of this on herself, and so she had, in a sense, got what she deserved. But, even so, Mma Ramotswe reminded herself, she had a soul like everyone else, and one should not crow over the defeat even of those who richly deserve to be defeated. That was dangerous, because then you yourself might get what you deserve for reveling in the misfortunes of another.

If everybody is a villain, then nobody is a villain

It was very sweet revenge, indeed. It was compensation for the garlic that was never to be. It was about garlic, and yearning, and disappointment, and justice. It was about so many things.