Quotes About Justice

We have the means to change the laws we find unjust or onerous. We cannot, as citizens, pick and choose the laws we will or will not obey. (On dismissing 12,000 striking air traffic controllers)

We must reject the idea that every time a law's broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.

I know in my heart that man is good, that what is right will always eventually triumph, and there is purpose and worth to each and every life.

What does it mean to see the Lord of the universe lying by the roadside starving and walk by on the other side? We cannot know. We can only pledge, in fear and trembling, not to kill him again.

I told you if you ever touched her again, I would kill you. Consider yourself dead.

For the most part, America's criminal justice system isn't deliberately cruel. It's just indifferent to the ways in which it breaks human beings. Few police officers want to contribute to mass incarceration or aid in the destruction of poor minority communities. But the absurdities and injustices are inherent in the system. Often, by the time the police get involved, the only available choices are bad ones.

What if instead of telling officers they have a right to go home safe, police training focused on reminding officers that members of the public have a right to go home safe? What if we reminded officers that they are voluntarily taking a risky job, and that if someone dies because of a mistake, it's better that it be a police officer who is trained and paid to take risks than a member of the public?

What line separates the lawful wartime targeting of an enemy combatant from the extrajudicial murder of a man suspected, but not convicted, of wrongdoing? (p8)

Bluntly: the United States will need to accept some further loss of sovereignty in exchange for more just and effective mechanisms for solving collective global problems. No state can combat disease, climate change, or international terrorist organizations on its own--but any state can play a destructive and destabilizing role on its own.

The distinction between war and nonwar may be arbitrary, but we want it to be sharp and clear, because many actions that are considered both immoral and illegal in peacetime are permissible—even praiseworthy—in wartime. Recall

I hope to die at my post: in the streets or in prison.

L'égalité politique s'incarne à partir du moment où l'exploitation économique est radicalement anéantie

Tomorrow the revolution will 'rise up again, clashing its weapons,' and to your horror it will proclaim with trumpets blazing: I was, I am, I shall be!

What do you want with these special Jewish pains? I feel as close to the wretched victims of the rubber plantations in Putamayo and the blacks of Africa with whose bodies the Europeans play ball… I have no special corner in my heart for the ghetto: I am at home in the entire world, where there are clouds and birds and human tears.

Women's freedom is the sign of social freedom.

I want to burden the conscience of the affluent with all the suffering and all the hidden, bitter tears.

Freedom only for the members of the government, only for the members of the Party – though they are quite numerous – is no freedom at all. Freedom is always the freedom of the one who thinks differently. Not because of any fanatical concept of justice, but because all that is instructive, wholesome and purifying in political freedom depends on this essential characteristic, and its effectiveness vanishes when 'freedom' becomes a special privilege.

Por um mundo onde sejamos socialmente iguais, humanamente diferentes e totalmente livres.

was that I was a person with dignity and self-respect, and I should not set my sights lower than anybody else just because I was black.

I would like to be remembered as a person who wanted to be free... and other people would be also free.

I am leaving this legacy to all of you ... to bring peace, justice, equality, love and a fulfillment of what our lives should be. Without vision, the people will perish, and without courage and inspiration, dreams will die-- the dream of freedom and peace.

I did not get on the bus to get arrested. I got on the bus to go home.

Whatever my individual desires were to be free, I was not alone. There were many others who felt the same way.

Something of Rosa