Quotes About Justice

Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.

It is impossible to suffer without making someone pay for it; every complaint already contains revenge.

There is a certain right by which we many deprive a man of life, but none by which we may deprive him of death; this is mere cruelty.

Socialism itself can hope to exist only for brief periods here and there, and then only through the exercise of the extremest terrorism. For this reason it is secretly preparing itself for rule through fear and is driving the word "justice" into the heads of the half-educated masses like a nail so as to rob them of their reason… and to create in them a good conscience for the evil game they are to play.

But thus I counsel you, my friends: Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful. They are people of a low sort and stock; the hangmen and the bloodhound look out of their faces. Mistrust all who talk much of their justice! Verily, their souls lack more than honey. And when they call themselves the good and the just, do not forget that they would be pharisees, if only they had—power.

Our crime against criminals lies in the fact that we treat them like rascals.

One is punished most for one's virtues.

He who is punished is never he who performed the deed. He is always the scapegoat.

All that exists is just and unjust and is equally justified in both respects.

Behold the good and just! Whom do they hate most? The man who breaks their tables of values, the breaker, the lawbreaker:- yet he is the creator.

Honor to the government, and obedience, and also to the crooked government! So desires good sleep. How can I help it, if power likes to walk on crooked legs?

Men were considered free only so that they might be considered guilty - could be judged and punished: consequently, every act had to be considered as lying within the consciousness.

Equality before the enemy—first precondition for an honest duel.

Compassion and love for mankind is a development of the sexual instinct, justice a development of the passion for revenge. Virtue is the pleasure in resistance, the will to power; honour is the recognition of one's peers and equals in power.

And others are proud of their modicum of righteousness, and for the sake of it do violence to all things: so that the world is drowned in their unrighteousness.

unrighteousness. Ah! how ineptly cometh the word virtue out of their mouth! And when they say: I am just, it always soundeth like: I am just—revenged!

There is no eternal justice.

Punishment.—A strange thing, our punishment! It does not cleanse the criminal, it is no atonement; on the contrary, it pollutes worse than the crime does. The

The Free Man is a Warrior. I do not believe in any Rights that are not supported by the power required to enforce them.

In warring against stupidity, the most just and gentle of men at last become brutal.

There is a solitude within him that is inaccessible to praise or blame, his own justice that is beyond appeal.

thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful! [...] out of their countenances peer the hangman and the sleuth-hound. Distrust all those who talk much of their justice!

Ich mag eure kalte Gerechtigkeit nicht; und aus dem Auge eurer Richter blickt mir immer der Henker und sein kaltes Eisen. (Ich don't like your cold justice; and from the eyes of your judges seems to always gaze the hangman and his cold iron.)

A small revenge is humaner than no revenge at all. And if the punishment be not also a right and an honor to the transgressor, I do not like your punishing. Nobler is it to own oneself in the wrong than to establish one's right, especially if one be in the right. Only, one must be rich enough to do so. I do not like your cold justice; out of the eye of your judges there always glanceth the executioner and his cold steel. Tell me: where find we justice, which is love with seeing eyes?