Quotes About Justice

All mankind... being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions.

The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings capable of law, where there is no law, there is no freedom.

Tis a Mistake to think this Fault [tyranny] is proper only to Monarchies; other Forms of Government are liable to it, as well as that. For where-ever the Power that is put in any hands for the Government of the People, and the Preservation of their Properties, is applied to other ends, and made use of to impoverish, harass, or subdue them to the Arbitrary and Irregular Commands of those that have it: There it presently becomes Tyranny, whether those that thus use it are one or many.

In transgressing the law of nature, the offender declares himself to live by another rule than that of reason and common equity" Ch.2, 8

For it will be very difficult to persuade men of sense that he who with dry eyes and satisfaction of mind can deliver his brother to the executioner to be burnt alive, does sincerely and heartily concern himself to save that brother from the flames of hell in the world to come.

The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom.

Moral laws are set as a curb and restraint to these exorbitant desires, which they cannot be but by rewards and punishments, that will over-balance the satisfaction any one shall propose to himself in the breach of the law.

Men living together according to reason, without a common superior on earth, with authority to judge between them, is properly the state of nature.

making laws with penalties of death, and consequently

God; I esteem it above all things necessary to distinguish exactly the business of civil government from that of religion and to settle the just bounds that lie between the one and the other. If this be not done, there can be no end put to the controversies that will be always arising between those that have, or at least pretend to have, on the one side, a concernment for the interest of men's souls, and, on the other side, a care of the commonwealth.

Whenever law ends, tyranny begins

He that had as good left for his improvement as was already taken up, needed not complain, ought not to meddle with what was already improved by another's labour:

the law of the land, which is not to be violated.

he, as much as he can, to preserve the rest of mankind, and may not, unless it be to do justice to an offender, take away or impair the life, or what tends to the preservation of life, the liberty, health, limb, or goods of another.

El fin de la ley no es abolir o restringir, sino preservar y ampliar la libertad. Para todos los estados de seres creados, capaces de derecho, donde no hay ley, no hay libertad.

Where there is no property, there is no injury

thus it is that every man, in the state of nature, has a power to kill a murderer, both to deter others from doing the like injury, which no reparation can compensate

This makes it lawful for a man to kill a thief

To one that, thus unbiassed, reads the scriptures, what Adam fell from (is visible) was the state of perfect obedience, which is called justice in the New Testament; though the word, which in the original signifies justice, be translated righteousness: and by this fall he lost paradise, wherein was tranquillity and the tree of life; i. e. he lost bliss and immortality.

it seems a strange way of understanding a law, which requires the plainest and directest words, that by death should be meant eternal life in misery.

the state of war once begun, continues with a right to the innocent party to destroy the other whenever he can, until the aggressor offers peace

Le leggi non vegliano sulla verità delle opinioni ma sulla sicurezza e l'integrità di ciascuno e dello Stato.

having by his fault forfeited his own life, by some act that deserves death; he, to whom he has forfeited it, may (when he has him in his power) delay to take it, and make use of him to his own service, and he does him no injury by it:

Kings are above the laws