Quotes About Justice

It is well said, then, that it is by doing just acts that the just man is produced, and by doing temperate acts the temperate man; without doing these no one would have even a prospect of becoming good.

Justice is the loveliest and health is the best, but the sweetest to obtain is the heart's desire.

We become just by the practice of just actions, self-controlled by exercising self-control, and courageous by performing acts of courage.

bad men... aim at getting more than their share of advantages, while in labor and public service they fall short of their share; and each man wishing for advantage to himself criticizes his neighbor and stands in his way; for if people do not watch it carefully the common weal is soon destroyed. The result is that they are in a state of faction, putting compulsion on each other but unwilling themselves to do what is just.

governments, which have a regard to the common interest, are constituted in accordance with strict principles of justice, and are therefore true forms; but those which regard only the interest of the rulers are all defective and perverted forms, for they are despotic, whereas a state is a community of freemen.

Inequality is everywhere at the bottom of faction, for in general faction arises from men's striving for what is equal.

But justice is the bond of men in states, for the administration of justice, which is the determination of what is just, is the principle of order in political society.

Even a woman may be good, and also a slave; though the woman may be said to be an inferior being, and the slave quite worthless.

For when people do not keep watch over the commons, it is destroyed. It results, then, that they fall into civil faction, compelling one another by force and not wishing to do what is just themselves.

All virtue is summed up in dealing justly.

men are guilty of the greatest crimes from ambition, and not from necessity

At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law & justice he is the worst.

The fact is that the greatest crimes are caused by excess and not by necessity. Men do not become tyrants in order that they may not suffer cold; and hence great is the honour bestowed, not on him who kills a thief, but on him who kills a tyrant.

Equity bids us be merciful to the weakness of human nature; to think less about the laws than about the man who framed them, and less about what he said than about what he meant; not to consider the actions of the accused so much as his intentions; nor this or that detail so much as the whole story; to ask not what a man is now but what he has always or usually been.

We praise a man who feels angry on the right grounds and against the right persons and also in the right manner at the right moment and for the right length of time.

Nevertheless, Rhetoric is useful, because the true and the just are naturally superior to their opposites, so that, if decisions are improperly made, they must owe their defeat to their own advocates; which is reprehensible.

The law is reason unaffected by desire.

Well-drawn laws should themselves define all the points they possibly can and leave as few as may be to the decision of the judges.

Man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but, when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all; since armed injustice is the more dangerous, and he is equipped at birth with the arms of intelligence and with moral qualities which he may use for the worst ends.

La justicia encierra y comprende en sí misma todas las virtudes, porque la justicia es la práctica de la virtud perfecta, y su perfección reside en el hecho de quien la ejerce y la posee; éste no lo hace sólo respecto de sí mismo, sino también respecto de los demás

It is in justice that the ordering of society is centered.

And retaliation too is pleasant, because if failing at it is painful, succeeding at it is pleasant.

absuelve y no cuando condena

For we don't wish to know what bravery is but to be brave, not what justice is but to be just, just as we wish to be in health rather than to know what health is