Quotes About Justice

Judaism is supremely a religion of freedom – not freedom in the modern sense, the ability to do what we like, but in the ethical sense of the ability to choose to do what we should, to become co-architects with God of a just and gracious social order. The former leads to a culture of rights, the latter to a culture of responsibilities: freedom as responsibility.

The book of Exodus is the West's meta-narrative of hope. It tells an astonishing story of how a group of slaves were liberated from the mightiest empire of the ancient world. Theologically, its message is even more revolutionary: the supreme power intervenes in history in defence of the powerless.

This is the question of questions for biblical faith. Paganism then, like secularism now, had no such doubt. Why should anyone expect justice in the world? The gods fought. They were indifferent to mankind. The universe was not moral. It was an arena of conflict. The strong win, the weak suffer, and the wise keep far from the fray. If there is no God or (what amounts to the same thing) many gods, there is no reason to expect justice. The question does not arise.

Jewish law is concerned not only with protecting the rights of those who have been wronged, but also helping wrongdoers rebuild their future. Guilt, in Judaism, is about acts, not persons. It is the act, not the person, that is condemned.

As long as there is hunger, poverty and treatable disease in the world there is work for us to do. As long as nations fight, and men hate, and corruption stalks the corridors of power; as long as there is unemployment and homelessness, depression and despair, our task is not yet done, and we hear, if we listen carefully enough, the voice of God asking us, as he asked the first humans, 'Where are you?' Hassidim tell the story of the

That is the nature of Jewish faith – not security but the courage to live with insecurity, knowing that life is a battle, but that if we do justice and practise compassion, if we honour great and small, the powerful and the powerless alike, if our eyes do not look down to the earth and its seductions but to heaven and its challenges, this small, vulnerable people is capable of great, even astonishing, achievements.

cooperation is as necessary as competition, that cooperation depends on trust, that trust requires justice, and that justice itself is incomplete without forgiveness. Morality is not simply what we choose it to be. It is part of the basic fabric of the universe, revealed to us by the universe's Creator, long ago.

Deterence is only a stay of execution, not a reprieve.

About Justice departing from the shepherds: Justice illustrates a passage from Virgil's Georgics, in which he describes how Astraea, the goddess of Justice, who used to live among mortals during the Golden Age, took refuge among country people, as times degenerated, and at length fled even from them. Rosa shows the cloud-borne goddess departing from a tumbledown farmstead as she hands her sword and scales to a bemused group of peasants, one of whom awkwardly pulls of his hat in respect.

if you can't treat this person properly there is something fundamentally wrong with your system.

It's to be a person who's able to shoot little arrows into sacred cows and knock politicians off their pedestals, to look out for hypocrisy, advocate for all sorts of things from social justice to peace.

Be sure of one thing, I can help you with your vengeance.

It is a maxim among these lawyers, that whatever hath been done before, may legally be done again: and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice and the general reason of mankind.

Power is no blessing in itself, except when it is used to protect the innocent.

Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.

Honestly, I'd love to be remembered as one of the best to ever pick up a mic, but if I'm doing my part to lessen some racial tension I feel good about what I'm doing.

I have the right to remain violente. Everything I say can and will be used against you.

The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man's right to his body, or woman's right to her soul.

The ultimate end of all revolutionary social change is to establish the sanctity of human life, the dignity of man, the right of every human being to liberty and well-being.

Ask for work. If they don't give you work, ask for bread. If they do not give you work or bread, then take bread.

Every society has the criminals it deserves.

Give us what belongs to us in peace, and if you don't give it to us in peace, we will take it by force.

The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man's right to his body, or woman's right to her soul.

Until we are all free, we are none of us free.