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Quotes about justice

171 quotes from 112 people

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The quality of mercy is not strain’d,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest,
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
William Shakespeare1564–1616The Merchant of Venice (c. 1597), Act IV, Scene I, spoken by PortiaIn context
- Forgiveness
I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
William Shakespeare1564–1616The Merchant of Venice (c. 1597), Act III, Scene I, spoken by ShylockIn context
- Race
Use every man after his desert, and who should ’scape whipping?
William Shakespeare1564–1616Hamlet (c. 1600), Act II, Scene II, spoken by HamletIn context
When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport: when the tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity. The distinction between Crime and Justice is no greater.
George Bernard Shaw1856–1950Maxims for Revolutionists (1903), #62
- Animals
I desired love and fellowship, and I was still spurned. Was there no injustice in this? Am I to be thought the only criminal, when all human kind sinned against me?
Mary Shelley1797–1851Frankenstein (1818), Chapter XXIVIn context
Revenge is the naked idol of the worship of a semi-barbarous age.
Percy Bysshe Shelley1792–1822A Defence of Poetry (1821)
If a nation could not prosper without the enjoyment of perfect liberty and perfect justice, there is not in the world a nation which could ever have prospered.
Adam Smith1723–1790The Wealth of Nations (1776)In context
- Liberty
That the innocent, though they may have some connexion or dependency upon the guilty (which, perhaps, they themselves cannot help), should not, upon that account, suffer or be punished for the guilty, is one of the plainest and most obvious rules of justice.
Adam Smith1723–1790The Theory of Moral Sentiments
No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged.
Adam Smith1723–1790The Wealth of Nations (1776), Book I, Chapter VIIIIn context
- Economics
- Work
Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn1918–2008Letter to three students (October 1967) as translated in Solzhenitsyn: A Documentary Record (1970) edited by Leopold Labedz, “The Struggle Intensifies”
- Morality
The truth, for time alone reveals the just;
A villain is detected in a day.
Sophocles496–406 BCOedipus the King (c. 429 BC), spoken by CreonIn context
- Time
- Truth & Lies
Nor did I deem that thou, a mortal man,
Could’st by a breath annul and override
The immutable unwritten laws of Heaven.
They were not born today nor yesterday;
They die not; and none knoweth whence they sprang.
Sophocles496–406 BCAntigone (c. 441 BC), spoken by AntigoneIn context
- Laws
- Morality
The longest way must have its close,⁠—the gloomiest night will wear on to a morning. An eternal, inexorable lapse of moments is ever hurrying the day of the evil to an eternal night, and the night of the just to an eternal day.
Harriet Beecher Stowe1811–1896Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), Volume II, Chapter XLIn context
- Hope
It is a maxim among these lawyers that whatever has 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. These, under the name of precedents, they produce as authorities to justify the most iniquitous opinions; and the judges never fail of directing accordingly.
Jonathan Swift1667–1745Gulliver’s Travels (1726), Part IV: A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms, Chapter VIn context
- Laws
The judge is condemned when the guilty is absolved.
PSPublilius Syrus101–101 BCSentences, Maxim 407
- Laws