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Quotes about justice

171 quotes from 112 people

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Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override.
John Rawls1921–2002A Theory of Justice (1971; 1975; 1999), Chapter I, Section 1, pg. 3-4
Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.
Henry David Thoreau1817–1862Civil Disobedience (1849)In context
- Laws
National injustice is the surest road to national downfall.
William Ewart Gladstone1809–1898Speech, Plumstead (30 November 1878) as quoted in Congressional Record, vol. 57, p. 4503
The first court martial was perhaps unintelligent; the second one is inescapably criminal.
Émile Zola1840–1902J’accuse…! (1898)
The true measure of the justice of a system is the amount of protection it guarantees to the weakest.
Aung San Suu Kyiborn 1945In Quest of Democracy (1991)
I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights.
Desmond Tutu1931–2021Today, NBC TV (9 January 1985)
- Freedom
My measures will not be crippled by any bureaucracy. Here I don’t have to worry about Justice; my mission is only to destroy and to exterminate, nothing more.
Hermann Göring1893–1946Speech in Frankfurt (3 March 1933), as quoted in Gestapo: Instrument of Tyranny (1956) by Edward Crankshaw, p. 48
- Power
In history and in life one sometimes seems to glimpse a ferocious law which states: “to he that has, will be given; from he that has not, will be taken away.”
Primo Levi1919–1987If This Is a Man (1947)
- History
Who ordained that a few should have the land of Britain as a perquisite, who made 10,000 people owners of the soil and the rest of us trespassers in the land of our birth?
David Lloyd George1863–1945Speech in Newcastle (9 October 1909), quoted in The Times (11 October 1909), p. 6
- Politics
The unjust distribution of goods persists, creating a situation of social sin that cries out to Heaven and limits the possibilities of a fuller life for so many of our brothers.
Pope Francis1936–2025Said during a gathering of Latin American bishops, as quoted in ‘Option for the Poor’ alive and well in Latin America, National Catholic Reporter (21 May 2007)
- Economics
The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box.
Harper Lee1926–2016To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), Pt. 2, Ch. 23 (Atticus Finch)
- Race
If we can cultivate in the world the idea that aggressive war-making is the way to the prisoner’s dock rather than the way to honors, we will have accomplished something toward making the peace more secure.
Robert H. Jackson1892–1954Statement on the War Trials Agreement (12 August 1945)
- War & Peace
Prisons do not disappear problems, they disappear human beings. And the practice of disappearing vast numbers of people from poor, immigrant and racially marginalized communities has literally become big business.
Angela Davisborn 1944“Masked Racism” (1998)
- Race
You say that you are my judge. I do not know if you are! But I tell you that you must take good care not to judge me wrongly, because you will put yourself in great danger.
JAJoan of Arc1412–1431Warning to Bishop Cauchon, trial of condemnation, examination in prison (14 March 1431)
Shall we be citizens in war, and aliens in peace? Would that be just?
Frederick Douglass1817–1895“What the Black Man Wants”, speech in Boston (1865)
- War & Peace