concept

justice Quotes

96 of the best book quotes about justice
01
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“JUROR #3: You come in here with your heart bleeding all over the floor about slum kids and injustice but you make up these wild stories, and you’ve got some soft-hearted old ladies listening to you.”
Reginald Rose
author
12 Angry Men
book
harsh
justice
concepts
02
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“JUDGE: One man is dead. The life of another is at stake. I urge you to deliberate honestly and thoughtfully. If this is a reasonable doubt - then you must bring me a verdict of ‘not guilty.‘”
03
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“The practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule, is not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest. But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it.”
04
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“If I have unjustly wrested a plank from a drowning man, I must restore it to him though I drown myself.”
05
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“The great end of justice is to substitute the notion of right for that of violence, and to place a legal barrier between the power of the government and the use of physical force.”
06
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“They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.”
07
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“’It is more likely,’ said he, ‘mankind have a little corrupted nature, for they were not born wolves, and they have become wolves; God has given them neither cannon of four-and-twenty pounders, nor bayonets; and yet they have made cannon and bayonets to destroy one another. Into this account I might throw not only bankrupts, but Justice which seizes on the effects of bankrupts to cheat the creditors.’”
Voltaire
author
James the Anabaptist
character
08
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“They became acquainted with sorrow and loved sorrow; they thirsted for suffering, and said that truth could only be attained through suffering. Then science appeared. As they became wicked they began talking of brotherhood and humanitarianism, and understood those ideas. As they became criminal, they invented justice and drew up whole legal codes in order to observe it, and to ensure their being kept, set up a guillotine. They hardly remembered what they had lost, in fact refused to believe that they had ever been happy and innocent.”
09
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“We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations…They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity”
10
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“If you want justice, you will have to claw it from them. Make it personal. Do as much damage as you can. Get your message across. That way, you stand a better chance of being taken seriously next time. Of being considered dangerous.”
11
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″‘How could any Lord have made this world?’ she asked. With her mind she had always seized the fact that there is no reason, order, justice: but suffering, death, the poor. There was no treachery too base for the world to commit; she knew that. No happiness lasted; she knew that.”
12
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“Why do we want to kill all the broken people? What is wrong with us, that we think a thing like that can be right?”
13
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“The true measure of our character is how we treat the poor, the disfavored, the accused, the incarcerated, and the condemned.”
14
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″‘You fool,’ said Lupin softly. ‘Is a schoolboy grudge worth putting an innocent man back inside Azkaban?‘”
15
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“Increasingly, I was recognizing the importance of hopefulness in creating justice.”
16
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“I will love you as misfortune loves orphans, as fire loves innocence, and as justice loves to sit and watch while everything goes wrong.”
17
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“The closer we get to mass incarceration and extreme levels of punishment, the more I believe it’s necessary to recognize that we all need mercy, we all need justice, and—perhaps—we all need some measure of unmerited grace.”
18
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“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
19
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“It was from the success, not from the justice, of their enterprises, that they expected the honors of a triumph.”
20
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“He called them privately after the Kings and Queens of England; Cam the Wicked, James the Ruthless, Andrew the Just, Prue the Fair—for Prue would have beauty, he thought, how could she help it?—and Andrew brains.”
21
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“This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.”
22
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“The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury.”
23
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“They preserved peace by a constant preparation for war; and while justice regulated their conduct, they announced to the nations on their confines, that they were as little disposed to endure, as to offer an injury.”
24
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“As a council of state, and as a court of justice, the senate possessed very considerable prerogatives; but in its legislative capacity, in which it was supposed virtually to represent the people, the rights of sovereignty were acknowledged to reside in that assembly. Every power was derived from their authority, every law was ratified by their sanction.”
25
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“To rebel was right and just, when you considered what the agents of the Authority did in His name.”
26
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“If you do not find a remedy to these evils it is a vain thing to boast of your severity in punishing theft, which, though it may have the appearance of justice, yet in itself is neither just nor convenient; for if you suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this but that you first make thieves and then punish them?”
27
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“And if When born to misery, as born I was, I met my sire, not knowing whom I met or what I did, and slew him, how canst thou With justice blame the all-unconscious hand?”
28
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“Let it be thy earnest and incessant care as a Roman and a man to perform whatsoever it is that thou art about, with true and unfeigned gravity, natural affection, freedom and justice.”
29
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“Yea, for these laws were not ordained of Zeus, And she who sits enthroned with gods below, Justice, enacted not these human laws. Nor did I deem that thou, a mortal man, Could’st by a breath annul and override The immutable unwritten laws of Heaven.”
Sophocles
author
Antigone
character
justice
gods
laws
man
concepts
30
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“Is there anything surprising in one who passes from divine contemplations to the evil state of man, misbehaving himself in a ridiculous manner; if, while his eyes are blinking and before he has become accustomed to the surrounding darkness, he is compelled to fight in courts of law, or in other places, about the images or the shadows of images of justice, and is endeavouring to meet the conceptions of those who have never yet seen absolute justice?”
31
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“I’ve seen what you can do to a jury. Twist and tangle them. Nobody’s forgotten the Endicott Publishing case—where you made the jury believe the obscenity was in their own minds, not on the printed page. It was immoral what you did to that jury. Tricking them. Judgment by confusion. Think you can get away with it here?”
32
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“The use of this title prejudices the case of my client: it calls up a picture of the prosecution, astride a white horse, ablaze in the uniform of a militia colonel, with all the forces of right and righteousness marshaled behind him.”
33
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“My friends of Hillsboro, you know why I have come here. I have not come merely to prosecute a lawbreaker, an arrogant youth who has spoken out against the Revealed Word.”
34
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“Did you see his face? He looked terrible…”
35
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“I fought that war to preserve justice in this world.”
36
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“He was a terrible person. He died a hard death. So maybe. A queen can forgive her vanquished foe. It isn’t easy, it doesn’t count if it’s easy, it’s the hardest thing. Forgiveness. Which is maybe where love and justice finally meet. Peace, at last. Isn’t that what the Kaddish asks for?”
37
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“Do you regret that poor little act of justice to an absent one? O, Izz, don’t spoil it by regret!”
38
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“Justice is the giving to each man what is proper to him, and this he termed a debt.”
Plato
person
Polemarchus
character
39
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“And so of all other things;—justice is useful when they are useless, and useless when they are useful?”
40
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″‘Hope,’ he says, ‘cherishes the soul of him who lives in justice and holiness, and is the nurse of his age and the companion of his journey;—hope which is mightiest to sway the restless soul of man.‘”
Plato
person
Cephalus
character
journeys
justice
hope
concepts
41
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“For the highest reach of injustice is, to be deemed just when you are not.”
Plato
author
Socrates
character
42
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“Listen, then, he said; I proclaim that justice is nothing else than the interest of the stronger.”
43
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“Then justice is the art which gives good to friends and evil to enemies.”
Plato
author
Polemarchus
character
44
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“Justice is not Healing. Healing cometh only by suffering and patience, and maketh no demand, not even for Justice.”
45
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“Noble patricians, patrons of my right, Defend the justice of my cause with arms.”
46
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“Justice worketh only within the bonds of things as they are... and therefore though Justice is itself good and desireth no further evil, it can but perpetuate the evil that was, and doth not prevent it from the bearing of fruit in sorrow.”
47
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“Rome, be as just and gracious unto me As I am confident and kind to thee.”
48
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“You find that the injustice that created a wound is no longer true, right now, in this moment.”
49
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“These of death No hope may entertain: and their blind life So meanly passes, that all other lots They envy. Fame of them the world hath none, Nor suffers; mercy and justice scorn them both. Speak not of them, but look, and pass them by.”
50
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“Heaven’s justice goads them on, that fear Is turn’d into desire.”
51
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“Only poetry or madness could do justice to the noises.”
52
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″‘Once and for all,’ said the prisoner, ‘I adjure you to set me free. By all fears and all loves, by the bright skies of Overland, by the great Lion, by Aslan himself, I charge you—‘”
53
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“I have wanted . . . to commit a murder myself. I recognized this as the desire of the artist to express himself! . . . But—incongruous as it may seem to some—I was restrained and hampered by my innate sense of justice. The innocent must not suffer.”
54
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“See that you mend your ways, boy, or I will come back some dark night and cut off your head and let the crows peck your eyeballs out.”
55
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“The sword of divine justice is every moment brandished over their heads, and ‘tis nothing but the hand of arbitrary mercy, and God’s mere will, that holds it back. ”
56
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″‘It was I who wounded you,’ said Aslan. ‘I am the only lion you met in all your journeyings. Do you know why I tore you?’ ‘No, sir.’ ‘The scratches on your back, tear for tear, throb for throb, blood for blood, were equal to the stripes laid on the back of your stepmother’s slave because of the drugged sleep you cast upon her. You needed to know what it felt like.’
57
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″‘You have appealed to Tash,’ said Aslan. ‘And in the temple of Tash you shall be healed. You must stand before the altar of Tash in Tashbaan at the great Autumn Feast this year and there, in the sight of all Tashbaan, your ass’s shape will fall from you and all men will know you for Prince Rabadash.‘”
58
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“There is nothing free except the Grace of God. You cannot earn that or deserve it.”
59
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“I have since learned that Judge Isaac Parker watched all the hangings from an upper window in the Courthouse. I suppose he did this from a sense of duty. There is no knowing what’s in a man’s heart.”
60
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“I hurriedly cocked the hammer and pulled the trigger. The charge exploded and sent a lead ball of justice, too long delayed, into the criminal heart of Tom Chaney.”
61
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“Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
62
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“Justice too long delayed is justice denied.”
63
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“Tyrants can no longer hide. There needs to be, and will be, documentation and accountability, and we need to bear witness. And to this end, I insist that all that happens should be known.”
64
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“Worse, certainly, than Communism; for it is not the performance of political systems which justifies or condemns them, but their principles. Communism, in principle, supposes itself to represent the wretched of the earth and bars no man by nature from Communist redemption; the Nazis, in categorical contrast, took themselves to be the elite of the earth and consigned whole categories of men to perdition by their nature. The distinctions between these two totalitarianisms may not command much interest in the present temper of the Western Christian; they are still distinctions.”
65
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“Haste still pays haste, and leisure answers leisure Like doth quit like, and Measure still for Measure.”
66
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“Condemn the fault and not the actor of it?”
67
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“Well, Angelo, your evil quits you well. ”
68
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“Hence I have no mercy or compassion in me for a society that will crush people, and then penalize them for not being able to stand up under the weight.”
69
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“I’ve had enough of someone else’s propaganda.…I’m for truth, no matter who tells it. I’m for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I’m a human being first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.”
70
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“Probably got him on ice. Thaw when needed.”
71
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“But since in fact we see that avarice, anger, envy, pride, sloth, lust and stupidity commonly profit far beyond humility, chastity, fortitude, justice and thought, and have to choose, to be human at all... why then perhaps we /must/ stand fast a little --even at the risk of being heroes.”
72
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“I will be a wise and tolerant monarch, dispencing justice fairly, and only setting nightmares to rip out the winds of the evil and the wicked. Or just anybody that I don’t like.”
73
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“So why not mercy and justice to sweet youth from an omnipotent and benevolent Creator? There are only three answers. He is not omnipotent, or he is not benevolent, or-the dreariest possibility of all-he is inattentive. What if that was what happened to my nephew? That God’s gaze had merely strayed elsewhere?”
74
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“Because of these strong feelings and deep thoughts, most high sensitive children are unusually empathic. So they suffer more when others suffer and become interested early in social justice.”
75
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“Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all.”
76
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“Justice therefore demands that no one should do more ruling than being ruled, but that all should have their turn.”
77
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“The political good is justice, and this is the common advantage.”
78
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“For as man is the best of all animals when he has reached his full development, so he is worst of all when divorced from law and justice.”
79
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“That’s how justice works around here. We don’t have jails or fines. If you commit a serious crime, we exile you to Earth. For everything else, there’s Rudy.”
Andy Weir
author
Rudy DeBois
character
80
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“Let everything under the covering of the blood be judged by it. I pray that Jesus will rule over my nation in righteousness and judgment and that the wicked will be rooted out of our land.”
81
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“Let all political pursuits that neglect the poor and make the rich richer be dealt with.”
82
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“We have then a public execution and a timetable. They do not punish the same type of crimes or the same type of delinquent. But they each define a certain penal style.”
83
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“Justice delivered without dispassion is always in danger of not being justice.”
84
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“That word again – responsibility. I’d been hearing it so much lately. From my teachers, from my parents, from everybody. Because I was tall (was that my fault?) and I played footy […] I ended up with all this responsibility. It didn’t seem fair.”
85
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“Nguyen was by now thoroughly spooked. Artemis generally had that effect on people. A pale adolescent speaking with the authority and vocabulary of a powerful adult. Nguyen had heard the name Fowl before—who hadn’t in the international underworld?—but he’d assumed he’d be dealing with Artemis senior, not this boy. Though the word “boy” hardly seemed to do this gaunt individual justice.”
86
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“Now, wait,” said Strega Nona. “The punishment must fit the crime.”
87
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“When people throw themselves into the arms of justice with the proofs of complicity on them, you can be sure they are not accomplices.”
88
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″‘He had stood there for justice,’ and he had counted the cost.”
89
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“Now it the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice.”
90
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“Now is the time to make justice a reality to all of God’s children.”
91
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“There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the colored citizen is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.”
92
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“The heart of justice is truth telling.”
93
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“There can be no love without justice.”
94
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“That set him wondering by what right Mr. Sleath lived so well and held such power over his workers’ lives. ”
95
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“For we are leaders of inclusiveness and community, of love, equity, and justice.”
96
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“Again and again, due justice must be rendered the investigating commission. It had done everything possible not only to catch the criminals but also to explain everything they had done.”

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