justice Quotes

“Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

“Justice too long delayed is justice denied.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.‘”

“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.”

“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.”

“If I have unjustly wrested a plank from a drowning man, I must restore it to him though I drown myself.”

“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”

“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.”

“’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.’”

“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.”

“The true measure of our character is how we treat the poor, the disfavored, the accused, the incarcerated, and the condemned.”

“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?”

“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.”

“I will love you as misfortune loves orphans, as fire loves innocence, and as justice loves to sit and watch while everything goes wrong.”

“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.”

“Increasingly, I was recognizing the importance of hopefulness in creating justice.”

“The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury.”

“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.”

″‘You fool,’ said Lupin softly. ‘Is a schoolboy grudge worth putting an innocent man back inside Azkaban?‘”

“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?”

“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.”

“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?”

“You find that the injustice that created a wound is no longer true, right now, in this moment.”

“Then justice is the art which gives good to friends and evil to enemies.”

“Listen, then, he said; I proclaim that justice is nothing else than the interest of the stronger.”

“And so of all other things;—justice is useful when they are useless, and useless when they are useful?”

“Justice is the giving to each man what is proper to him, and this he termed a debt.”

″‘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.‘”

“For the highest reach of injustice is, to be deemed just when you are not.”

“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.”

“Heaven’s justice goads them on, that fear Is turn’d into desire.”

″‘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—‘”

“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.”

“Only poetry or madness could do justice to the noises.”

″‘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.’

″‘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.‘”

“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. ”

“There is nothing free except the Grace of God. You cannot earn that or deserve it.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“It was from the success, not from the justice, of their enterprises, that they expected the honors of a triumph.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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?”

“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.”

“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.”

“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?”

“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.”

“Did you see his face? He looked terrible…”

“I fought that war to preserve justice in this world.”

“Do you regret that poor little act of justice to an absent one? O, Izz, don’t spoil it by regret!”

“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?”

″‘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.”

“Rome, be as just and gracious unto me As I am confident and kind to thee.”

“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.”

“Noble patricians, patrons of my right, Defend the justice of my cause with arms.”

“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.”

“Justice is not Healing. Healing cometh only by suffering and patience, and maketh no demand, not even for Justice.”

“To rebel was right and just, when you considered what the agents of the Authority did in His name.”

“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.”

“Well, Angelo, your evil quits you well. ”

“Haste still pays haste, and leisure answers leisure Like doth quit like, and Measure still for Measure.”

“Condemn the fault and not the actor of it?”

“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.”

“Probably got him on ice. Thaw when needed.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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?”

“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.”

“Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all.”

“The political good is justice, and this is the common advantage.”

“Justice therefore demands that no one should do more ruling than being ruled, but that all should have their turn.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Let all political pursuits that neglect the poor and make the rich richer be dealt with.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Justice delivered without dispassion is always in danger of not being justice.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Now, wait,” said Strega Nona. “The punishment must fit the crime.”

“The heart of justice is truth telling.”

“There can be no love without justice.”

“Now it the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice.”

“Now is the time to make justice a reality to all of God’s children.”

“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.”

“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.”

“For we are leaders of inclusiveness and community, of love, equity, and justice.”

“I, too, say let us be peaceful; but the only way to do this is first to assure justice. By keeping “peaceful” in this instance, we end up consenting to the destruction of all peace—for so long as we condone injustice by a small but powerful group, we condone the destruction of all social stability, all real peace, all trust in man’s good intentions toward his fellow man.”

“How can you render the duties of justice to men when you’re afraid they’ll be so unaware of justice they may destroy you?”

“That set him wondering by what right Mr. Sleath lived so well and held such power over his workers’ lives. ”

“When people throw themselves into the arms of justice with the proofs of complicity on them, you can be sure they are not accomplices.”

″‘He had stood there for justice,’ and he had counted the cost.”

A blessing on the righteous Colony of the Massachusetts, where iniquity is dragged out into the sunshine!

“Has he not paid thee all?”

It is not so! There might be good for thee, and thee alone, since thou hast been deeply wronged, and hast it at thy will to pardon. Wilt thou give up that only privilege? Wilt thou reject that priceless benefit?”

“If we lay hands on this fortune, we may enjoy it without remorse.”

At length Providence has done something for you; he restores to you more than he takes away, and it was time I should die.

“It is God’s pleasure that things should be so.”

“If a man had by unheard-of and excruciating tortures destroyed your father, your mother, your betrothed,—a being who, when torn from you, left a desolation, a wound that never closes, in your breast,—do you think the reparation that society gives you is sufficient when it interposes the knife of the guillotine between the base of the occiput and the trapezal muscles of the murderer, and allows him who has caused us years of moral sufferings to escape with a few moments of physical pain?”

“Perhaps what I am about to say may seem strange to you, who are socialists, and vaunt humanity and your duty to your neighbor, but I never seek to protect a society which does not protect me, and which I will even say, generally occupies itself about me only to injure me; and thus by giving them a low place in my esteem, and preserving a neutrality towards them, it is society and my neighbor who are indebted to me.”

“Come, count, you do not do that young man justice.”

“Calm yourself, my dear child, and take courage in remembering that there is a God who will punish traitors.”

“Had it been possible to save you, I should have considered it another proof of God’s mercy, and I would again have endeavored to restore you, I swear by my father’s tomb.”

“Poor young man,” said Monte Cristo in a low voice; “it is then true that the sin of the father shall fall on the children to the third and fourth generation.”

“If it is God’s justice, instead of his anger, which is walking through that house, Maximilian, turn away your face and let his justice accomplish its purpose.”

I am in my turn bitten by the serpent whose tortuous course I was watching, and bitten to the heart!

“He is accused,” said the commissary with his inflexible voice, “of having assassinated the man named Caderousse, his former companion in prison, at the moment he was making his escape from the house of the Count of Monte Cristo.”

“For Heaven’s sake, madame,” said Villefort, with a firmness of expression not altogether free from harshness—“for Heaven’s sake, do not ask pardon of me for a guilty wretch! What am I?—the law. Has the law any eyes to witness your grief? Has the law ears to be melted by your sweet voice? Has the law a memory for all those soft recollections you endeavor to recall? No, madame; the law has commanded, and when it commands it strikes.”

“I unite with M. Morrel in demanding justice for crime; my blood boils at the idea of having encouraged a murderer by my cowardly concession.”

“Rise,” said the count, “your life is safe; the same good fortune has not happened to your accomplices—one is mad, the other dead. Keep the 50,000 francs you have left—I give them to you. The 5,000,000 you stole from the hospitals has been restored to them by an unknown hand. And now eat and drink; I will entertain you tonight. Vampa, when this man is satisfied, let him be free.”

The daring attempt to rob the count was the topic of conversation throughout Paris for the next fortnight. The dying man had signed a deposition declaring Benedetto to be the assassin. The police had orders to make the strictest search for the murderer. Caderousse’s knife, dark lantern, bunch of keys, and clothing, excepting the waistcoat, which could not be found, were deposited at the registry; the corpse was conveyed to the morgue. The count told everyone that this adventure had happened during his absence at Auteuil, and that he only knew what was related by the Abbé Busoni, who that evening, by mere chance, had requested to pass the night in his house, to examine some valuable books in his library. Bertuccio alone turned pale whenever Benedetto’s name was mentioned in his presence, but there was no reason why anyone should notice his doing so. Villefort, being called on to prove the crime, was preparing his brief with the same ardor that he was accustomed to exercise when required to speak in criminal cases. But three weeks had already passed, and the most diligent search had been unsuccessful; the attempted robbery and the murder of the robber by his comrade were almost forgotten in anticipation of the approaching marriage of Mademoiselle Danglars to the Count Andrea Cavalcanti.

“Now, sir,” continued Morrel, “in these days no one can disappear by violent means without some inquiries being made as to the cause of her disappearance, even were she not a young, beautiful, and adorable creature like Valentine.”

“Do you not know that if he were in St. Petersburg now, he would take the whip with which he drove out the bankers from his temple—”

“Do you know, or do you not know, that the law of England supposes every man to be innocent, until he is proved—proved—to be guilty?”

one must take into consideration the facts which prove him innocent, especially as they are facts that cannot be denied.

“He said to himself that he would not speak a word, even when his aunt came in, but would sit perfectly still till she asked who did the mischief; and then he would tell, and there would be nothing so good in the world as to see that pet model “catch it.”

“I ask you the same question again: if you consider me guilty, why don’t you take me to prison?”

“I commit my cause to the justice of my judges, yet I see no room for hope. I beg permission to have a few witnesses examined concerning my character, and if their testimony shall not overweigh my supposed guilt, I must be condemned, although I would pledge my salvation on my innocence.”

“But on you only had I any claim for pity and redress, and from you I determined to seek that justice which I vainly attempted to gain from any other being that wore the human form.”