Why Justice? Quotes answer.

JUSTICE IS FOUND IN THE RIGHTS BESTOWED BY NATURE UPON MAN. LIBERTY IS MAINTAINED IN SECURITY OF JUSTICE. Engraved into the exterior marble of the US Justice Department

Justice is the great interest of man on earth. Wherever her temple stands, there is a foundation for social security, general happiness and the improvement and progress of our race. Inscribed above the entrance to the US Dept. of Justice, Washington DC.

"An injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." - MLK

"If we do not maintain Justice, Justice will not maintain us.": Francis Bacon 

"If justice perishes, human life on Earth has lost its meaning." - Immanuel Kant

"The common sense of mankind demands that law shall not stop with the punishment of petty crimes by little people. It must also reach men who possess themselves of great power and make deliberative and concerted use of it to set in motion evils which leave no home in the world untouched." - Justice Robert Jackson  - Nuremberg address

"Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens" : Plato : Ancient Greek philosopher (428/427-348/347 B.C.)

“No Justice. No Peace.” A Pope’s 4 word summary.

“Justice or else!”. Million Man March’s 3 word summary on banner celebrating it’s 20th anniversary in Washington DC. Sept 2015.

“Just Security”. The two word summary of the Commission on Global Security, Justice and Governance. June 2015.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere... there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws." - Martin Luther King Jr., "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" (April 16, 1963)

…one of the great problems of history is that “the concepts of love and power have usually been contrasted as opposites, polar opposites, so that love is identified with a resignation of power, and power with a denial of love. What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and that love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love. MLK 1967

" Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children. ... No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream." Martin Luther King, Jr.

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” MLK

'If, while there is yet time, we turn to Justice and obey her, if we trust Liberty and follow her, the dangers that now threaten must disappear, the forces that now menace will turn to agencies of elevation. Think of the powers now wasted; of the infinite fields of knowledge yet to be explored; of the possibilities of which the wondrous inventions of this century give us but a hint. with want destroyed, with greed changed to noble passions, with the fraternity that is born of equality taking the place of the jealousy and fear that now array men against each other, with mental power loosened by conditions which give to the humblest comfort and leisure; who shall measure the heights to which our civilisation may soar? Henry George 1839 - 1897

"The XXI century will be a century either of total all-embracing crisis or of moral and spiritual healing that will reinvigorate humankind. It is my conviction that all of us - all reasonable political leaders, all spiritual and ideological movements, all  faiths - must help in this transition to a triumph of humanism and justice, in making the XXI century a century of a new human renaissance."  Mikhail Gorbachev (His website 2016)

Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all": Edmund Burke

"He who is not angry when there is just cause for anger is immoral. Why? Because anger looks to the good of justice. And if you can live amid injustice without anger, you are immoral as well as unjust." -- St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)

"The fundamental source of all your errors, sophisms and false reasonings is a total ignorance of the natural rights of mankind. Were you once to become acquainted with these, you could never entertain a thought, that all men are not, by nature, entitled to a parity of privileges. You would be convinced, that natural liberty is a gift of the beneficent Creator to the whole human race, and that civil liberty is founded in that; and cannot be wrested from any people, without the most manifest violation of justice." -- Alexander Hamilton (1757-1804)
Source: The Farmer Refuted, February 23, 1775

"Justice is as strictly due between neighbor nations as between neighbor citizens. A highwayman is as much a robber when he plunders in a gang as when single; and a nation that makes an unjust war is only a great gang":  - Benjamin Franklin to Benjamin Vaughan, 14 March 1785 (B 11:16-7)

"Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe". Frederick Douglass

True peace is not merely the absence of war, it is the presence of justice. Jane Addams (First American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize).

"Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just." - Blaise Pascal (1623- 1662) French mathematician and philosopher

"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality." -  Desmond Tutu  

"History affords us many instances of the ruin of states, by the prosecution of measures ill suited to the temper and genius of their people. The ordaining of laws in favor of one part of the nation, to the prejudice and oppression of another, is certainly the most erroneous and mistaken policy. An equal dispensation of protection, rights, privileges, and advantages, is what every part is entitled to, and ought to enjoy… These measures never fail to create great and violent jealousies and animosities between the people favored and the people oppressed; whence a total separation of affections, interests, political obligations, and all manner of connections, by which the whole state is weakened." -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) US Founding Father. Source: Emblematical Representations, Circa 1774

"The common sense of mankind demands that law shall not stop with the punishment of petty crimes by little people. It must also reach men who possess themselves of great power and make deliberative and concerted use of it to set in motion evils which leave no home in the world untouched." Justice Robert Jackson  - Nuremberg address

"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." : Alexander Solzhenitsyn

"Where is the justice of political power if it executes the murderer and jails the plunderer, and then itself marches upon neighboring lands, killing thousands and pillaging the very hills?" - :Kahlil Gibran

Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.
And moderation in the defense of justice is no virtue. Richard Nixon

"Justice without force is impotent, force without justice is tyranny.
Unable to make what is just strong, we have made what is strong just."
-- Blaise Pascal (1623- 1662) French mathematician and philosopher
Source: Pensées

"Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all." - George Washington

"The dignity and stability of government in all its branches, the morals of the people, and every blessing of society depend so much upon an upright and skillful administration of justice, that the judicial power ought to be distinct from both the legislative and executive, and independent upon both, that so it may be a check upon both, and both should be checks upon that."
-- John Adams (1735-1826) Founding Father, 2nd US President
Source: John Adams, Thoughts on Government, 1776

"If citizens cannot trust that laws will be enforced in an evenhanded and honest fashion, they cannot be said to live under the rule of law. Instead, they live under the rule of men corrupted by the law." - Dale Carpenter, Flagrant Conduct: The Story of Lawrence v. Texas

"Some lawyers and judges may have forgotten it, but the purpose of the court system is to produce justice, not slavish obedience to the law." -- Charlie Reese (1937-) Columnist
Source: Don’t sacrifice justice to law, Conservative Chronicle, May 1, 1996

"If we work in marble, it will perish; if we work upon brass, time will efface it; if we rear temples, they will crumble into dust; but if we work upon immortal minds and instill into them just principles, we are then engraving upon tablets which no time will efface, but will brighten and brighten to all eternity": Daniel Webster

Only when the state is restricted to the administration of justice, and economic creativity thus freed from arbitrary restraints, will conditions exist for making possible a lasting improvement in the welfare of the more miserable peoples of the world. — Francis E. Mahaffy, The Freeman [September 1963]

"The test for whether one is living in a police state is that those who are charged with enforcing the law are allowed to break the laws with impunity." -- Jon Roland (1944-) founder of the Constitution Society

"Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable... Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals." -  Martin Luther King

"Iniquity [gross injustice], committed in this world, produces not fruit immediately, but, like the earth, in due season, and advancing by little and little, it eradicates the man who committed it. ...justice, being destroyed, will destroy; being preserved, will preserve; it must never therefore be violated." Manu 1200 bc

Justice may be the most central pillar for ensuring both freedom and security. And while there may be a gene that allows us to notice injustice it is the creation of laws that we have all agreed upon to enforce justice that is the foundation of civilization and peaceful co-existence. Cw

All men have equal rights to liberty, to their property, and to the protection of the laws. – Voltaire, Essai sur les Moeurs [1754]

Framing a world federation mission:
“No justice. No Peace”.    (the Pope- in 4 words)
“Justice or Else!”     (Million Man March 20th Anniversary slogan – in 3 words.)
“Just Security”     (the summary of the “Commission on Global Security, Justice and Governance” report – 2 words.
The common denominator…and key word? Justice.  (which is a function of the “rule of law” which International law or the UN cannot achieve as they are.) cw

"It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance". Robert F. Kennedy US Attorney General 1961-64, assassinated in Los Angeles while campaigning

"He who is not angry when there is just cause for anger is immoral. Why? Because anger looks to the good of justice. And if you can live amid injustice without anger, you are immoral as well as unjust." Aquinas

“America is not a pile of goods, more luxury, more comforts, a better telephone system, a greater number of cars. America is a dream of greater justice and opportunity for the average man and, if we can not obtain it, all our other achievements amount to nothing.” Jan. 6, 1941, Eleanor Roosevelt

"That frequent recurrence to fundamental principles, and a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, industry and frugality, are absolutely necessary to preserve the blessings of liberty, and keep government free. The people ought, therefore, to pay particular attention to these points, in the choice of officers and representatives, and have a right to exact a due and constant regard to them, from their legislators and magistrates, in the making and executing such laws as are necessary for the good government of the State."
-- Vermont Declaration of Rights
Source: Article 16

"Silence in the face of injustice is complicity with the oppressor." -- Ginetta Sagan

"Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice." -- Alexander Solzhenitsy

"I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy.'  -- Thomas Paine 

"Complaints are every where heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable; that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties; and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice, and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority." -- James Madison (1751-1836), Father of the Constitution for the USA, 4th US President. Source: Federalist no. 10