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.
“Equal Justice for All” The phrase carved into stone above the entrance of the Supreme Court.
"Reno's greatest achievement was to teach Americans that there isn't much justice in the Justice Department. But never trust the professors, pundits, and other official scorekeepers to admit that truth." – James Bovard, "Janet Reno Is No Hero" [2023]
"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever." - Thomas Jefferson
"Equal laws protecting equal rights -- the best guarantee of loyalty and love of country."
-- James Madison (1751-1836), Father of the Constitution for the USA, 4th US President
Source: letter to Jacob de la Motta, August 1820
"Law and justice are not always the same." -- Gloria Steinem (1944- ) Publisher of Ms. magazine
“At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.” Aristotle
"For man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but, when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all; since armed injustice is the more dangerous, and he is equipped at birth with the arms of intelligence and with moral qualities which he may use for the worst ends." -- Aristotle (384-322 BC) Greek philosopher. Source: Politics, 300 B.C.
"If we do not maintain Justice, Justice will not maintain us.": Francis Bacon
"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
“I guess the only time most people think about injustice is when it happens to them.” - Charles Bukowski,
"We can have justice whenever those who have not been injured by injustice are as outraged by it as those who have been." -- Solon (c.638 BC-558 BC) Athenian statesman, lawmaker, Lyric poet, renowned as a founding father of the Athenian polis, one of the Seven Sages of Greece 594 B.C.
Source: when asked how social justice could be achieved in Athens.
"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
"We have to condemn publicly the very idea that some people have the right to repress others. In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.” -― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956
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
Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is in an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe. – Frederick Douglass, Speech on the Twenty-Fourth Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation [April 1886]
“As long as there is one person suffering an injustice; as long as one person is forced to bear an unnecessary sorrow; as long as one person is subject to an undeserved pain, the worship of a God is a demoralizing humiliation." - Joseph Lewis, An Atheist Manifesto
“Most people will not stand up to injustice unless their comfort of living is severely threatened. This is because today's man does not care for the outside world so long as he has a roof over his head and four walls to contain his own.” - Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun:
"No government is respectable which is not just. Without unspotted purity of public faith, without sacred public principle, fidelity, and honor, no machinery of laws, can give dignity to political society."
-- Daniel Webster (1782-1852) US Senator.
"True Liberty and Justice may require resistance to law."
-- Second Monument to Shays' Rebellion
Source: The last sentence of the inscription of a second monument to Shays' Rebellion was erected in 1987, in Petersham, Massachusetts alongside the first.
"National injustice is the surest road to national downfall." -- William E. Gladstone (1809-1898) English statesman
Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government which impartially secures to every man whatever is his own. – James Madison [1792]
“When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.” - Thomas Jefferson
“It’s not unpatriotic to denounce an injustice committed on our behalf, perhaps it’s the most patriotic thing we can do.” - E.A. Bucchianeri.
“There is no greater tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of the law and in the name of justice. (Cambridge University Press (September 29, 1989)” - Charles-Louis de Secondat
“I guess the only time most people think about injustice is when it happens to them.” - Charles Bukowski,
“Yes the truth is that men's ambition and their desire to make money are among the most frequent causes of deliberate acts of injustice.” - ― Aristotle, Politics
"We are beckoned to see the world through a one-way mirror, as if we are threatened and innocent and the rest of humanity is threatening, or wretched, or expendable. Our memory is struggling to rescue the truth that human rights were not handed down as privileges from a parliament, or a boardroom, or an institution, but that peace is only possible with justice and with information that gives us the power to act justly." -John Pilger 04/11/2009)
"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
“We are all implicated when we allow other people to be mistreated. An absence of compassion can corrupt the decency of a community, a state, a nation.” - Bryan Stevenson
"No man suffers injustice without learning, vaguely but surely, what justice is." -- Isaac Rosenfeld
(1918-1956) Jewish-American writer
"In the Halls of Justice the only justice is in the halls." -- Lenny Bruce
[Leonard Alfred Schneider] (1925-1966) American comedian, social critic and satirist
"Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just." - Blaise Pascal
"To be wealthy and honored in an unjust society is a disgrace." - Confucius, The Analects
"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) American statesman, Secretary of the Treasury. Source: The Farmer Refuted, February 23, 1775
"Find out just what the people will submit to and you have found out
the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon
them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either
words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by
the endurance of those whom they oppress." -- Frederick Douglass
[Frederick Baily] (1818-1895), escaped slave, Abolitionist, author, editor of the North Star and later the New National Era Source: August 4, 1857
“The instability, injustice, and confusion introduced into the public councils, have, in truth, been the mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished;” James Madison Federalist #10, 1787
"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
"Unjust rule never abides continually." -- Lucius Annaeus Seneca
(4 B.C.-A.D. 65) Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist, "Seneca the Younger"
Source: Tragedies, Medea, line 196; (Medea)
"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, Jr
“I hope you will be treated unfairly, so that you will come to know the value of justice.” Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts 6-3-17.
“There is no greater tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of the law and in the name of justice. - Charles-Louis de Secondat
"It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do." -- Edmund Burke (1729-1797) Irish-born British statesman, parliamentary orator, and political thinker Source: Second Speech on Conciliation, 1775
"An injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." - MLK
The best and only safe road to honor,glory and true dignity is JUSTICE.
– George Washington, Letter to Marquis de Lafayette [September 30, 1779]
Justice is the only foundation upon which a society of free and independent people can exist. Justice is a concrete, recognizable, and objective principle. It is not a matter of opinion. – Leslie Snyder
“Injustice, poverty, slavery, ignorance - these may be cured by reform or revolution. But men do not live only by fighting evils. They live by positive goals, individual and collective, a vast variety of them, seldom predictable, at times incompatible.” Isaiah Berlin (1907-1997)
In the last year of his life King moved from protesting for civil rights for African-Americans and moved on to protesting the war in Vietnam, according to The Intercept.
“This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love,” MLK, Riverside Church in New York City in April 1967.
"The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges. But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred." -- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968), US civil rights leader. Source: Speech delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. on August 28, 1963.
"If justice perishes, human life on Earth has lost its meaning." - Immanuel Kant
“The best and only safe road to honor, glory and true dignity is justice”.
– George Washington, Letter to Marquis de Lafayette [1779]
"The opposite of poverty isn't wealth. The opposite of poverty is justice." Bryan A. Stevenson Stevenson is an American lawyer, social justice activist, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, and a clinical professor at New York University School of Law
“[W]henever the offense inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigor of penal law is obliged to give way to the common feelings of mankind.” – Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire [1776]
"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 the end of government. - In a society under the forms of which the stronger faction can readily unite and oppress the weaker, anarchy may as truly be said to reign as in a state of nature, where the weaker individual is not secured against the violence of the stronger ..." - James Madison
"Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit." -- James Madison (1751-1836), Father of the Constitution for the USA, 4th US President Source: Federalist No. 51, February 8, 1788
"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.)
"Then it must also be admitted, my friend, that men who are harmed become more unjust. "-Plato
"Charity should be abolished; and be replaced by justice." - Norman Bethune
"Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of supply and demand; it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy." - Wendell Berry
"There comes a time when a moral man can't obey a law which his conscience tells him is unjust."
-- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) US civil rights leader
"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 Solzhenitsyn
"Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice. It is the protection of a fundamental human right, the right to dignity and a decent life . . ." -- Nelson Mandela
“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.
Justice removed, then, what are kingdoms but great bands of robbers?... It was a pertinent and true answer which was made to Alexander the Great by a pirate whom he had seized. When the king asked him what he meant by infesting the sea, the pirate defiantly replied: ‘The same as you do when you infest the whole world; but because I do it with a little ship I am called a robber, and because you do it with a great fleet, you are an emperor. – St. Augustine, City of God, IV [1470]
“A federation of all humanity … together with a sufficient measure of social justice to ensure health, education, and a rough equality of opportunity to most of the children born into the world, would mean such a release and increase of human energy as to open a new phase in human history.” HG Wells
"And I might say that I see these two struggles as one struggle. There can be no justice without peace. And there can be no peace without justice."
MLK 1968 equating the anti-war effort with the Civil Rights movement.
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
"First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection." MLK — Letter From a Birmingham Jail, 1963 [13]
"The eyes of the world being thus on our Country, it is put the more on its good behavior, and under the greater obligation also, to do justice to the Tree of Liberty by an exhibition of the fine fruits we gather from it." -- James Madison
(1751-1836), Father of the Constitution for the USA, 4th US President
Source: letter to James Monroe, December 16, 1824
"The objector and the rebel who raises his voice against what he believes to be the injustice
of the present and the wrongs of the past is the one who hunches the world along."
-- Clarence S. Darrow (1857-1938) Source: Address to the Court, People v. Lloyd, 1920
"I shall not counsel or maintain any suit or
proceeding which shall appear to me to be unjust,
nor any defense except such as I believe to be
honestly debatable under the law of the land."
-- American Bar Association, Source: Oath for Candidates Seeking Admission to the Bar, 1925
"The only shape in which equality is really connected with justice is this --
justice presupposes general rules. If these general rules are to be maintained at all,
it is obvious that they must be applied equally to every case which satisfies their terms."
-- James Fitzjames Stephens (1829-1894) Source: Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, 1873
'It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.’ James A. Baldwino
"But it is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear?...It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity." MLK — “The Other America,” 1968 [8
'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
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]
“For Civilians or military personnel, “power” is alluring. People grab it to keep it. In the face of being arrested or losing a job or putting a friend or a relative in trouble, very few people would stand up for truth or justice. It is all down hill from there.” Anadi Naik, Washington Post Letter to the Editor, Aug.2, 2020
"True liberty can exist only when justice is equally administered to all."
-- Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923) New Zealand author
"The guarantee of equal protection cannot mean one thing when applied to one individual and something else when applied to a person of another color. If both are not accorded the same protection, then it is not equal." -- Lewis F. Powell (1907-1998) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (1971-1987) Source: Regents of the University of California v Bakke, 1978
"If everyone were clothed with integrity, if every heart were just, frank, kindly,
the other virtues would be well-nigh useless, since their chief purpose is
to make us bear with patience the injustice of our fellows." -- Molière
[Jean-Baptiste Poquelin] (1622-1673) French playwright
"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." -- Bishop Desmond Tutu (1931- ) Nobel Prize for Peace 1984
"Every man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add... artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society -- the farmers, mechanics, and laborers -- who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their government." -- Andrew Jackson (1767-1845) 7th US President
Source: veto of national bank bill, July 10, 1832
"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." - Malcolm X
"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)
"A people who extend civil liberties only to preferred groups start down the path either to dictatorship of the right or the left." -- William O. Douglas (1898-1980), U. S. Supreme Court Justice. Source: New York Times, 20 January 1980
"Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world...would do this, it would change the earth." - William Faulkner
"Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence and thereby eventually lose all ability to defend ourselves and those we love." - Julian Assange
"Custom may suffice as the basis of law, but is inadequate as the basis of justice. Tyranny, not liberty, has been the custom in the past; and so Libertarians reject custom as a guiding principle, just as they reject power or might. They know that justice is not something that was, or is, but that is to be." -- Charles T. Sprading (1871-1959) Libertarian activist, writer
Source: Charles T. Sprading's Introduction to Liberty and the Great Libertarians; An Anthology On Liberty; A Hand-book Of Freedom (Los Angeles: The Libertarian Publishing Company, 1913)
"No, there is a limit to the tyrant's power! When the oppressed man finds no justice, When the burden grows unbearable, he appeals With fearless heart to Heaven, And thence brings down his everlasting rights, Which there abide, inalienably his, And indestructible as stars themselves. The primal state of nature reappears, Wherein man confronts his fellow man; And if all other means shall fail his need, One last resort remains—his own good sword. The dearest of our goods we may defend From violence. We stand before our country, We stand before our wives, before our children!" -- Friedrich Schiller [Johann Christoph Friedrich (von) Schiller] (1759-1805) German poet, philosopher, physician, historian, and playwright. Source: from the drama Wilhelm Tell, 1804
"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)
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).
"Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice. It is the protection of a fundamental human right, the right to dignity and a decent life . . ." -- Nelson Mandela
"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
"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
The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If 'Thou shalt not covet' and 'Thou shalt not steal' were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free. – John Adams [1787]
"A scholar without activism is only a mercenary of knowledge. An activist without knowledge is just a mercenary of charity. Beware, it is neither knowledge nor charity, but justice that brings the kingdom." - Santiago Slabodsky
"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
"Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all." - George Washington
“You know and we know, as practical men that the question of justice arises only between parties equal in strength and that the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.” - Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War
"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
Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is in an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe. – Frederick Douglass [1886]
"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
"Ethics and equity and the principles of justice do not change with the calendar." D. H. Lawrence
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
"Our Founders warned us that all republics have eventually fallen into tyranny -- the only difference being the relative timeline of each republic's descent. ... From the summer of 1787 when our Framers deliberated over their magnificent Constitution, we have recognized that the clear statement and equal application of the Law is among the most critical duties of any government. If we allow ourselves to lose this, we may as well be back in ancient Rome, subject to the whim of every petty tyrant in the taxing bureau or the zoning board. For it doesn't matter whether the regulator's foot is shod in a jack boot or a Roman sandal; if he can hold you down with that boot upon your neck, then we are no longer in the America that our Founding Fathers intended for us." -- John F. Di Leo
Columnist http://libertytree.ca/quotes/John.Di.Leo.Quote.62DC
"The Internal Revenue Service is everything the so-called tax protesters said it was; nonresponsive, unable to withstand scrutiny, tyrannical, and oblivious to the rule of law and the U.S. Constitution."
-- Joseph Banister
CPA, former IRS Criminal Investigator
Source: quoted by Sarah Foster, The Power to Destroy, IRS Special Agent Challenges System, WORLDNETDAILY, March 26, 1999
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]
"A criminal trial is not a search for truth.
It is much too circumscribed for that.
Rather, a trial is a formalized contest for
the hearts and minds of a panel of twelve.
It is a quest for a verdict in which information
is selected and screened (we can almost say “processed”)
before it is allowed to reach jurors." -- Phillip Finch
Source: Fatal Flaw, 1992
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
“This is my solemn pledge: I will work to build a single nation of justice and opportunity.” George W. Bush, first Inaugural address.
"We have to condemn publicly the very idea that some people have the right to repress others. In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers ... we are ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations." - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
"Our memory is struggling to rescue the truth that human rights were not handed down as privileges from a parliament, or a boardroom, or an institution, but that peace is only possible with justice and with information that gives us the power to act justly." - John Pilger
"Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public!" - Cornell West
"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
"The State, both in its genesis and by its primary intention, is purely anti-social. It is not based on the idea of natural rights, but on the idea that the individual has no rights except those that the State may provisionally grant him. It has always made justice costly and difficult of access, and has invariably held itself above justice and common morality whenever it could advantage itself by so doing." -- Albert Jay Nock (1870-1945) American libertarian author, editor, educational theorist, Georgist, social critic
"In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations." Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago:
"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
"We place no race or people above any other, acknowledge no superiority in any culture, honor no special privilege in any nation, and have no respect for any creed that limits the absolute freedom of the human mind." - ClassWarFilms
