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Justice Quotes
"Reason and justice grip the remotest and the loneliest star. Look at those stars. Don't they look as if they were single diamonds and sapphires? Well, you can imagine any mad botany or geology you please. Think of forests of adamant with leaves of brilliants. Think the moon is a blue moon, a single elephantine sapphire. But don't fancy that all that frantic astronomy would make the smallest difference to the reason and justice of conduct. On plains of opal, under cliffs cut out of pearl, you would still find a notice-board, "Thou shalt not steal."
13
"I am not a committed pacifist. I would not hold that it is under all imaginable circumstances wrong to use violence, even though use of violence is in some sense unjust. I believe that one has to estimate relative justices. But the use of violence and the creation of some degree of injustice can only be justified on the basis of the claim and the assessment-which always ought to be undertaken very, very seriously and with a good deal of scepticism that this violence is being exercised because a more just result is going to be achieved."
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"The corrupt system made the ordinary citizen absolutely powerless and without rights."
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"Why must some of us deliberate between brands of toothpaste while others deliberate between damp dirt and bone dust to quiet the fire of an empty stomach lining?"
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"Is human dignity and human life so cheap that the rights protecting it can be traded away to appease the appetite for intimidation and prejudice of a vicious and self-centered group - for whatever reason, power, politics, nationalism, or unity?"
13
"Eaton looks to the man next to him, who licks his lips before saying, "There are rules on paper and rules too big for paper.It takes me a moment to realize what this means, which is that there really is no rule against it, but they're not going to let me ride anyway. This is like when Gabe and I would play games when we were younger - as soon as I got close to winning, he would change the rules on me.And just like back then, the unfairness of it makes my chest burn."
13
"They questioned us but they were polite because we had passports and money. I do not think they believed a word of the story and I thought it was silly but it was like a law-court. You did not want something reasonable, you wanted something technical and then stuck to it without explanations."
13
"Always seek justice, but love only mercy. To love justice and hate mercy is but a doorway to more injustice."
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"The larger crimes are apt to be the simpler, for the bigger the crime, the more obvious, as a rule, is the motive."
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"A perfect judge will read each word of wit with the same spirit that its author writ."
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"What really arouses indignation against suffering is not suffering as such but the senselessness of suffering..."
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"Sometimes a people lose their right to remain silent when pressured to remain silent."
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"He thought his detective brain as good as the criminal's, which was true. But he fully realised the disadvantage. "The criminal is the creative artist; the detective only the critic," he said with a sour smile, and lifted his coffee cup to his lips slowly, and put it down very quickly. He had put salt in it."
12
"The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it."
12
"Aelin hissed, "Need I remind you Captain, that you went to Endovier and did not blink at the slaves and the mass graves? Need I remind you that I was starved and chained and you let Duke Perrington force me to the ground at Dorian's feet while you did nothing? And now you have the nerve to accuse me of not caring, when many of the people in this city have profited off the blood and misery of the very people you ignored?"
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"It is incontestable and deplorable that Negroes have committed crimes; but they are derivative crimes. They are born of the greater crimes of the white society."
12
"I did believe, at first, that I wanted only justice. I thought my heart was pure. We do like to have such good opinions of our motives when we're about to do something harmful, to someone else. But as Mr. Erskine also pointed out, Eros with his bow and arrows is not the only blind god. Justitia is the other one. Clumsy blind gods with edged weapons: Justitia totes a sword, which, coupled with her blindfold, is a pretty good recipe for cutting yourself."
12
"We win justice quickest by rendering justice to the other party."
12
"On some positions, cowardice asks the question, is it expedient? And then expedience comes along and asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? Conscience asks the question, is it right?There comes a time when one must take the position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must do it because conscience tells him it is right."
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"Dear Police:You can't protect me and be scared of me."
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"The police have lost sight of the fact that they are public servants."
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"He was expressing his certainty that my appeal would be granted, but I was carrying the burden of a sin from which I had to free myself. According to him, human justice was nothing and divine justice was everything. I pointed out it was the former that had condemned me."
12
"They look upon fraud as a greater crime than theft, and therefore seldom fail to punish it with death; for they allege, that care and vigilance, with a very common understanding, may preserve a man's goods from thieves, but honesty has no defence against superior cunning; and, since it is necessary that there should be a perpetual intercourse of buying and selling, and dealing upon credit, where fraud is permitted and connived at, or has no law to punish it, the honest dealer is always undone, and the knave gets the advantage."
12
"When men have both done and suffered injustice and have had experience of both, not being able to avoid the one and obtain the other, they think that they had better agree among themselves to have neither; hence there arise laws and mutual covenants; and that which is ordained by law is termed by them lawful and just. This they affirm to be the origin and nature of justice;-it is a mean or compromise, between the best of all, which is to do injustice and not be punished, and the worst of all, which is to suffer injustice without the power of retaliation; and justice, being at a middle point between the two, is tolerated not as a good, but as the lesser evil."
12
"You can never let your compassion stand in the way of justice because when you do, other people get hurt."
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"God is neither just nor unjust. 'No one be hurt in the slightest', that is God's language. Justice and injustice is people's language."
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"Protecting the rights of even the least individual among us is basically the only excuse the government has for even existing."
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