Justice Quotes

What is fair? What is right? Voices from history weigh in on the most fundamental human question.

27299 quotes

"Slavery is a thing that strikes at the root of human nature."
Harriet Beecher Stowe
"The world is hungry for people who can speak truth with compassion."
Harriet Beecher Stowe
"Justice delayed is a wound upon the conscience of society."
James Fenimore Cooper
W
"In the face of injustice, silence becomes complicity; speak your truth with conviction."
Washington Irving
E
"The dead do not rest peacefully when their deeds cry out for justice."
Edgar Allan Poe
E
"Justice is a human invention, not a law of nature."
Edgar Allan Poe
"Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest."
Mark Twain
"Slander and abuse never yet were successfully met, in any age of the world, by ignoring them."
Walt Whitman
"I am the hounded slave, I wince at the bite of the dogs."
Walt Whitman
H
"To be evil is to be divided against oneself."
Herman Melville
H
"The universal causes is not aided by making concessions to it."
Herman Melville
"A just society is built upon the foundation of respect for all persons."
James Fenimore Cooper
"The measure of a civilization is how it treats its most vulnerable members."
James Fenimore Cooper
E
"Justice is a flower that blooms in gardens of the just."
Emily Dickinson
W
"Justice is the insurance which we effect against the commission of crime."
Washington Irving
"Nothing is so unforgivable as sin achieved through ignorance."
Mark Twain
H
"Justice without mercy is tyranny; mercy without justice is weakness."
Herman Melville
N
"What we call real estate—the solid ground to build a house on—is the broad foundation on which nearly all the guilt of this world rests."
Nathaniel Hawthorne
N
"Every crime is a departure from nature."
Nathaniel Hawthorne
N
"The real offence is that of being wicked, not of being caught."
Nathaniel Hawthorne
E
"My country is the world, and my religion is to do good."
Edgar Allan Poe
E
"Revenge is a kind of wild justice."
Edgar Allan Poe
"The purpose of civilization is to replace violence with law."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Good men must not obey the laws too well."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Justice is what love looks like in public."
Louis-Ferdinand Céline
"Seek justice."
Louis-Ferdinand Céline
F
"Justice without mercy is cruelty."
François Mauriac
F
"We must defend the powerless and vulnerable."
François Mauriac
"I have no color prejudices nor caste prejudices nor creed prejudices."
Mark Twain
N
"The duty of man is to be just, even if the world is not."
Nathaniel Hawthorne