Justice Quotes

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The "trickle-down" theory: the principle that the poor, who must subsist on table scraps dropped by the rich, can best be served by giving the rich bigger meals.

- William Blum

The best safeguard against fascism is to establish social justice to the maximum extent possible.

- Arnold Toynbee

That is true culture which helps us to work for the social betterment of all.

- Henry Ward Beecher

Justice is never given; it is exacted and the struggle must be continuous for freedom is never a final fact, but a continuing evolving process to higher and higher levels of human, social, economic, political and religious relationship.

- A. Philip Randolph

The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.

- Julia Ward Howe

Don't wait for the Last Judgment. It happens every day.

- Albert Camus

Truth never damages a cause that is just.

- Mohandas K. Gandhi

One of the most powerful, and deeply spiritual, ways to work for social change is for us to take action in the present that embodies -- right now! -- the future vision that we seek

- Rabbi Arthur Ocean Waskow

A weak man is just by accident. A strong but nonviolent man is unjust by accident.

- Mohandas K. Gandhi

Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends by defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

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.

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.

- Rabbi Tarfon

Liberals are not unconcerned with economic liberty, but they have come to believe that the common good requires that social justice be given a higher priority than absolute economic freedom.

- Robert S. McElvaine

For these are all our children. We will all profit by, or pay for, whatever they become,

- James Baldwin

Compassion is not sentiment but is making justice and doing works of mercy. Compassion is not a moral commandment but a flow and overflow of the fullest human and divine energies.

- Matthew Fox

The rain is famous for falling on the just and unjust alike, but if I had the management of such affairs I would rain softly and sweetly on the just, but if I caught a sample of the unjust out doors I would drown him.

- Mark Twain

Transformation is only valid if it is carried out with the people, not for them. Liberation is like a childbirth, and a painful one. The person who emerges is a new person: no longer either oppressor or oppressed, but a person in the process of achieving freedom. It is only the oppressed who, by freeing themselves, can free their oppressors.

- Paulo Freire

Values are not just words, values are what we live by. They're about the causes that we champion and the people we fight for.

- John Kerry

I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life.

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

In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are only consequences.

- Robert G. Ingersoll

You must be the change you wish to see in the world.

- Mohandas K. Gandhi

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

We have before us the glorious opportunity to inject a new dimension of love into the veins of our civilization,

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

We hold the moral obligation of providing for old age, helpless infancy, and poverty is far superior to that of supplying the invented wants of courtly extravagance.

- Thomas Paine

As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.

- John Stuart Mill