best quotes about justice

The word justice comes from the Latin word “jus”, which means right or law. Justice is often used interchangeably with the word “fairness.” Many philosophers, sociologists, theologians, and other scientists define justice as the proper ordering of people and things. All races and religions include a definition of justice in their codes of law and conduct. Justice is, in fact, the glue that holds societies together. Justice includes the notion of upholding the law, as in the work of police, judges and the court.

Behind the concept of justice lies the notion of balance – that people get what is right, fair and appropriate. We all feel we deserve equal and impartial treatment but perhaps our concept of justice is nothing more than a way to legitimize our desire for revenge. Perhaps we attach to justice the connotations of “right” and “good” simply to make ourselves feel better about our need to balance the scales. Be that as it may, in the following article there is a collection of short, funny, cynical, intellectual, inspiring and poetic quotes.

Short Quotes about Justice

• Justice is truth in action. Benjamin Disraeli
• People who don’t expect justice don’t have to suffer disappointment. Isaac Asimov

• Never pray for justice, because you might get some. Margaret Atwood
• Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public. Cornel West
• The golden eye of justice sees, and requites the unjust man. Sophocles
• The foundation of justice is good faith. Cicero

Justice is truth in action. Benjamin Disraeli

• It’s every man’s business to see justice done. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
• Justice is the constant and perpetual will to allot to every man his due. Domitus Ulpian
• Delay of justice is injustice. Walter Savage Landor
• Justice is never so slender to us as when we first practice it. Henry Ward Beecher
• Freedom for the wolves has often meant death to the sheep. Isaiah Berlin
• Pity for the guilty is treason to the innocent. Terry Goodkind
• The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. Theodore Parker

• There is no virtue so truly great and godlike as justice. Joseph Addison
• Law is not law, if it violates the principles of eternal justice. Lydia Maria Child
• True peace is not merely the absence of war, it is the presence of justice. Jane Addams
• Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are. Benjamin Franklin

Delay of justice is injustice. Walter Savage Landor

• Justice is the means by which established injustices are sanctioned. Anatole France
• Extreme justice is often injustice. Jean Racine
• Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny. Edmund Burke
• Justice and the facade of a temple are seen best from the outside. Austin O’Malley
• Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Alexander Solzhenitsyn
• Knowledge which is divorced from justice may be called cunning rather than wisdom. Marcus Tullius Cicero
• Truth never damages a cause that is just. Mahatma Gandhi
• Justice is a fading light. Sheryl Crow
• The greatest trespasser on justice still wishes it done to him. Edward Counsel
• Fairness is what justice really is. Potter Stewart

Funny Quotes about Justice

• Revenge? Nah, I’m too lazy. I’m gonna sit here and let karma fuck you up. Unknown
• A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer. Robert Frost

• Any society that needs disclaimers has too many lawyers. Erik Pepke
• At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst Aristotle
• Capital punishment turns the state into a murderer. But imprisonment turns the state into a gay dungeon-master. Jesse Jackson
• Corn can’t expect justice from a court composed of chickens. African Proverb
• Good lawyers know the law; great lawyers know the judge. Author Unknown
• Many remark justice is blind; pity those in her sway, shocked to discover she is also deaf. David Mamet

• You know, the courts may not be working anymore, but as long as everyone is videotaping everyone else, justice will be done. Marge Simpson

Truth never damages a cause that is just.

 

Cynical Quotes about Justice

• If we do not maintain justice, justice will not maintain us. Francis Bacon
• There is no such thing as justice, all the best that we can hope for is revenge. Emilie Autumn
• The love of justice is, in most men, nothing more than the fear of suffering injustice. Francois de la Rochefoucauld
• My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?  C.S. Lewis
• Where there are too many policemen, there is no liberty. Where there are too many soldiers, there is no peace. Where there are too many lawyers, there is no justice. Lyn Yutang
• A rule that cannot be bent will certainly be broken. Robert Brault
• Couldn’t help but make me feel ashamed to live in a land where justice is a game. Bob Dylan
• Death is the fairest thing in the world. No one’s ever gotten out of it. The earth takes everyone – the kind, the cruel, the sinners. Aside from that, there’s no fairness on earth.  Svetlana Alexievich

• Justice is always violent to the party offending, for every man is innocent in his own eyes. Daniel Defoe
• For children are innocent and love justice, while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy. G.K. Chesterton
• Men often mistake killing and revenge for justice. They seldom have the stomach for justice. Robert Jordan
• The love of justice is, in most men, nothing more than the fear of suffering injustice. Francois, Duc de la Rochefoucauld
• Justice is a whore that won’t let herself be stiffed, and collects the wages of shame even from the poor. Karl Kraus

Martin Luther King Quotes about Justice

• Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Martin Luther King, Jr.
• The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice. Martin Luther King, Jr.
• A unjust law, is no law at all. Martin Luther King, Jr.
• True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice. Martin Luther King Jr.
• Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. Martin Luther King Jr.

• It is not possible to be in favor of justice for some people and not be in favor of justice for all people. Martin Luther King Jr.
• I came to the conclusion that there is an existential moment in your life when you must decide to speak for yourself; nobody else can speak for you. Martin Luther King Jr.
• Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. Indeed, it is a weapon unique in history, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. Martin Luther King, Jr.
• The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood. Martin Luther King Jr.

 

Intellectual Quotes about Justice

• In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt as injustice. Charles Dickens
• Although the legal and ethical definitions of right are the antithesis of each other, most writers use them as synonyms. They confuse power with goodness, and mistake law for justice. Charles T. Sprading
• Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted, the indifference of those who should have known better, the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most, that has made it possible for evil to triumph. Haile Selassie
• Justice has always evoked ideas of equality, of proportion of compensation. Equity signifies equality. Rules and regulations, right and righteousness are concerned with equality in value. If all men are equal, then all men are of the same essence, and the common essence entitles them of the same fundamental rights and equal liberty… In short justice is another name of liberty, equality and fraternity. B.R. Ambedkar
• The need for justice grows out of the conflict of human interests. That is to say, if there were no conflict of interests among mankind we should never have invented the word justice, nor conceived the idea for which it stands. Thomas Nixon Carver
• To know how to put what knowledge in which place is wisdom (hikmah). Otherwise, knowledge without order and seeking it without discipline does lead to confusion and hence to injustice to one’s self. Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas
• The need for justice grows out of the conflict of human interests. That is to say, if there were no conflict of interests among mankind we should never have invented the word justice, nor conceived the idea for which it stands. Thomas Nixon Carver
• The just man is not the product of a day, but of a long brooding and a painful birth. To become a power for peace, a man must first pass through experiences which lead him to see things in their different aspects: it is necessary that he have a wide horizon, and breathe various atmospheres–in a word, from crossing, one after another, paths and points of view the most diverse, and sometimes the most contradictory, he must acquire the faculty of putting himself in the place of others and appreciating them. Charles Wagner
• There is a certain attitude of mind that underlies the theory of justice and that ought to be strengthened by the experience of complex equality: we can think of it as a decent respect for the opinions of mankind. Not the opinions of this or that individual, which may well deserve a brusque response: I mean those deeper opinions that are the reflections in individual minds, shaped also by individual thought, of the social meanings that constitute our common life. For us, and for the foreseeable future, these opinions make for autonomous distributions; and every form of dominance is therefore an act of disrespect. To argue against dominance and its accompanying inequalities, it is only necessary to attend to the goods at stake and to the shared understanding of these goods. When philosophers do this, when they write out of respect for the understandings they share with their fellow citizens, they pursue justice justly, and they reinforce the common pursuit. Michael Walzer
• The safety of the people requireth further from him or them that have the sovereign power, that justice be equally administered to all degrees of people, that is, that as well the rich and mighty as poor and obscure persons may be righted of the injuries done them, so as the great may have no greater hope of impunity when they do violence, dishonor, or any injury to the meaner sort than when one of these does the like to one of them. For in this consisteth equity, to which, as being a precept of the law of Nature, a sovereign is as much subject as any of the meanest of his people. Thomas Hobbes

Inspiring Quotes about Justice

• All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope. Winston Churchill
• If you tremble with indignation at every injustice then you are a comrade of mine. Ernesto Che Guevara
• If we expect others to rely on our fairness and justice we must show that we rely on their fairness and justice. Calvin Coolidge

Never pray for justice, because you might get some. Margaret Atwood.

• Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are. Benjamin Franklin
• Justice should remove the bandage from her eyes long enough to distinguish between the vicious and the unfortunate. Robert G. Ingersoll
• Justice and injustice indeed begins and ends with the self. Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas
• Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary. Reinhold Niebuhr
• The American people have this to learn: that 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 person nor property is safe. Frederick Douglass
• The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just. Abraham Lincoln
• The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword. If you would take a man’s life, you owe it to him to look into his eyes and hear his final words. And if you cannot bear to do that, then perhaps the man does not deserve to die. […] a ruler who hides behind paid executioners soon forgets what death is. George R.R. Martin
• If you spend your time hoping someone will suffer the consequences for what they did to your heart, then you’re allowing them to hurt you a second time in your mind. Shannon L. Alder
• There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest. Elie Wiesel
• Courage is of no value unless accompanied by justice; yet if all men became just, there would be no need for courage. Agesilaus the Second
• Justice is a contract of expediency, entered upon to prevent men harming or being harmed. Epicurus
• Jedi do not fight for peace. That’s only a slogan, and is as misleading as slogans always are. Jedi fight for civilization, because only civilization creates peace. We fight for justice because justice is the fundamental bedrock of civilization: an unjust civilization is built upon sand. It does not long survive a storm. Matthew Woodring Stover

Poetic Quotes about Justice

• This thing that men call justice, this blind snake that strikes men down in the dark, mindless with fury, keep your hand back from it, pass by in silence. Maxwell Anderson
• Justice is a knee in the gut from the floor on the chin at night sneaky with a knife brought up down on the magazine of a battleship sandbagged underhanded in the dark without a word of warning. Garroting. That’s what justice is. Joseph Heller
• Oh, I am arm’d with more than complete steel, The justice of my quarrel. Aphra Behn
• Justice, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Some see an innocent victim. Others will see evil incarnate getting exactly what’s deserved. Emily Thorne
• For Justice, though she’s painted blind, is to the weaker side inclin’d. Samuel Butler
• Injustice alone can shake down the pillars of the skies, and restore the reign of Chaos and Night. Horace Mann
• The most reasonable man always manages, when he pulls the trigger, to become a dispenser of justice. Jean Genet
• If one really wishes to know how justice is administered in a country, one does not question the policemen, the lawyers, the judges, or the protected members of the middle class. One goes to the unprotected–those, precisely, who need the law’s protection most!–and listens to their testimony. James Baldwin
• Justice, sir, is the great interest of man on earth. It is the ligament which holds civilized beings and civilized nations together. Wherever her temple stands, and so long as it is duly honored, there is a foundation for general security, general happiness, and the improvement and progress of our race. Daniel Webster
• There’s no surer justice in the world than that which makes the rich thief hang the poor one. Peire Cardenal
• Justice is justly represented blind, because she sees no difference in the parties concerned. She has but one scale and weight, for rich and poor, great and small. William Penn
• Justice is always violent to the party offending, for every man is innocent in his own eyes. Daniel Defoe

The righteous care about justice for the poor, but the wicked have no such concern. Proverbs 29:7

Bible and Religious Quotes about Justice

• The Lord is known by his justice; the wicked are ensnared by the work of their hands. Psalm 9:16
• Justice is that which is practiced by God himself, and to be practiced in its perfection by none but him. Omniscience and omnipotence are requisite for the full exertion of it. Joseph Addison
• The righteous care about justice for the poor, but the wicked have no such concern. Proverbs 29:7
• It is highly convenient to believe in the infinite mercy of God when you feel the need of mercy, but remember also his infinite justice. B. R. Haydon

Famous Quotes about Justice

• To have the power of forgetting, for the time, self, friends, interests, relationship; and to think of doing right toward another, a stranger, an enemy, perhaps, is to have that which men can share only with the angels, and with Him who is above men and angels. David Dudley Field
• Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.    Martin Luther King, Jr.

• In matters of truth and justice, there is no difference between large and small problems, for issues concerning the treatment of people are all the same.  Albert Einstein   

• The dead cannot cry out for justice. It is a duty of the living to do so for them. Lois McMaster Bujold     
• There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.  Elie Weasel    
• Social justice cannot be attained by violence. Violence kills what it intends to create.   Pope John Paul II
• Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are. Benjamin Franklin

• We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer    

• If one really wishes to know how justice is administered in a country, one does not question the policemen, the lawyers, the judges, or the protected members of the middle class. One goes to the unprotected--those, precisely, who need the law's protection most!--and listens to their testimony. James Baldwin  

• 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