It would be very singular if this great shad-net of the law did not enable men to catch at something, balking for the time the eternal flood-tide of justice.--_Chapin._
When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.” But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. [“I Have A Dream” Speech, 1963.]
Ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.
Hypotheses non fingo=--I frame no hypotheses. _Sir Isaac Newton._ [Greek: Haploun to dikaion, rhadion to alethes]--Justice is simple, truth easy.
The false justice of Pilate only caused the suffering of Jesus Christ; for he caused him to be scourged by his false justice, and then slew him. It would have been better that he had slain him at first. Thus is it with those who are falsely just. They do good works or evil to please the world, and show that they are not altogether of Jesus Christ, for they are ashamed of him. Then at last in great temptations and on great occasions, they slay him.
All this is mere justice to Goethe; but, as it is the unpleasant duty of the historian to do justice upon, as well as to, great men, it behoves me to add that the germs of the worst faults of later ioeculative morphologists are no less visible in his writings than their great merits. In the artist-philosopher there was, at best, a good deal more artist than philosopher; and when Goethe ventured into the regions which belong to pure science, this excess of a virtue had all the consequences of a vice. "Trennen und zahlen lag nicht in meiner Natur," says he; but the mental operations of which "analysis and numeration" are partial expressions are indispensable for every step of progress beyond happy glimpses, even in morphology; while, in physiology and in physics, failure in the most exact performance of these operations involves sheer disaster, as indeed Goethe was afforded abundant opportunity of learning. Yet he never understood the sharp lessons he received, and put down to malice, or prejudice, the ill-reception of his unfortunate attempts to deal with purely physical problems.
_Against those who trusting in the mercy of God live carelessly, without doing good works._--As the two sources of our sins are pride and indolence, God has revealed to us two of his attributes for their cure, mercy and justice. The property of justice is to abase our pride, however holy may be our works, _et non intres in judicium, etc._; and the property of mercy is to combat indolence by exciting to good works, according to that passage: "The goodness of God leads to repentance," and that other of the Ninevites: "Let us do penance to see if peradventure he will pity us." Thus mercy is so far from authorising slackness, that it is on the contrary the quality which formally assails it, so that instead of saying: "Were there not mercy in God, we must make every effort after virtue," we should say, on the contrary, that because there is mercy in God we must make every effort.
Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naive trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile the excluded are still waiting. [ Evangelii Gaudium, op. cit., §54, Nov. 26, 2013. ]
Discite justitiam moniti, et non temnere divos=--Warned by me, learn justice, and not to despise the gods.
Resentment seems to have been given us by Nature for defence, and for defence only; it is the safeguard of justice and the security of innocence.
As if there were two hells, one for sins against charity, the other for sins against justice.
When there are too many policemen, there can be no liberty. When there are too many soldiers, there can be no peace. When there are too many lawyers, there can be no justice.
If every man possessed everything he wanted, and no one had the power to interfere with such possession; or if no man desired that which could damage his fellow-man, justice would have no part to play in the universe.
Astr?a redux=--Return of the goddess of justice.
Judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar off; for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter.
There is but one law for all; namely, that law which governs all law — the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice, equity; the law of nature and of nations. [January 9, 1795. Needs citation.]
Outward judgment often fails, inward justice never.
La justice et la verite sont deux pointes si subtiles, que nos instrumens sont trop emousses pour y toucher exactement=--Justice and truth are two points so fine that our instruments are too blunt to touch them exactly.
~Mercy.~--Mercy more becomes a magistrate than the vindictive wrath which men call justice!--_Longfellow._
The justice of God must be as vast as his mercy, but justice towards the reprobate is less vast, and should be less amazing than mercy towards the elect.
The first priority of humankind in this era is to establish an effective system of world law that will assure peace with justice among the peoples of the world.
The act of Social Justice is the act of organizing. The power that we have now to change any institution of life was always there but we did not know how to use it. Now we know. [Chapter VI, Introduction to Social Justice .]
Let justice be done, though the world perish.
Habeas corpus=--A writ to deliver one from prison, and show reason for his detention, with a view to judge of its justice,
Just as to prohibit shouting fire in a crowded theater is a reasonable limitation on our universally appealing constitutional right to freedom of speech, the American people and their elected political representatives should debate whether to prohibit and punish speech that advocates violence against persons or groups engaging in non-violent speech and non-violent activities. The advocacy of violence against the non-violent ignites the passions of the “mad dogs” in every society and turns them loose against champions of new ideas intended to advance Peace, Prosperity and Freedom through Justice for all members of human society. The free and open marketplace for reasoned debate cannot function in an orderly way when invaded by suicide bombers or those who incite violence and killing of non-violent advocates of change. Ignoring such hate-mongering is a formula for spreading fear of free speech throughout society, leaving the pursuit of Truth, Love and Justice to those willing to martyr themselves for their commitment to the advance of civilization. What prompted a mentally unstable person like Jared Lee Loughner to shoot Rep. Gabielle Giffords, or John Hinckley, Jr. to shot Ronald Reagan? Who helped from afar to “pull the trigger” in the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Medgar Evers and other champions of justice throughout human history? To what extent was the preaching of religious and ideological extremists responsible for 9/11 and for the killing of thousands of innocent people by hate-filled suicide bombers? How can the War of Ideas be won if the advocacy of violence against the non-violent is not suppressed as a social cancer threatening the sacred marketplace of free and open debate? [Message on signing Move-On petition on Jan. 11, 2011.]
Think on this doctrine,--that reasoning beings were created for one another's sake; that to be patient is a branch of justice, and that men sin without intending it.
And, with increasing refinement of moral appreciation, the problem of desert, which arises out of this distinction, acquired more and more theoretical and practical importance. If life must be given for life, yet it was recognized that the unintentional slayer did not altogether deserve death; and, by a sort of compromise between the public and the private conception of justice, a sanctuary was provided in which he might take refuge from the avenger of blood.
Suum cuique tribuere, ea demum summa justitia est=--To give to every man his due, that is supreme justice.
The First Amendment is often inconvenient. But that is besides the point. Inconvenience does not absolve the government of its obligation to tolerate speech.
Nor let us part with justice, like a cheap and common thing, for a small and trifling price. [“The Comparison of Crassus with Nicias,” The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans , Translated by John Dryden and revised by Arthur Hugh Clough. (New York: Random House, Modern Library edition, p. 677).]
Man perfected by society is the best of all animals; he is the most terrible of all when he lives without law and without justice.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal." I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state, sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.
The virtue of great souls is justice= (
The impartiality which, in contemplation, is the unalloyed desire for truth, is the very same quality of mind which, in action, is justice, and in emotion is that universal love which can be given to all, and not only to those who are judged useful or admirable. Thus contemplation not only enlarges the objects of our thoughts, but also the objects of our actions and our affections: it makes us citizens of the universe, not only of one walled city at war with the rest. In this citizenship of the universe consists man's true freedom, and his liberation from the thralldom of narrow hopes and fears.
The goal is justice, the method is transparency. It's important not to confuse the goal and the method.
But the wise shall shine brightly like the splendor of the firmament, and those who lead the many to justice shall be like the stars forever. ( Qui autem docti fuerint, fulgebunt quasi splendor firmamenti; et que ad iustitiam erudiunt multos, quasi stell? in perpetuas ?ternitates .) [Daniel 12:3.]
The benefactors of mankind are those who grumble to the best purpose. Grumbling has raised man from the condition of the gorilla to that of the judge on the bench of justice.
Fiat justitia, ruat c?lum=--Let justice be done, though the heavens should fall in.
Tremble, thou wretch, That hast within thee undivulged crimes, Unwhipp'd of justice.
It is not the same in the Church, for there is true justice and no violence.
There is no safety where there is no strength; no strength without Union; no Union without justice; no justice where faith and truth are wanting. The right to be free is a truth planted in the hearts of men. [ William Lloyd Garrison: The Story of His Life , p. 200.]
Certainly had he known it, he would not have established the maxim, most general of all current among men, that every one must conform to the manners of his own country; the splendour of true equity would have brought all nations into subjection, and legislators would not have taken as their model the fancies and caprice of Persians and Germans instead of stable justice. We should have seen it established in all the States of the world, in all times, whereas now we see neither justice nor injustice which does not change its quality upon changing its climate. Three degrees of latitude reverse all jurisprudence, a meridian decides what is truth, fundamental laws change after a few years of possession, right has its epochs, the entrance of Saturn into the Lion marks for us the origin of such and such a crime. That is droll justice which is bounded by a stream! Truth on this side of the Pyrenees, error on that.
There is no evasion of this moral responsibility of all the nations and especially of the most powerful nations for that peace and justice which, together with the security of one’s own nation, is the object of foreign policy. Too many people who eagerly draw up perfect blueprints for world organization are secretly influenced by the expectation that after the establishment of such legal institutions they will get rid of the continuous responsibility of a burdensome foreign policy. They have fallen into the same fallacy as the classical liberal economists, namely, that if a certain set of legal institutions should be introduced, then out of the individuals’ efforts to pursue their unrestricted self-interest the social harmony would automatically ensue. The result was, of course, not social harmony but the power struggle of collective interests, class struggles, and the like. If in the national order the merely legalistic concept of the state according to the liberal pattern is impossible, a complete juridification of the international order will be even less possible. On World Peace, Justice and Charity . Too many of the planners, moreover, have an optimistic though mechanistic psychology according to which man is the creature of his institutional environment, that is, he is a bundle of causal reactions to the primary acting environmental and objective institutional factors. But this psychology of determinism forgets that man is conditioned and motivated, but not causally determined, by these institutional factors. There remains a residual sphere beyond all causal determinations, where man is morally free and can become truly culpable, not innocently guilty as in the ancient tragedy. [Sophocles’ “Oedipus Trilogy”] Sometimes this over-all juridification is caused by a tacit rejection of man’s moral nature. And contradictions appear, such as this, that Hitler is wholly explained causally as the effect of causes that are sociological, institutional, and so on, and yet considered personally and morally guilty. Politics is an integral part of ethics, as is law. Arbitrary power must be controlled by positive law. But, that law may be enabled to do so, it must itself be backed by power responsible to the moral ideas, to the national common good. The strife among nations can be best settled if the universal law of morality, the principles of natural law as the unwritten constitution of the international community, are commonly accepted. For then power is put in the service of the fundamental moral ideas. And there is no evasion of the principle that the greater the power, influence, and prestige of a nation, the greater is its responsibility for peace and justice. Moreover, the less can this responsibility be shifted to any legal institution, however abstractly perfect, and the nation still hope to return securely to a splendid isolation and to the sole pursuit of its own national happiness. On the other hand, only after the powerful nations are ready to accept in mutual understanding their direct and inseparable responsibility for peace, only then will the legal institution work. But just as important is the perpetual will to establish justice, that is, to work for changes of the actual status quo when it has become an obviously unjust status, the continuation of which would endanger the peace of the world. Peace is the work of justice. Hence it will always be this moral will to justice that gives the legal institutions power. Without this moral will and concordant responsibility, the institutions will be empty hulks, a derision of the idea of law. Though peace, the tranquility of the order, is the work of justice, justice itself ought to be vivified by charity, based on the common brotherhood of men and on the common fatherhood of God. These three — charity vivifying justice, justice working peace, and peace being tranquility of the order — by permeating and inspiring the legal institutions, are the real guaranty for the peace of the world. [“World Peace”, The State in Catholic Thought , IV.xxxii.vii.]
Too few own the wealth of nations. Too many own nothing. [Banner on CESJ Website, Dawn Kurland Brohawn, Director of Communications,1995].
We'd jump the life to come. But, in these cases, / We still have judgment here; that we but teach / Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return / To plague the inventor. This even-handed justice / Commends the ingredients of our poison'd chalice / To our own lips.
[I]n Social Justice there is never any such thing as helplessness . No problem is ever too big or too complex, no field is ever too vast, for the methods of this Social Justice. Problems that were agonizing in the past and were simply dodged, even by serious and virtuous people, can now be solved with ease by any school child. [“Nothing is Impossible,” Chapter VII, Introduction to Social Justice. ]
It is to be recollected in view of the apparent discrepancy between men's acts and their rewards that Nature is juster than we. She takes into account what a man brings with him into the world, which human justice cannot do. If I, born a bloodthirsty and savage brute, inheriting these qualities from others, kill you, my fellow-men will very justly hang me, but I shall not be visited with the horrible remorse which would be my real punishment if, my nature being higher, I had done the same thing.
In the habits of legal men every accusation appears insufficient if they do not exaggerate it even to calumny. It is thus that justice itself loses its sanctity and its respect amongst men.--_Lamartine._
No man can say in what degree any other person, besides himself, can be, with strict justice, called wicked.
Spirit of Nature! / The pure diffusion of thy essence throbs / Alike in every human heart. / Thou aye erectest there / Thy throne of power unappealable; / Thou art the judge beneath whose nod / Man's brief and frail authority / Is powerless as the wind / That passeth idly by. / Thine the tribunal which surpasseth / The show of human justice, / As God surpasseth man.
Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all God’s children. [ Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Road to Socialism by Maurice Isserman in Civil Rights to Human Rights; Martin Luther King, Jr. , and The Struggle for Economic Justice by Thomas F. Jackson, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006; In King’s Own Words , from a 1965 speech to the Negro American Labor Council quoted in Jackson’s book.]
Man is then only disguise, falsehood, and hypocrisy, both in himself and with regard to others. He will not be told the truth, he avoids telling it to others, and all these tendencies, so far removed from justice and reason, have their natural roots in his heart.
Restraint and discipline, examples of virtue and of justice, these are what form the education of the world.
Next to religion, let your care be to promote justice.
One definition of justice is “giving to each what he or she is due.” The problem is knowing what is “due”. Functionally, “;justice” is a set of universal principles which guide people in judging what is right and what is wrong, no matter what culture and society they live in. Justice is one of the four “cardinal virtues” of classical moral philosophy, along with courage, temperance (self-control) and prudence (efficiency). (Faith, hope and charity are considered to be the three “religious” virtues.) Virtues or “good habits” help individuals to develop fully their human potentials, thus enabling them to serve their own self-interests as well as work in harmony with others for their common good. The ultimate purpose of all the virtues is to elevate the dignity and sovereignty of the human person. While often confused, justice is distinct from the virtue of charity. Charity, derived from the Latin word caritas, or “divine love,” is the soul of justice. Justice supplies the material foundation for charity. While justice deals with the substance and rules for guiding ordinary, everyday human interactions, charity deals with the spirit of human interactions and with those exceptional cases where strict application of the rules is not appropriate or sufficient. Charity offers expedients during times of hardship. Charity compels us to give to relieve the suffering of a person in need. The highest aim of charity is the same as the highest aim of justice: to elevate each person to where he does not need charity but can become charitable himself. True charity involves giving without any expectation of return. But it is not a substitute for justice. [“Toward Economic and Social Justice: Founding Principles of CESJ,” 1987.]
Is. lvi. "Thus saith the Lord, Keep ye judgment, and do justice: for my salvation is near to come, and my righteousness to be revealed.
He that buyeth magistracy must sell justice.
The love of justice is simply, in the majority of men, the fear of suffering injustice.
Truth shall prevail — don't you know Magna est veritas . . . Yes, when it gets a chance. There is a law, no doubt — and likewise a law regulates your luck in the throwing of dice. It is not Justice — the servant of men, but accident, hazard, Fortune — the ally of patient Time — that holds an even and scrupulous balance.
God's justice, tardy though it prove perchance, Rests never on the track until it reach Delinquency.
Slavery is but half abolished, emancipation is but half completed, while millions of freemen with votes in their hands are left without education. Justice to them, the welfare of the States in which they live, the safety of the whole Republic, the dignity of the elective franchise,--all alike demand that the still remaining bonds of ignorance shall be unloosed and broken, and the minds as well as the bodies of the emancipated go free.
He who knows the will of his master will be beaten with more stripes, because of the power he has by his knowledge. _Qui justus est justificetur adhuc_, because of the power which he has by justice. From him who has received most will the greatest account be demanded, because the aid received has given him greater power.
Fiat justitiam, pereat mundus=--Let justice be done, and the world perish.
We love justice greatly, and just men but little.