354 quotes
“Let us put our minds together and see what life we can make for our children”
— Sitting Bull
“No man is free who is not master of himself”
— Epictetus
“Liberty means responsibility that is why most men dread it”
— George Bernard Shaw
“Justice without force is powerless; force without justice is tyrannical.”
— Blaise Pascal
“The banality of evil is the most terrifying aspect of our modern world”
— Hannah Arendt
“I was only a young girl when I realized the grave injustice of taking peoples land and culture”
— Zitkala-Sa
“Do unto those downstream as you would have those upstream do unto you”
— Wendell Berry
“The only way to have a friend is to be one”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Where justice is denied where poverty is enforced where ignorance prevails and where any one class feels that society has conspired there neither persons nor property will be safe nor will there be peace.”
— Frederick Douglass
“When we fight for justice we fight for all communities”
— Patrisse Cullors
“In recognizing the humanity of our fellow beings we pay ourselves the highest tribute”
— Thurgood Marshall
“The wheels of justice grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine.”
— Sextus Empiricus
“Understanding the past is essential for building a just future”
— Nikole Hannah-Jones
“You wanna fly you got to give up the stuff that weighs you down”
— Toni Morrison
“Compassion is the basis of all morality, but justice is the basis of all society.”
— Swami Vivekananda
“Justice consists in doing no injury to men; decency in giving them no offence.”
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
“Transform yourself to transform the world”
— Grace Lee Boggs
“If they do not give you a seat at the table bring a folding chair”
— Shirley Chisholm
“To exist humanly is to name the world to change it”
— Paulo Freire
“The trouble is that once you see it you cannot unsee it and once you have seen it keeping quiet saying nothing becomes as political an act as speaking out”
— Arundhati Roy
“To live is to choose but to choose well you must know who you are and what you stand for”
— Kofi Annan
“To will oneself free is also to will others free”
— Simone de Beauvoir
“Washing ones hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful”
“If we do not believe in freedom of expression for people we despise we do not believe in it at all”
— Noam Chomsky
“The only thing rising faster than sea levels is awareness”
— Naomi Klein
“When we try to pick out anything by itself we find it hitched to everything else in the universe”
— John Muir
“If we do not maintain justice, justice will not maintain us.”
— Francis Bacon
“Justice consists in seeing that no harm is done to people”
— Simone Weil
“No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another”
— Charles Dickens
“Recompense injury with justice, and recompense kindness with kindness.”
— Confucius
“The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by private citizens”
— Alexis de Tocqueville
“The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil”
“The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal”
— Aristotle
“Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought.”
— John Rawls
“The time is always right to do what is right”
— Martin Luther King Jr.
“Mankind censure injustice fearing that they may be the victims of it, and not because they shrink from committing it.”
— Plato
“One who is injured ought not to return the injury, for on no account can it be right to do an injustice.”
— Socrates
“If we do not maintain justice justice will not maintain us”
“We as women must stand up and speak truth we must stand up and vote”
— Dolores Huerta
“Everyone thinks of changing the world but no one thinks of changing himself”
— Leo Tolstoy
“Justice is the first virtue of social institutions.”
“The world is too dangerous for anything but truth and too small for anything but love”
— William Sloane Coffin
“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty”
— Wendell Phillips
“If thou suffer injustice, console thyself; the true unhappiness is in doing it.”
— Democritus
“Give light and people will find the way”
— Ella Baker
“If we cannot see a problem we cannot fix a problem”
— Kimberle Crenshaw
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”
“Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out”
— Vaclav Havel
“The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from political controversy”
— Robert Jackson
“At his best man is the noblest of all animals separated from law and justice he is the worst”
“Extreme justice is often injustice.”
— Jean Racine
“Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women when it dies there no constitution no law no court can save it”
— Learned Hand
“The galaxy of practice and policy that maintains racial hierarchy is not a matter of intent but of architecture”
— Ta-Nehisi Coates
“To be a good human being is to have a kind of openness to the world an ability to trust uncertain things beyond your own control”
— Martha Nussbaum
“I do not wish women to have power over men but over themselves”
— Mary Wollstonecraft
“An unjust law is no law at all”
— Augustine of Hippo
“We cannot seek achievement for ourselves and forget about the progress and prosperity for our community”
— Cesar Chavez
“A sword never kills anybody it is a tool in the killers hand”
— Seneca
“Peace is not merely the absence of conflict. True peace is the presence of harmony justice and goodwill.”
— Baruch Spinoza
“Equal rights for all special privileges for none”
— Thomas Jefferson
“Charity begins at home, and justice begins next door.”
“Justice is what love looks like in public.”
— Cornel West
“An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind”
— Mahatma Gandhi
“My humanity is bound up in yours for we can only be human together”
— Desmond Tutu
“The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression”
— W.E.B. Du Bois
“Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.”
— Edmund Burke
“We need in every community a group of angelic troublemakers”
— Bayard Rustin
“Each generation must discover its mission fulfill it or betray it”
— Frantz Fanon
“Justice is an experience of the impossible”
— Jacques Derrida
“Justice means minding your own business and not meddling with other peoples concerns”
“Our prime purpose in this life is to help others and if you cannot help them at least do not hurt them”
— Dalai Lama
“Your silence will not protect you”
— Audre Lorde
“There is no justice without love and there is no love without justice”
— James Cone
“Heaven's net is wide; coarse are the meshes, yet nothing slips through.”
— Lao Tzu
“It is not power that corrupts but fear fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it”
— Aung San
“I am invisible understand simply because people refuse to see me”
— Ralph Ellison
“It is in justice that the ordering of society is centered.”
“I love America more than any other country in this world and exactly for this reason I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually”
— James Baldwin
“The injustice done to an individual is sometimes of service to the public.”
— Junius
“Empowerment through empathy is the key to healing communities”
— Tarana Burke
“You are not Atlas carrying the world on your shoulders it is good to remember that the planet is carrying you”
— Vandana Shiva
“It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have frequently been forged in cases involving not very nice people”
— Felix Frankfurter
“Justice is the firm and continuous desire to render to everyone that which is his due.”
— Justinian I
“We are not only constituted by our relations but also dispossessed by them”
— Judith Butler
“There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come”
— Victor Hugo
“Man is unjust, but God is just; and justice finally triumphs.”
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“One child one teacher one book one pen can change the world”
— Malala Yousafzai
“Truth is powerful and it prevails”
— Sojourner Truth
“When suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat for him he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool”
— Chinua Achebe
“Another world is not only possible she is on her way on a quiet day I can hear her breathing”
“True patriotism hates injustice in its own land more than anywhere else”
— Clarence Darrow
“Observe good faith and justice toward all nations.”
— George Washington
“Where justice is denied where poverty is enforced ignorance prevails and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress them there neither persons nor property will be safe”
“He who commits injustice is ever made more wretched than he who suffers it.”
“Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants”
— Louis Brandeis
“When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.”
“The earth does not belong to us we belong to the earth”
— Chief Seattle
“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
— Theodore Parker
“True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.”
— Unknown
“The face of the other calls me to justice”
— Emmanuel Levinas
“Compassion is the basis of all morality.”
— Arthur Schopenhauer
“The opposite of poverty is not wealth the opposite of poverty is justice”
— Bryan Stevenson
“Truth and love must prevail over lies and hatred”
“We have to improve life not just for those who have the most skills and those who know how to manipulate the system but for the people who often have so much to give but never get the opportunity”
— Dorothy Height
“To be perfectly just is an attribute of the divine nature; to be so to the utmost of our abilities is the glory of man.”
— Joseph Addison
“Freedom of expression is the foundation of human rights the source of humanity and the mother of truth”
— Liu Xiaobo
“Justice is not just the absence of oppression it is the presence of opportunity”
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
“Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains”
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“There is infinite hope just not for us”
— Franz Kafka
“The racial contract is the truth behind the social contract”
— Charles Mills
“Freedom by definition is people realizing that they are their own leaders”
— Diane Nash
“We must center the voices of those most impacted by injustice”
— Alicia Garza
“When you see something that is not right not fair not just you have to speak up you have to do something”
— John Lewis
“In civilized life law floats in a sea of ethics”
— Earl Warren
“The genius of the Constitution rests in the adaptability of its great principles to cope with current problems”
— William Brennan
“The only way to undo racism is to consistently identify and describe it and then dismantle it”
— Ibram X. Kendi
“The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise”
— Tacitus
“Democracy has to be born anew every generation and education is its midwife”
— John Dewey
“If you are neutral in situations of injustice you have chosen the side of the oppressor and there can be no peace.”
“Justice is the first virtue of social institutions”
“True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar it sees that the system which produces beggars needs restructuring”
“Do your little bit of good where you are it is those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world”
— Archbishop Desmond Tutu
“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.”
“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
“Those who are too lazy and comfortable to think for themselves and be their own judges obey the laws. Others sense their own laws from within.”
— Hermann Hesse
“Do not ask what the world needs ask what makes you come alive and go do it because what the world needs is people who have come alive”
— Howard Thurman
“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil not to speak is to speak not to act is to act”
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“The love of justice is simply, in the majority of men, the fear of suffering injustice.”
— François de La Rochefoucauld
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field I will meet you there”
— Rumi
“If you are neutral in situations of injustice you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”
“The secret of our success is that we never never give up”
— Wilma Mankiller
“The ruler who is guided by mercy and justice earns the devotion that force can never command.”
— Saadi Shirazi
“Laws are like spiders webs which stand firm when any light yielding object falls upon them while a weightier thing breaks through and escapes”
— Solon
“Justice consists not in being neutral between right and wrong, but in finding out the right and upholding it, wherever found, against the wrong.”
— Theodore Roosevelt
“It is not what happens to you but how you react to it that matters”
“Justice requires not merely that individuals be treated fairly but that social structures be fair”
— Iris Marion Young
“He who digs a pit shall fall into it, and he who rolls a stone, it will come back on him.”
— King Solomon
“Deeds not words”
— Emmeline Pankhurst
“Not everything that is faced can be changed but nothing can be changed until it is faced”
“It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer”
— William Blackstone
“I freed a thousand slaves I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves”
— Harriet Tubman
“The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself”
— Albert Camus
“Human rights is a universal standard it is a component of every religion and every civilization”
— Shirin Ebadi
“The question is not can they reason nor can they talk but can they suffer”
— Jeremy Bentham
“When those who have power to name and to socially construct reality choose not to see you or hear you whether you are dark-skinned old disabled female or speak with a different accent or dialect than theirs when someone with the authority of a teacher describes the world and you are not in it there is a moment of psychic disequilibrium”
— Adrienne Rich
“The heartbeat of racism is denial the heartbeat of antiracism is confession”
“The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them”
— Ida B. Wells
“Justice is never served by turning the other into a scapegoat”
— Reinhold Niebuhr
“Whoever digs a pit will fall into it, and a stone will come back on him who starts it rolling.”
— Solomon
“If there is a book you want to read but it has not been written yet then you must write it”
“Justice cannot be for one side alone but must be for both”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
“If you are silent about your pain they will kill you and say you enjoyed it”
— Zora Neale Hurston
“Justice is what love looks like in public and kindness is what love looks like in private”
“The foundation of justice is good faith”
— Cicero
“Civil disobedience is not our problem our problem is civil obedience”
— Howard Zinn
“It is not our differences that divide us it is our inability to recognize accept and celebrate those differences”
“Peace cannot exist without justice justice cannot exist without fairness fairness cannot exist without development”
— Rigoberta Menchu
“A society should be judged not by how it treats its outstanding citizens but by how it treats its criminals”
— Fyodor Dostoevsky
“A good act does not wash out the bad, nor a bad act the good. Each should have its own reward.”
“To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay, right or justice.”
“Let justice be done though the heavens should fall.”
— William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield
“A just cause is not ruined by a few mistakes.”
“I too sing America”
— Langston Hughes
“It is the little things citizens do that will make the difference”
— Wangari Maathai
“The sword of justice has no scabbard.”
— Joseph de Maistre
“A people without knowledge of their past history origin and culture is like a tree without roots”
— Ngugi wa Thiongo
“Justice is not something that comes to those who wait it must be demanded and fought for”
— Elizabeth Warren
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”
“Hope will never be silent”
— Harvey Milk
“When we plant trees we plant the seeds of peace and seeds of hope”
“The measure of a man is what he does with power”
“True wealth is not measured in money or status or power it is measured in the legacy we leave behind for those we love and those we inspire”
“There is one safeguard known generally to the wise which is an advantage and security to all especially to democracies what is it distrust”
— Demosthenes
“Do not be desirous of having things done quickly. Do not look at small advantages. Desire to have things done quickly prevents their being done thoroughly. Looking at small advantages prevents great affairs from being accomplished.”
“No one can possibly know what is about to happen it is happening each time for the first time for the only time”
“We hold our heads high despite the price we have paid because freedom is priceless”
— Lech Walesa
“An animal has its being in its world but the human being stands in the world”
— Martin Buber
“Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends than that good men should look on and do nothing”
— John Stuart Mill
“When the legends die the dreams end there is no more greatness”
— Tecumseh
“We do not need to reinvent human rights we need to implement them”
“When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have to speak up. You have to say something; you have to do something.”
“Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.”
— Adam Smith
“In a time of universal deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act”
— George Orwell
“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.”
“Men can starve from a lack of self-realization as much as they can from a lack of bread”
— Richard Wright
“Struggle is a never ending process freedom is never really won you earn it and win it in every generation”
— Coretta Scott King
“One of the greatest problems of our time is that many are schooled but few are educated”
— Thomas More
“The welfare of the people is the ultimate law”
“You can kill a revolutionary but you can never kill the revolution”
— Fred Hampton
“History despite its wrenching pain cannot be unlived but if faced with courage need not be lived again”
— Maya Angelou
“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.”
— Mencius
“The just man is not the product of a day, but of a long brooding and a painful birth.”
“The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny”
— Wole Soyinka
“Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein: and he that rolleth a stone, it will return upon him.”
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere and faith demands that we stand against injustice wherever we find it”
“The man who does ill must suffer ill.”
— Aeschylus
“The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line”
“There is no virtue so truly great and godlike as justice.”
“We win justice not by meeting impossible standards but by refusing to let them define us”
— Stacey Abrams
“Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves”
— Abraham Lincoln
“Under a government which imprisons any unjustly the true place for a just man is also a prison”
— Henry David Thoreau
“We live in capitalism its power seems inescapable so did the divine right of kings”
— Ursula K. Le Guin
“Hatred does not cease by hatred but only by love this is the eternal rule”
— Buddha
“Optimism is a strategy for making a better future because unless you believe that the future can be better you are unlikely to step up”
“Even as the holy ones of old were arranged in their due order, and the stars fight from their courses, so is the deed its own judge, the deed its own reward.”
— Marcus Aurelius
“He who digs a pit for others falls in himself.”
“I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change I am changing the things I cannot accept”
— Angela Davis
“In nature nothing exists alone”
— Rachel Carson
“The strictest law sometimes becomes the severest injustice.”
— Benjamin Franklin
“Peace is not the product of terror or fear peace is not the silence of cemeteries”
— Oscar Romero
“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others”
“The power to tax involves the power to destroy”
— John Marshall
“In a consumer society contentment is a radical proposition”
— Robin Wall Kimmerer
“Who will guard the guardians themselves”
— Juvenal
“Remember you are all people and all people are you”
— Joy Harjo
“In the midst of winter I found there was within me an invincible summer”
“The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority but to escape finding yourself in the ranks of the insane”
“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”
— Nelson Mandela
“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice but there must never be a time when we fail to protest”
“Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be just be one”
“Justice is not to be taken by storm she is to be wooed by slow advances”
— Benjamin Cardozo
“Do not be deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”
“The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children”
“The only real prison is fear and the only real freedom is freedom from fear”
— Aung San Suu Kyi
“One of the finest things about being an Indian is that people are always interested in you and your plight”
— Vine Deloria Jr.
“Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law”
— Immanuel Kant
“The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart”
“The strictest justice is sometimes the greatest injustice.”
— Terence
“In a free society some are guilty but all are responsible”
— Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
“The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.”
“What the people want is very simple they want an America as good as its promise”
— Barbara Jordan
“I hear it was charged against me that I sought to destroy institutions but really I am neither for nor against institutions what I am after is a new beginning”
— Walt Whitman
“The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons”
“The memory of the just is blessed, but the name of the wicked shall rot.”
“You would not abandon ship in a storm just because you could not control the winds”
“We love because it is the only true adventure”
— Nikki Giovanni
“The life of the law has not been logic it has been experience”
— Oliver Wendell Holmes
“When asked by an anthropologist what the Indians called America before the white man came an Indian said simply Ours”
“The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice”
“An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so.”
“Every moment is an organizing opportunity every person a potential activist every minute a chance to change the world”
“The foundations of justice are that no one shall suffer wrong; then, that the public good be promoted.”
“To be truly visionary we have to root our imagination in our concrete reality while simultaneously imagining possibilities beyond that reality”
— bell hooks
“It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong”
— Voltaire
“I have come to you tonite to say that the time for waiting has passed that the time for action is now”
— Sonia Sanchez
“If it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance we ought morally to do it”
— Peter Singer
