Justice and Equality

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God, cannot long retain it.

Property, said Proudhon, is theft. This is the only perfect truism that has been uttered on the subject.

It is better to risk saving a guilty man than to condemn an innocent one.

Not to punish evil is equivalent to authorizing it.

I have spent all my life under a Communist regime and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale but the legal one is not quite worthy of man either.

 

We enact many laws that manufacturecriminals, and then a few that punish them.

 

A just cause is not ruined by a few mistakes.

Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento (Hae tibi erunt artes), pacique imponere morem, Parcere subiectis et debellare superbos.

A society based on the letter of the law and never reaching any higher fails to take advantage of the full range of human possibilities. The letter of the law is too cold and formal to have a beneficial influence on society. Whenever the tissue of life is woven of legalistic relationships, this creates an atmosphere of spiritual mediocrity that paralyzes man’s noblest impulses.

 

Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion.

Hating England is a form of self-defense. That kind of nationalism is nothing more than a local manifestation of a concern for human rights.

As you grow older, you’ll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don’t you forget it—whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash.

America free Tom Mooney America save the Spanish Loyalists America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die America I am the Scottsboro boys.

World history is the world’s court. 2

 

You should not decide until you have heard what both have to say.

We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly.

Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned: . . . until there are no longer first-class and second-class citizens of any nation; . . . until the color of a man’s skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes; . . . until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race; . . . until that day, the dream of lasting peace and world citizenship and the rule of international morality will remain but a fleeting illusion, to be pursued but never attained.

 

But from each crime are born bullets that will one day seek out in you where the heart lies.

[ Thrasymachus speaking :] I affirm that the just is nothing else than the advantage of the stronger.

Here I was, in a country where a right tosay how the country should be governed was restricted to six persons in each thousand of its population. . . . I was become a stockholder in a corporation where nine hundred and ninety-four of the members furnished all the money and did all the work, and the other six elected themselves a permanent board of direction and took all the dividends. It seemed to me that what the nine hundred and ninety-four dupes needed was a new deal.

The power to tax is not the power to destroy while this Court sits.

 

That generous maxim, that it is much moreprudence to acquit two persons, though actually guilty, than to pass sentence of condemnationon one that is virtuous and innocent.

[ In response to a well-wisher who called out “Now justice will be administered in Washington” as Holmes embarked to take his seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, 1902 :] Don’t be too sure. I am going there to administer the law .

 

History says, Don’t hope On this side of the grave. But then, once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of justice can rise up And hope and history rhyme.