Justice and Equality

Get up, stand up

Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice.

I have dedicated my life to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for, and to see realized. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.

Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bond-man’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, ‘The judgements of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in: to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.

To give victory to the right, not bloody bullets, but peaceful ballots only, are necessary.

We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.

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 the table of brotherhood …

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

The Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.

I want to be the white man’s brother, not his brother-in-law.

Judicial decrees may not change the heart; but they can restrain the heartless.

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

I am never to act otherwise than so that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law.

Someone must have traduced Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning.

Sex and taxes are in many ways the same. Tax does to cash what males do to genes. It dispenses assets among the population as a whole. Sex, not death, is the great leveller.

A lawyer has no business with the justice or injustice of the cause which he undertakes, unless his client asks his opinion, and then he is bound to give it honestly. The justice or injustice of the cause is to be decided by the judge.

How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?

The majority never has right on its side.

The worst enemy of truth and freedom in our society is the compact majority. Yes, the damned, compact, liberal majority.

Liberties … depend on the silence of the law.

‘Justice’ was done, and the President of the Immortals (in Aeschylean phrase) had ended his sport with Tess.

How small, of all that human hearts endure,

How wide the limits stand