Justice and Equality

Ill fares the land, to hast’ning ills a prey,

The Law is the true embodiment

They [the poor] have to labour in the face of the majestic equality of the law, which forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

A woman can hardly ever choose … she is dependent on what happens to her. She must take meaner things, because only meaner things are within her reach.

‘Two nations; between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws.’ ‘You speak of—’ said Egremont, hesitatingly, ‘ THE RICH AND THE POOR. ’

Justice is truth in action.

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.

The one great principle of the English law is, to make business for itself.

Jarndyce and Jarndyce still drags its dreary length before the Court, perennially hopeless.

If it has to choose who is to be crucified, the crowd will always save Barabbas.

Salus populi suprema est lex.

There are only two families in the world … the haves and the have-nots.

To the very last he [Napoleon] had a kind of idea; that, namely, of La carrière ouverte aux talents, The tools to him that can handle them.

Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion.

A man’s a man for a’ that.

The rank is but the guinea’s stamp,

Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.

Laws, like houses, lean on one another.

Slavery they can have anywhere. It is a weed that grows in every soil.

It is not, what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice, tells me I ought to do.

A robin red breast in a cage

It is better that ten guilty persons escape than one innocent suffer.

Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts.

Written laws are like spiders’ webs; they will catch, it is true, the weak and poor, but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful.