Justice and Equality

If a man perfectly righteous should come upon earth, he would find so much opposition that he would be imprisoned, reviled, scourged, and in fine crucified by such, who, though they were extremely wicked, would yet pass for righteous men.

I say that justice is nothing other than the advantage of the stronger.

Does not every man love that which he deems noble and just and good, and hate the opposite of them? people regard the same things, some as just and others as unjust, about these they dispute; and so there arise wars and fightings among them.

Doesn’t it follow that a ship’s captain or ruler won’t seek and order what is advantageous to himself, but what is advantageous to a sailor?.. No one in any position of rule, insofar as he is a ruler, seeks or orders what is advantageous to himself, but what is advantageous to his subjects; the ones of whom he is himself the craftsman. It is to his subjects and what is advantageous and proper to them that he looks, and everything he says and does he says and does for them.

Between the best of all, which is to do injustice and not be punished, and the worst of all, which is to suffer injustice without the power of retaliation; and justice, being at a middle point between the two, is tolerated not as a good, but as the lesser evil.

Because people want more and more possessions, they start wanting more money, and thus honor money more and excellence less. Accordingly, the wealthy become more honored, and the people of excellence less honored. With the majority now money-loving businessmen instead of lovers of victory and honor, the admirable rich men will be put into office, and the poor will be dishonored.

Any city however small, is in fact divided into two, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich. These are at war with one another.

A man ought not to return evil for evil, as many think, since at no time ought we to do an injury to our neighbor.

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

The arc of a moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of injustice where they experience the blackness of corroding despair.

I consider that in no government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it. If a sovereign oppresses his people to a great degree, they will rise and cut off his head. There is a remedy in human nature against tyranny, that will keep us safe under every form of government.

One of the chief virtues of a democracy, however, is that its defects are always visible, and under democratic processes can be pointed out and corrected.

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.

Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world . . . would do this, it would change the earth.

If I were to remain silent, I’d be guilty of complicity.

I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.

Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are.

Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.

All rights tend to declare themselves absolute to their logical extreme. Yet all in fact are limited by the neighborhood of principles of policy which are other than those on which the particular right is founded, and which become strong enough to hold their own when a certain point is reached.

Justice without force is powerless; force without justice is tyrannical.

The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint, but from time to time one can see the old aristocratic colors breaking through.

The value systems of those with access to power and of those far removed from such access cannot be the same. The viewpoint of the privileged is unlike that of the underprivileged.