“Truth never damages a cause that is just.” Mahatma Gandhi
“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
“Every time we turn our heads the other way when we see the law flouted, when we tolerate what we know to be wrong, when we close our eyes and ears to the corrupt because we are too busy or too frightened, when we fail to speak up and speak out, we strike a blow against freedom and decency and justice.” Robert F. Kennedy
“In case of dissension, never dare to judge till you’ve heard the other side.” Euripides
Chung Tzu’s Advice to Rulers of the Chou Dynasty in China between 1046 – 256 BCE, and perhaps to us:
“Follow the ancient ones who preached liberality of mind, hoping thereby to bring men together in the joy of harmony, to insure concord within the four seas. Their chief task lay, they felt, in the effort to establish these ideals. They regarded it as no shame to suffer insult, but sought to put an end to strife among the people, to outlaw aggression, to abolish the use of arms, and to rescue the world from warfare. With these aims they walked the whole world over, trying to persuade those above them and to teach those below, and though the world refused to listen, they clamored all the louder and would not give up, until men said, “High and low are sick at the sight of them, and still they demand to be seen!…The art of the Way lies in these things: to be unsnared by vulgar things, to make no vain show of material things, to bring no hardship on others, to avoid offending the mob, to seek peace and security for the world and preservation of the people’s lives, to see to full provender for others as well as oneself, and to rest content when these aims are fulfilled.”
“In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand-fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.” ― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn. 1918-1956
“Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour … If at my convenience I might break them, what would be their worth?” Charlotte Brontë,
“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.” Frederick Douglass
“Right is right, even if everyone is against it, and wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it.” William Penn
“It is more important that innocence be protected than it is that guilt be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world that they cannot all be punished.
“The Pledge of Allegiance says ‘liberty and justice for all’. Which part of ‘all’ don’t you understand?” Pat Schroeder
But if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die, then the citizen will say, ‘whether I do good or whether I do evil is immaterial, for innocence itself is no protection,’ and if such an idea as that were to take hold in the mind of the citizen that would be the end of security whatsoever.” John Adams
“What really frightens and dismays us is not external events themselves, but the way in which we think about them. It is not things that disturb us, but our interpretation of their significance.” Epictetus
“There’s no guarantee that justice will win out or that a noble sacrifice will make any difference. But when it does, there’s something that still swells my chest. There’s magic in that…. It tells me that’s the way things are supposed to be.” Brent Weeks
“Do not make the mistake of thinking that you have to agree with people and their beliefs to defend them from injustice.” Bryant McGill
“. . . there is a wish in the heart of mankind to be distracted and confused. Truth is but one attraction, and not always the most powerful.” Joyce Carol Oates
“Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.” Reinhold Niebuhr
“It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.” Edmund Burke
“Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount.” Omar N. Bradley
“Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of man will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.” Alexander Hamilton
“Couldn’t help but make me feel ashamed to live in a land where justice is a game.” Bob Dylan
“Knowledge which is divorced from justice may be called cunning rather than wisdom.” Marcus Tullius Cicero
“A president cannot defend a nation if he is not held accountable to its laws.” DaShanne Stokes
“Vice may triumph for a time, crime may flaunt its victories in the face of honest toilers, but in the end the law will follow the wrong-doer to a bitter fate, and dishonor and punishment will be the portion of those who sin.” Allan Pinkerton
“Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.” Robert F. Kennedy