Justice Quotes
By a wide margin the most quotes here are Shakespeare’s, and the two judges who follow him, Lord Mansfield and Lord Kenyon, are a sign that this page leans on the bench as much as the stage. Seneca and John Rawls fill out the top five.
Among the sourced entries, Bierce’s definition from 1911 describes justice as a commodity the State sells to citizens as a reward for their allegiance, taxes and personal service. Sartre’s Dirty Hands (1948) and Wilde’s Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898) are here for what they say about guilt, not courts.
Three lines carry flags: Marlowe’s “the justice of my quarrel,” Augustine on charity and withheld justice, and a Martin Luther King Jr. line about peace and justice being goals for man.
To die is the lot of all, to commit homicide only of the weak man.
Magna Charta is such a fellow, that he will have no sovereign.
People think that they have no right to judge a fact — all they have to do is to accept it.
But he who neither thinks for himself, nor lays to heart another's wisdom, this is a useless man.’
Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.
When laws, customs, or institutions cease to be beneficial to man, they cease to be obligatory.
Oh dear, I never realized what a terrible lot of explaining one has to do in a murder!
They have a Right to censure, that have a Heart to help: The rest is Cruelty, not Justice.