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.
Judges are the weakest link in our system of justice and they are also the most protected.
He used to define justice as "a virtue of the soul distributing that which each person deserved."
Laws of justice which Hammurabi, the wise king, established.
The hammer of criminal justice is the preferred tool of a society that has run out of ideas.
The only actors who can really do justice to their parts are the ones who don't know what they are.
Peace is not the silence of cemeteries, but the song of social justice.
They that have Power to do, may, when they will,
Pick Quarrels, and, pretending Justice, kill.