As Bob Dylan forgot to say, "To live outside the law, you must be lucky."
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.
The hungry judges soon the sentence sign,
And wretches hang that jurymen may dine.
But Justice, though her dome [doom] she doe prolong,
Yet at the last she will her owne cause right.
As a lawyer I am before and above all things for the supremacy of law.
A Court has no right to strain the law because it causes hardship.
In the hurry of business, the most able Judges are liable to err.
I am far from being such a Judge as shall lay any intolerable yoke upon any one's neck.
Legality and oppression are not unknown to run hand in hand.
It is a public scandal when the law is forced to uphold a dishonest act.