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.
Let us consider the reason of the case. For nothing is law that is not reason.
Disgrace does not consist in the punishment, but in the crime.
Where there are laws, he who has not broken them need not tremble.
The love of justice is, in most men, nothing more than the fear of suffering injustice.
Heaven is not always angry when he strikes,
But most chastises those whom most he likes.
God's justice, tardy though it prove perchance,
Rests never on the track until it reach
Delinquency.