49 Fairness Quotes

Fairness is a principle that transcends cultures, societies, and generations. It fosters harmony, encourages justice, and brings out the best in humanity. Whether in the context of social justice, business ethics, or personal relationships, fairness remains a cornerstone of integrity and respect. In a world that often feels chaotic and divided, reflecting on the wisdom of others can remind us of the importance of fairness in our lives. Here, we've curated a selection of 49 of the most profound and inspiring quotes on fairness. Let these words guide you towards a more just and equitable perspective.

1. “Let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve of monarcy, that in America the law is King. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other.” - Thomas Paine

2. “The world isn't fair, Calvin.""I know Dad, but why isn't it ever unfair in my favor?” - Bill Watterson

3. “I am a person who is unhappy with things as they stand. We cannot accept the world as it is. Each day we should wake up foaming at the mouth because of the injustice of things.” - Hugo Claus

4. “…it’s better in fact to be guilty of manslaughter than of fraud about what is fair and just.” - Plato

5. “To expect life to treat you good is foolish as hoping a bull won't hit you because you are a vegetarian.” - Roseanne Barr

6. “In the end we are always rewarded for our good will, our patience, fair-mindedness, and gentleness with what is strange.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

7. “Life isn't fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all.” - William Goodman

8. “Satire's nature is to be one-sided, contemptuous of ambiguity, and so unfairly selective as to find in the purity of ridicule an inarguable moral truth.” - E. L. Doctorow

9. “Let the watchwords of all our people be the old familiar watchwords of honesty, decency, fair-dealing, and commonsense."... "We must treat each man on his worth and merits as a man. We must see that each is given a square deal, because he is entitled to no more and should receive no less.""The welfare of each of us is dependent fundamentally upon the welfare of all of us.” - Theodore Roosevelt

10. “But the vicar of St. Botolph's had certainly escaped the slightest tincture of the Pharisee, and by dint of admitting to himself that he was too much as other men were, he had become remarkably unlike them in this - that he could excuse others for thinking slightly of him, and could judge impartially of their conduct even when it told against him. [from Middlemarch, a quote my mother thinks describes the kind of man my father was]” - George Eliot

11. “Nothing is fair in this world. You might as well get that straight right now” - Sue Monk Kidd

12. “The lowly have small ambitions, and are satisfied with small indulgences. They need not get fair treatment. They need only think that they do... ” - Joe Abercrombie

13. “Do you truly believe that life is fair, Senor de la Vega?-No, maestro, but I plan to do everything in my power to make it so.” - Isabel Allende

14. “Equality is not a concept. It's not something we should be striving for. It's a necessity. Equality is like gravity. We need it to stand on this earth as men and women, and the misogyny that is in every culture is not a true part of the human condition. It is life out of balance, and that imbalance is sucking something out of the soul of every man and woman who's confronted with it. We need equality. Kinda now.” - Joss Whedon

15. “A blind Justice is merely an impartial Justice. True Justice would have eyes in the back of her head and a pair of mismatched shoes.” - Eli Ashpencea

16. “The guest will judge better of a feast than the cook” - Aristotle

17. “Being good is easy, what is difficult is being just.” - Victor Hugo

18. “You cannot be fair to others without first being fair to yourself.Know that a well-honed sense of justice is a measure of personal experience, and all experience is a measure of self.Know that the highest expression of justice is mercy.Thus, as the supreme judge in your own court, you must have compassion for yourself.Otherwise, cede your gavel.” - Vera Nazarian

19. “Make not, when you work a deed of shame, The scoundrel's plea, 'My forbears did the same.” - Abu'l-Ala-Al-Ma'arri

20. “Fairness begründet aber nicht Gleichheit, sondern legitime Ungleichheit.” - Christian Lindner

21. “Do not complain of life's unfairness. It is never fair - at best it is impartial.” - David Gemmell

22. “It isn’t fair, but maybe that’s the whole point. Fairness has no part in real life, and she took that lesson away from the Hotel Angeline with her.” - Susan Wiggs

23. “Love is like life with or without justice, with or without fairness.” - Fadi Hattendorf

24. “Persons appear to us according to the light we throw upon them from our own minds. -Laura Ingalls Wilder, author (1867-1957)” - Laura Ingalls Wilder

25. “I will never deny that life isn't fair. It seems as though when a woman leaves a man she is strong and independent, but when a man leaves a woman he is a pig and a jerk.” - Criss Jami

26. “Criminal justice" is what happens after a complicated series of events has gone bad. It is the end result of failure--the failure of a group of people that sometimes includes, but is never limited to, the accused person.” - Paul Delano Butler

27. “ATHENA: There are two sides to this dispute. I've heard only one half the argument. (...) So you two parties, summon your witnesses, set out your proofs, with sworn evidence to back your stories. Once I've picked the finest men in Athens, I'll return. They'll rule fairly in this case, bound by a sworn oath to act with justice.” - Aeschylus

28. “Have you noticed how difficult it is just to get along in the world? If you're no good at all in your job, people treat you badly and eventually you will be unemployed. And if you're a little better than competent, everyone expects miracles from you, every single time. Like most of life, it's a no-win situation. And if you dare to mention it, no matter how creatively you phrase your complaints, you are shunned as a whiner.” - Jeff Lindsay

29. “And who ever said the world was fair, little lady? Maybe death is fair, but certainly not life. We must accept the unfairness as proof of the sublime flux of existence, the capricious music of the universe- and go on about our tasks” - Tom Robbins

30. “Exploration is a dirty game.” - Tahir Shah

31. “(Regarding a twenty-questions game:)Did you know that the Russian composer Aram Katchaturian described his ‘Sabre Dance’ as no more than a button on the shirt on the body of his work? No? You’re not alone. Suppose my twenty-questions answer was that metaphorical button — would that be fair?” - Stephen Minkin

32. “We need to defend the interests of those whom we've never met and never will.” - Jeffrey D. Sachs

33. “Fairness does not mean everyone gets the same. Fairness means everyone gets what they need.” - Rick Riordan

34. “I know you kids are angry, because the world isn't fair. Well, get over it, because it's never going to be fair. The white boys have all the money and all the power and that's the way it is. And they aren't going to give it up - to you or to me. And you can't blame them for it because if you had it, you wouldn't give it to them, either. But fighting each other isn't going to fix anything. All it's going to do is let everybody go on insisting that black and Hispanic kids are ignorant and violent. That's perfect. It's easy. If you're ignorant and violent, people who don't like you can kick you out of school or put you in jail. And it's you own fault.” - LouAnne Johnson

35. “Life isn't fair, so you have to play the best game you can with the cards you're dealt.” - Marta Acosta

36. “My sister's bringing up had made me sensitive. In the little world in which children have their existence whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice. It may be only small injustice that the child can be exposed to; but the child is small, and its world is small, and its rocking-horse stands as many hands high, according to scale, as a big-boned Irish hunter. Within myself, I had sustained, from my babyhood, a perpetual conflict with injustice. I had known, from the time when I could speak, that my sister, in her capricious and violent coercion, was unjust to me. I had cherished a profound conviction that her bringing me up by hand, gave her no right to bring me up by jerks. Through all my punishments, disgraces, fasts and vigils, and other penitential performances, I had nursed this assurance; and to my communing so much with it, in a solitary and unprotected way, I in great part refer the fact that I was morally timid and very sensitive.” - Charles Dickens

37. “I looked up fairness in the dictionary and it was not there.” - William Giraldi

38. “As an editor, you develop a B.S. meter—an internal warning system that signals caution about journalism that doesn't feel trustworthy. Sometimes it's a quote or incident that's too perfect —a feeling I always had when reading stories by Stephen Glass in the New Republic. Sometimes it's too many errors of fact, the overuse of anonymous sources, or signs that a reporter hasn't dealt fairly with people or evidence. And sometimes it's a combination of flaws that produces a ring of falsity, the whiff of a bad egg. There's no journalist who sets off my bullshit alarm like Ron Suskind.” - Jacob Weisberg

39. “All a guy needed was a chance. Somebody was alway controlling who got a chance and who didn't.” - Charles Bukowski

40. “In my opinion, if 100% of the people were farming it would be ideal. If each person were given one quarter-acre, that is 1 1/4 acres to a family of five, that would be more than enough land to support the family for the whole year. If natural farming were practiced, a farmer would also have plenty of time for leisure and social activities within the village community. I think this is the most direct path toward making this country a happy, pleasant land.” - Masanobu Fukuoka

41. “I nodded, unsure if Ted sounded admiring or angry. 'I waded in but I couldn't find him. I mean, is it possible - the water wasn't deep enough for him to drown. It doesn't make any sense.''My band made four brilliant albums and never had a single goddamn hit. We were supposed to be the American Rolling Stones, and we couldn't get more than five minutes of airplay. Does that make sense?' Ted stubbed out his cigarette.” - Elizabeth Hand

42. “How do you measure someone’s life? By the scope of their accomplishments, or the number of people they’ve touched, or by the width of a hand? None of it seemed fair. None of it seemed like enough.” - Yvonne Woon

43. “You have no concept of fairness, apart from your desire to have your own way. I suggest you put that notion from your head, because despite what you believe, the realms will not cater to your whims, and neither will I.” - Dawn Jayne

44. “Sooner or later in life, we will all take our own turn being in the position we once had someone else in.” - Ashly Lorenzana

45. “We naturally think from our own perspective, from a point of view which tends to privilege our position. Fairness implies the treating of all relevant viewpoints alike without reference to one's own feelings or interests. Because we tend to be biased in favor of our own viewpoint, it is important to keep the standard of fairness at the forefront of our thinking. This is especially important when the situation may call on us to see things we don't want to see, or give something up that we want to hold onto.” - Linda Elder

46. “Armed neutrality makes it much easier to detect hypocrisy.” - Criss Jami

47. “Uniformity in the common law, consisting of broad principles like the "reasonable person" standard, generally permits adjustment for the circumstances. This type of uniform principle is almost synonymous with fairness. Uniform application of a detailed rule, on the other hand, will almost always favor one group over another. p. 34” - Philip K. Howard

48. “I don’t believe in the Law of Attraction. There were things I wanted in my life that no amount of positive thinking was going to make it a reality for me. However, I have learned to believe in the Law of Tough Love. Life has thrown a dozen tragedies at me. I did what any Christian would do--prayed for the outcome I wanted, but God was tough and only gave me what I needed. I now realize that life is not about fulfilling a wish list; rather a need list. Good and bad experiences are on the horizon. How else does a person change, grow and evolve? And just like any warrior woman, I won’t simply survive-- but thrive!” - Shannon L. Alder

49. “Jill had three basic statements about life,1. It is your life, usually with some added social commentary.2. What you want and what you get are usually two entirely different things.3. No one ever said that life was fair.” - Nicholas Sparks Micah Sparks