95 Inspiring Justice Quotes

In a world where the pursuit of justice stands as a cornerstone of societal progress, the words of great thinkers and leaders have long served as beacons of inspiration. Justice—a concept that embodies fairness, equity, and righteousness—has been celebrated and challenged through the ages. Whether you are seeking motivation to advocate for change, or simply wishing to reflect on the principles of justice, a thoughtfully curated collection of quotes can provide profound insight and encouragement. In this compilation, we present 95 inspiring justice quotes, each a testament to the enduring human spirit’s quest for a just and equitable world.

1. “War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth a war, is much worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice, — is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.” - John Stuart Mill

2. “Justice can sleep for years and awaken when it is least expected. A miracle is nothing more than dormant justice from another time arriving to compensate those it has cruelly abandoned. Whoever knows this is willing to suffer, for he knows that nothing is in vain.” - Mark Helprin

3. “Our sense of justice depends on our sense of time. Justice is a phenomenon only of consciousness, because time spread out in a spatial succession is its very essence. And this is possible only in a spatial metaphor of time.” - Julian Jaynes

4. “There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.” - Martin Luther King Jr.

5. “In politics as in philosophy, my tenets are few and simple. The leading one of which, and indeed that which embraces most others, is to be honest and just ourselves and to exact it from others, meddling as little as possible in their affairs where our own are not involved. If this maxim was generally adopted, wars would cease and our swords would soon be converted into reap hooks and our harvests be more peaceful, abundant, and happy.” - George Washington

6. “Foolish liberals who are trying to read the Second Amendment out of the Constitution by claiming it's not an individual right or that it's too much of a public safety hazard, don't see the danger in the big picture. They're courting disaster by encouraging others to use the same means to eliminate portions of the Constitution they don't like.” - Alan Dershowitz

7. “Justice is my being allowed to do whatever I like. Injustice is whatever prevents my doing so.” - Samuel Johnson

8. “But men often mistake killing and revenge for justice. They seldom have the stomach for justice.” - Robert Jordan

9. “Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.” - Robert F. Kennedy

10. “Wer es zulässt, dass man ihn beleidigt, verdient es.” - Pierre Corneille

11. “The millions of vacationers who came here every year before Katrina were mostly unaware of this poverty. French Quarter tourists were rarely exposed to the reality beneath the Disneyland Gomorrah that is projected as 'N'Awlins,' a phrasing I have never heard a local use and a place, as far as I can tell, that I have never encountered despite my years in the city. The seemingly average, white, middle-class Americans whooped it up on Bourbon Street without any thought of the third-world lives of so many of the city's citizens that existed under their noses. The husband and wife, clad in khaki shorts, feather boa, and Mardi Gras beads well out of season, beheld a child tap-dancing on the street for money and clapped along to his beat without considering the obvious fact that this was an early school-day afternoon and that the child should be learning to read, not dancing for money. Somehow they did not see their own child beneath the dancer's black visage. Nor, perhaps, did they see the crumbling buildings where the city's poor live as they traveled by cab from the French Quarter to Commander's Palace. They were on vacation and this was not their problem. ” - Billy Sothern

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

13. “Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of supply and demand; it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy.” - Wendell Berry

14. “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” - Theodore Parker

15. “The Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake.” - Philip Pullman

16. “Men's indignation, it seems, is more exited by legal wrong than by violent wrong; the first looks like being cheated by an equal, the second like being compelled by a superior.” - Thucydides

17. “A time will come when a politician who has wilfully made war and promoted international dissension will be as sure of the dock and much surer of the noose than a private homicide. It is not reasonable that those who gamble with men's lives should not stake their own.” - H.G. Wells

18. “In Paris there are two dens, one for thieves, the other for murderers. The den of thieves is the Stock Exchange; the den of murderers is the Courthouse.” - Petrus Borel

19. “Earlier in [2007] the [Prime Minister's Office] had also drawn criticism for trying to muzzle the judiciary. The reproach came from Antonio Lamer, the former chief justice of the Supreme Court....'I must say I was taken aback,' said Lamer, who sat on the Supreme Court for twenty years. 'The prime minister is going the wrong route as regards the independence of the judiciary. He's trying to interfere with the sentencing process.” - Lawrence Martin

20. “It is only on the basis of the probable and the apparent that men bereft of a sixth sense are able to sit in judgment over other men.” - Petrus Borel

21. “Seit wir den Glauben und damit die Wahrheit verloren haben, liegt zwischen Heuchelei und Ehrlichkeit der letzte Unterschied, der uns bleibt.” - Juli Zeh

22. “Peace has to be created, in order to be maintained. It is the product of Faith, Strength, Energy, Will, Sympathy, Justice, Imagination, and the triumph of principle. It will never be achieved by passivity and quietism.” - Dorothy Thompson

23. “Were God to show grace to all of Adam's descendants, men would at once conclude that He was righteously compelled to take them to heaven as meet compensation for allowing the human race to fall into sin. But the great God in under no obligation to any of his creatures, least of all to those who are rebels against him.” - Arthur W. Pink

24. “Auditur et altera pars. (The other side shall be heard as well.)” - seneca

25. “Slaves are generally expected to sing as well as to work.” - Frederick Douglass

26. “Couldn't help but make me feel ashamed to live in a land where justice is a game.” - Bob Dylan

27. “We are beckoned to see the world through a one-way mirror, as if we are threatened and innocent and the rest of humanity is threatening, or wretched, or expendable. Our memory is struggling to rescue the truth that human rights were not handed down as privileges from a parliament, or a boardroom, or an institution, but that peace is only possible with justice and with information that gives us the power to act justly.” - John Pilger

28. “Justice based purely on laws is about as accurate as a portrait created out of large low-resolution color pixels.If you stand back far enough it looks good.Come any closer and the glaring approximations overtake all semblance of the original.Justice should be viewable under the microscope, not from a telescope.And for that it needs to be based not on law but on truth.” - Vera Nazarian

29. “Dimka, not you too.” - Richelle Mead

30. “Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small; Though with patience He stands waiting, with exactness grinds He all.” - Friedrich von Logau

31. “Knowledge which is divorced from justice may be called cunning rather than wisdom.” - Marcus Tullius Cicero

32. “There is no client as scary as an innocent man."J. Michael Haller, Criminal Defense Attorney, Los Angeles, 1962.” - Michael Connelly

33. “Why do people resist [engines, bridges, and cities] so? They are symbols and products of the imagination, which is the force that ensures justice and historical momentum in an imperfect world, because without imagination we would not have the wherewithal to challenge certainty, and we could never rise above ourselves.” - Mark Helprin

34. “Not one of the orthodox ministers dare preach what he thinks if he knows a majority of his congregation think otherwise. He knows that every member of his church stands guard over his brain with a creed, like a club, in his hand. He knows that he is not expected to search after the truth, but that he is employed to defend the creed. Every pulpit is a pillory, in which stands a hired culprit, defending the justice of his own imprisonment.” - Robert G. Ingersoll

35. “I believe that there will be ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those who do the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the system of exploitation. I believe that there will be that kind of clash, but I don't think it will be based on the color of the skin...” - Malcolm X

36. “[Nonviolence] is directed against forces of evil rather than against persons who happen to be doing the evil. It is evil that the nonviolent resister seeks to defeat, not the persons victimized by evil.” - Martin Luther King Jr.

37. “God's love for his people is so great that it turns God against himself, his love against his justice.” - Pope Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger)

38. “There is one key area in which Zuma has made no attempt at reconciliation whatsoever: criminal justice and security. The ministers of justice, defence, intelligence (now called 'state security' in a throwback to both apartheid and the ANC's old Stalinist past), police and communications are all die-hard Zuma loyalists. Whatever their line functions, they will also play the role they have played so ably to date: keeping Zuma out of court—and making sure the state serves Zuma as it once did Mbeki.” - Mark Gevisser

39. “The foundation of individual rights is the assumption that people have wants and needs and are authorities on what those wants and needs are. If people's stated desires were just some kind of erasable inscription or reprogrammable brainwashing, any atrocity could be justified.” - Steven Pinker

40. “God, who might have directed the assassin's dagger so as to end your career in a moment, has given you this quarter of an hour for repentance. Reflect, then, wretched man, and repent.” - Alexandre Dumas

41. “For this new-married man approaching here,Whose salt imagination yet hath wrong'dYour well defended honour, you must pardonFor Mariana's sake: but as he adjudged your brother,--Being criminal, in double violationOf sacred chastity and of promise-breachThereon dependent, for your brother's life,--The very mercy of the law cries outMost audible, even from his proper tongue,'An Angelo for Claudio, death for death!'Haste still pays haste, and leisure answers leisure;Like doth quit like, and MEASURE still FOR MEASURE” - William Shakespeare

42. “To those peoples in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required - not because the Communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right. If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.” - John F. Kennedy

43. “Justice," she said. " I've heard that word. It's a cold world. I tried it out," she said, still speaking in that low voice. "I wrote it down. I wrote it down several times and always it looked like a damn cold lie to me. There is no justice.” - Jean Rhys

44. “Karma has been a pop culture term for ages. But really, what the heck is it?Karma is not an inviolate engine of cosmic punishment. Rather, it is a neutral sequence of acts, results, and consequences.Receiving misfortune does not necessarily indicate that one has committed evil. But it is a sufficient indicator of something else.And that something else can be anything, as long as it is a logical consequence of what has come before.Consider: if you fall into a well, you are not a bad person who deserves to suffer—you are merely someone who took a wrong step. Or someone who had one drink too many. Or got a head rush due to poor circulation. Or forgot to wear your glasses. Or—The reasons are plentiful, and all plausible. But the chain of cause and effect goes way, way back into the deepest hoariest recesses of your personal past.So never rule out retribution. But never expect it.” - Vera Nazarian

45. “Justice and injustice indeed begins and ends with the self.” - Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas

46. “To know how to put what knowledge in which place is wisdom (hikmah). Otherwise, knowledge without order and seeking it without discipline does lead to confusion and hence to injustice to one's self.” - Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas

47. “In short, the right given to one man to inflict corporal punishment on another is one of the ulcers of society, one of the most powerful destructive agents of every germ and every budding attempt at civilization, the fundamental cause of its certain and irretrievable destruction.” - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

48. “A ruler who discerning justice refuseth to it the sanction of law, demanding abnegation of rights and self-sacrifice, will not drive his subjects to these virtues, virtuous only if free, but by unnaturally making justice unlawful, will drive them rather to rebellion against all law.” - J.R.R. Tolkien

49. “À ceux qui ignorent, enseignez-leur [...]Le coupable n'est pas celui qui y fait le péché, mais celui qui y a fait l'ombre.” - Victor Hugo

50. “Beware of a client who's suing on principle and paying by the hour. He rarely gets his money's worth.” - Pete Morin

51. “إن طلب العدل مرض,و لكنه المرض الوحيد الذى لا يصيب الحيوانات,كل ما فى الأمر أننا انا و أنت شفينا من هذا المرض فأصبحنا نرى أعراضه على الاّخرين.” - بهاء طاهر

52. “قد لا ينقذ من يطلب العدل العالم,و لكنه ينقذ نفسه.” - بهاء طاهر

53. “Our lives are led, and our decisions made, within a network of needs and wants, some natural, some arising from the acts of others, some aggravated by the acts of the state. We are all bored, or threatened, or tantalized in differing degrees by a perilous world, some hostile people, and a not very sensitive government.” - Carl Cohen

54. “Nothing is illegal if one hundred businessmen decide to do it. -Andrew Young, author, civil rights activist, US congressman, mayor, and UN ambassador (b. 1932)” - Andrew Young

55. “LA VIDA NO ES LA QUE VIVIMOS.LA VIDA ES EL HONOR Y EL RECUERDO.POR ESO MAS VALE MORIRCON EL PUEBLO VIVO,Y NO VIVIRCON EL PUEBLO MUERTO.Life is not as it seems, Life is pride and personal history.Thus it is better that one die and that the people should live,rahter than one live and the people should die.~Lopitos” - Oscar Zeta Acosta

56. “Peace and justice are two sides of the same coin.” - Dwight D. Eisenhower

57. “The justice I have received, I shall give back.” - Patricia Highsmith

58. “The notion that we should promote “happy” or “humane” exploitation as “baby steps” ignores that welfare reforms do not result in providing significantly greater protection for animal interests; in fact, most of the time, animal welfare reforms do nothing more than make animal exploitation more economically productive by focusing on practices, such as gestation crates, the electrical stunning of chickens, or veal crates, that are economically inefficient in any event. Welfare reforms make animal exploitation more profitable by eliminating practices that are economically vulnerable. For the most part, those changes would happen anyway and in the absence of animal welfare campaigns precisely because they do rectify inefficiencies in the production process. And welfare reforms make the public more comfortable about animal exploitation. The “happy” meat/animal products movement is clear proof of that. We would never advocate for “humane” or "happy” human slavery, rape, genocide, etc. So, if we believe that animals matter morally and that they have an interest not only in not suffering but in continuing to exist, we should not be putting our time and energy into advocating for “humane” or “happy” animal exploitation.” - GaryLFrancione

59. “If we take the position that an assessment that veganism is morally preferable to vegetarianism is not possible because we are all “on our own journey,” then moral assessment becomes completely impossible or is speciesist. It is impossible because if we are all “on our own journey,” then there is nothing to say to the racist, sexist, anti-semite, homophobe, etc. If we say that those forms of discrimination are morally bad, but, with respect to animals, we are all “on our own journey” and we cannot make moral assessments about, for instance, dairy consumption, then we are simply being speciesist and not applying the same moral analysis to nonhumans that we apply to the human context.” - GaryLFrancione

60. “We do not need to eat animals, wear animals, or use animals for entertainment purposes, and our only defense of these uses is our pleasure, amusement, and convenience.” - Gary L. Francione

61. “I reject animal welfare reform and single-issue campaigns because they are not only inconsistent with the claims of justice that we should be making if we really believe that animal exploitation is wrong, but because these approaches cannot work as a practical matter. Animals are property and it costs money to protect their interests; therefore, the level of protection accorded to animal interests will always be low and animals will, under the best of circumstances, still be treated in ways that would constitute torture if applied to humans.By endorsing welfare reforms that supposedly make exploitation more “compassionate” or single-issue campaigns that falsely suggest that there is a coherent moral distinction between meat and dairy or between fur and wool or between steak and foie gras, we betray the principle of justice that says that all sentient beings are equal for purposes of not being used exclusively as human resources. And, on a practical level, we do nothing more than make people feel better about animal exploitation.” - Gary L. Francione

62. “Education leads to enlightenment. Enlightenment opens the way to empathy. Empathy foreshadows reform.” - Derrick A. Bell

63. “But witnesses incur responsibilities, as anyone who has ever seen a traffic accident and had to go to court to testify, knows. In the new world of globally televised war crimes, the defence of 'not knowing,' or neutrality, will dissolve for everyone. To be a witness or bystander is not a value-free choice but, inadvertently, a moral position; and in this sense the 'guilt' of people who live with the memory of crimes committed by members of their families, or communities, has been unwittingly extended to everyone who watches appalling pictures on the news.” - Erna Paris

64. “Finally, I had held up examples of Goldhagen's inflammatory language and suggested that he had missed the essence of what Primo Levi once called the 'grey zone' of human affairs, described by the historian Christopher Browning as that foggy universe of mixed motives, conflicting emotions, personal priorities, reluctant choices, opportunism and accomodation, all wedded, when convenient, to self-deception and denial. I thought that by marshalling his research into an overly narrow narrative, painted without nuance in black and white, the author had missed the human complexity and the ordinariness of racism.” - Erna Paris

65. “And one day we must ask the question, "Why are there forty million poor people in America?" And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy.” - Martin Luther King Jr.

66. “Truth and justice are commonly found in the personality of the paranoid delusional” - Russian, Unknown

67. “Can anything be imagined more abhorrent to every sentiment of generosity and justice, than the law which arms the rich with the legal right to fix, by assize, the wages of the poor? If this is not slavery, we have forgotten its definition. Strike the right of associating for the sale of labor from the privileges of a freeman, and you may as well bind him to a master, or ascribe him to the soil.” - William Cullen Bryant

68. “Standing still is never an option so long as inequities remain embedded in the very fabric of the culture.” - Tim Wise

69. “When men follow justice the city blooms, the earth bears rich harvests, and children and flocks increase; but for the unjust all nature is hostile, the people waste away from famine, and a whole city may reap the evil fruit of one man's ill deeds.” - Christopher Henry Dawson

70. “My dear friend, to be both powerful and fair has always been difficult for mankind. Power and justice have always been seen like day and night; this being the case, when one of them is there the other disappears.” - Mehmet Murat ildan

71. “Remember, what goes around comes around, if you give out venom, sooner or later it will come back to poison you” - TheEmoQueen

72. “Freedom flourishes upon the bedrock of ethics and integrity.” - Mollie Marti

73. “” - حاكم المطيري

74. “Ehren wir die Freiheit. Arbeiten wir für den Frieden. Halten wir uns an das Recht. Dienen wir unseren inneren Maßstäben der Gerechtigkeit."[Ansprache am 8. Mai 1985 in der Gedenkstunde im Plenarsaal des Deutschen Bundestages]” - Richard von Weizsäcker

75. “I wish you would thrash him. He deserves it."She looked back at him. "I will one day, sir. I'm getting tired of falling down.” - Tamora Pierce

76. “The sense of justice is continuous with the love of mankind.” - John Rawls

77. “They only asked for punishments that fitted their crimes. Not ones that came like cupboards with built-in bedrooms. Not ones you spent your whole life in, wandering through its maze of shelves.” - Arundhati Roy

78. “Justice has always evoked ideas of equality, of proportion of compensation. Equity signifies equality. Rules and regulations, right and righteousness are concerned with equality in value.If all men are equal, then all men are of the same essence, and the common essence entitles them of the same fundamental rights and equal liberty... In short justice is another name of liberty, equality and fraternity.” - Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar

79. “The Indian criminal justice system was a market like garbage, Abdul now understood. Innocence and guilt could be bought and sold like a kilo of polyurethane bags.” - Katherine Boo

80. “Someone, somewhere, needs to take courage to break the cycle of violence. Forgiveness is superior to justice. Being kind and compassionate to those who are good to you is easy. True forgiveness and compassion come only when one is able to forgive even those who have committed barbaric acts. If Angulimala is capable of renouncing violence, then tell me, your Majesty: is your civilized society also capable of being truly civilized and renouncing violence?” - Satish Kumar

81. “Do not make the mistake of thinking that you have to agree with people and their beliefs to defend them from injustice.” - Bryant McGill

82. “I have the documents. Documents, proof, evidence, photograph, signature. One day you raise your right hand and you are American. They give you an American Pass port. The United States of America. Somewhere someone has taken my identity and replaced it with their photograph. The other one. Their signature their seals. Their own image. And you learn the executive branch the legislative branch and the third. Justice. Judicial branch. It makes the difference The rest is past.” - Theresa Hak Kyung Cha

83. “Hope that justice will be done to those brave men who stood up for their convictions.” - Albert Einstein

84. “Justice in a fallen world is not equality of outcome but equal treatment under a fair law.” - Kevin DeYoung

85. “Justice isn’t about fixing the past; it’s about healing the past's future.” - Jackson Burnett

86. “In the old Republican days the subject of slavery and of the saving of the Union made appeals to the consciences and liberty-loving instincts of the people. These later years have been full of talk about commerce and dinner pails, but I feel sure that the American conscience and the American love of liberty have not been smothered. They will break through this crust of sordidness and realize that those only keep their liberties who accord liberty to others.” - Benjamin Harrison

87. “The only law that means anything - that can have anything to do with God - is one that is alive and that strives for justice given the circumstances of the present. Otherwise, the law is merely something dead, a weapon in the hands of those with power. Against those with none.” - Nafisa Haji

88. “What if the differences between social strata stem not from genomics or inherent xcellence or even dollars, but merely differences in knowledge? Would this not mean the whole Pyramid is built on shifting sands?" I speculated such a suggestion could be seen as a serious deviancy. Melphi seemed delited. "Try this for deviancy: fabricants are mirrors held up to purebloods' consciences; what purebloods see reflected there sickens them. So they blame you for holding up the mirror." I hid my shock by asking when purebloods might blame themselves. Melphi relplied, "History suggests, not until they are made to.” - David Mitchell

89. “Faith without reason produces a mindless Christianity which is less than useless; the focus on justice in this world produces a theology that chases its own tail."~R. Alan Woods [2013]” - R. Alan Woods

90. “When we try to control, we become controlled; when we release, we become free.” - Bryant McGill

91. “It's Unfair to be fairBecause Life is unfair” - Farley Maglaya

92. “It is a world," he said, "filled with the mysterious joinder of accident!""It is a world," replied Abner, "filled with the mysterious justice of God!” - Melville Davisson Post

93. “The natural and untainted male mind respects and loves the woman and her magnificent scope of capability and creative gifts.” - Bryant McGill

94. “What I have told you is not completely true. You should beware, for often in this story, my words will be spoken out of bitterness, out of hate. The scream of the poor is not always just; but if you do not listen to it, then you will never understand justice.” - Erik Christian Haugaard

95. “If you spend your time hoping someone will suffer the consequences for what they did to your heart, then you're allowing them to hurt you a second time in your mind.” - Shannon L. Alder