Better World Quotes - Justice

* Silence in the face of injustice is complicity with the opressor.
-- Ginetta Sagan

"I've always had a really developed sense of justice. As a child, I would rotate my dolls' dresses for fear that they might come alive at midnight and one of them would always have the best dress on. Whatever it was that made me worry about my dolls I suppose has paid off in my career because, really, an actor is all about empathy and imagination. And those are the cornerstones of activism."
-- Susan Sarandon

I try to live my life every day in the present, and try not to turn a blind eye to injustice and need.
-- Susan Sarandon

Lovers of freedom, lovers of social justice, disarmers, peacekeepers, civil disobeyers, democrats, civil-rights activists, and defenders of the environment are legions in a single multiform cause, and they will gain strength by knowing it, taking encouragement from it, and when appropriate and opportune, pooling their efforts.
-- Jonathan Schell

The Pledge of Allegiance says "...with liberty and justice for all." What part of "all" don't you understand?
~ Patricia Schroeder

I am still a journeyman actor and a peace and justice activist. I'm a pilgrim trying to win my freedom and serve as best I can in the time I have, with this gift I've been given.
-- Martin Sheen

"The primary threat to nature and people today comes from centralising and monopolising power and control. Not until diversity is made the logic of production will there be a chance for sustainability, justice and peace. Cultivating and conserving diversity is no luxury in our times: it is a survival imperative."
~ Vandana Shiva

Many folks have asked me, ‘How do you do it and why have you sacrificed so much to do this work? The answer comes easy. I look at my daughter and find hope in that she is living in a world of struggle, of social and political movement. She and the other five-year-olds will grow up in a more just, more equitable world. She motivates me.
-- Lateefah Simon

We have more than enough programs, organisations, parties, and strategies in the world for the alleviation of suffering and injustice.
-- Sulak Sivaraksa

"Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice."
-- Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.
-- Benedict Spinoza (1632-1677)

“Love is stronger than justice.”
-- Sting

“To make the public sentiment, on the side of all that is just and true and noble, is the highest use of life.”
-- Lucy Stone

“Now all we need is to continue to speak the truth fearlessly, and we shall add to our number those who will turn the scale to the side of equal and full justice in all things.”
-- Lucy Stone

War crushes with bloody heel all justice, all happiness, all that is Godlike in man. In our age there can be no peace that is not honorable; there can be no war that is not dishonorable.
-- Charles Sumner

If the ecological crisis, for example, is to be solved and if we are to promote genuine justice and thus bring real peace to the planet—and with it the possibility of improving lives on every level, not just economically, socially, and politically, but spiritually, psychologically, and intellectually—then, just on a practical level, we need to have all of the religions working together."
~ Brother Wayne Teasdale

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights - This great and inspiring instrument was born of an increased sense of responsibility by the international community for the promotion and protection of man’s basic rights and freedoms. The world has come to a clear realization of the fact that freedom, justice and world peace can only be assured through the international promotion and protection of these rights and freedoms.
-- U Thant, Third United Nations Secretary-General, 1961-1971

Courage, it would seem, is nothing less than the power to overcome danger, misfortune, fear, injustice, while continuing to affirm inwardly that life with all its sorrows is good; that everything is meaningful even if in a sense beyond our understanding; and that there is always tomorrow.
-- Dorothy Thompson

We add our voice ... to those who struggle for the recognition and protection for their rights and cultures, because to the extent that we respect our differences, we shall build a life with more justice.
-- Francisco Toledo

"All who affirm the use of violence admit it is only a means to achieve justice and peace. But peace and justice are nonviolence...the final end of history. Those who abandon nonviolence have no sense of history. Rathy they are bypassing history, freezing history, betraying history."
-- André Trocmé

"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor."
--Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Today, I wish that the millions of displaced people would be able to return with the necessary conditions of safety and dignity, that people in exile could return to their home-country as the intelligence is needed, that cruelty, political killings, poverty and hunger cease. I wish that our people recover their dignity, truth is revealed and justice exists.
-- Alirio Uribe Muñoz

“Injustice moves me and the feeling of working efficiently for justice gives me energy”. And in the meantime there is “a world of contrasts: the real one, where human rights of the majority are violated; and the other one, the ideal, where they are guaranteed to every one”.
-- Patricia Verdugo Aguirre

An act of justice closes the book on a misdeed; an act of vengeance writes one of its own
-- Marilyn Vos Savant

In many parts of the world the people are searching for a solution which would link the two basic values: peace and justice. The two are like bread and salt for mankind.
-- Lech Walesa

We desire peace - and that is why we have never resorted to physical force. We crave for justice - and that is why we are so persistent in the struggle for our rights. We seek freedom of convictions - and that is why we have never attempted to enslave man's conscience, nor shall we ever attempt to do so. We are fighting for the right of the working people to association and for the dignity of human labor. We respect the dignity and the rights of every man and every nation. The path to a brighter future of the world leads through honest reconciliation of the conflicting interests and not through hatred and bloodshed. To follow that path means to enhance the moral power of the all-embracing idea of human solidarity.
-- Lech Walesa

It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.
-- Earl Warren

"Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all."
-- George Washington

The supernatural virtue of justice consists of behaving exactly as though there were equality when one is the stronger in an unequal relationship.
-- Simone Weil

the Society is based on that great bottom law of human right, that nothing but crime can forfeit liberty. That no condition of birth, no shade of color, no mere misfortune of circumstances, can annul that birthright charter, which God has bequeathed to every being upon whom he has stamped his own image, by making him a free moral agent, and that he who robs his fellow man of this tramples upon right, subverts justice, outrages humanity, unsettles the foundation of human safety, and sacrilegiously assumes the prerogative of God."
-- Theodore Weld

"A federation of all humanity, together with a sufficient measure of social justice, to ensure health, education, and a rough equality of opportunity to most of the children born into the world, would mean such a release and increase of human energy as to open a new phase in human history."
-- H. G. Wells

“One had better die fighting against injustice than die like a dog or a rat in a trap.”
-- Ida B. Wells

Politics is about the improvement of people's lives. It's about advancing the cause of peace and justice in our country and the world. Politics is about doing well for the people.
-- Paul Wellstone

“There can’t be peace in the world if there isn’t justice.”
-- Barbara Wiedner

There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.
-- Elie Wiesel

“There is no freedom without justice.”
-- Simon Wiesenthal

My cause was justice, not vengeance. My work is for a better tomorrow and a more secure future for our children and grandchildren.
-- Simon Wiesenthal

“An enormous discrepancy exists between the way we talk about equality in the abstract and the value as translated into laws and justice.”
~Roy Wilkins

We want to live and love and build a just and peaceful society.
-- Betty Williams & The Peace People

We have to speak out now on behalf of our community and on behalf of the land and say they're the same thing and say "No, we are not rolling over" and "No, this is not a corporate enterprise." This is democracy in the fullest sense and we must have regard and reverence and those are the cornerstones of a just society.
~ Terry Tempest Williams

It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world.
-- Mary Wollstonecraft

We have come this far always believing
that justice would somehow prevail.
This is the burden, this is the promise,
and THIS is why we will not fail.
-- Peter Yarrow

I love life and want to hold onto it. But my passion for justice for my tormented people, for their dignity and freedom, must be greater still. For of what value is a life of slavery, of humiliation and contempt for that which you hold most dear: Your identity! I will therefore not give in to the Turkish Inquisition.
-- Leyla Zana

Our planet is dying - both spiritually and physically. Fear, aggression and greed, narrow-minded national interests and immature dominance and control over others is a common theme in most countries. However, there are more and more people who define themselves as global citizens, who know that life is intimately interconnected, and that we can never be fully human whilst others continue to suffer, and who know that love, justice and nonviolence is the very essence of life. And what gives me hope is the very many different ways in which ordinary people are taking responsibility. They are creating the changes needed to pass beyond war and injustice, control and dominance and towards a free, just, loving, and diverse world.
-- Angie Zelter

Justice Quotes
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JUSTICE
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Justice Day - July 17