A precedent embalms a principle.

Revenge is an act of passion; vengeance of justice. Injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged.

There is no injustice in the grace of God. God is as just when He forgives a believer as when He casts a sinner into hell.

Act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.

The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected.

Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.

We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.

Justice and truth are too such subtle points that our tools are too blunt to touch them accurately.

A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.

No cause justifies the deaths of innocent people.

Justice means minding one’s own business and not meddling with other men’s concerns.

The good of the people is the greatest law.

There is an orderliness in the universe, there is an unalterable law governing everything and every being that exists or lives. It is no blind law; for no blind law can govern the conduct of living beings.

Children say that people are hung sometimes for speaking the truth.

What is human warfare but just this; an effort to make the laws of God and nature take sides with one party.

Law, without force, is impotent.

Rather leave the crime of the guilty unpunished than condemn the innocent.

Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‚within the limits of the law‘ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.

The jury consist of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.

My biographers… would like to have my time at the court almost complete before they finish the book. We decided… to flip the order.

I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice.

Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all.

If I were a Negro, I’d be fighting, as Martin Luther King fought, for human recognition and justice. I’d rather go down with my flag flying. If you’re weak or crippled, or you can’t speak out or fight back in some way, then people don’t hesitate to treat you badly.

As an attorney, I could be rather flamboyant in court. I did not act as though I were a black man in a white man’s court, but as if everyone else – white and black – was a guest in my court. When trying a case, I often made sweeping gestures and used high-flown language.

If a man had more than one life, I think a little hanging would not hurt this one; but after he is once dead, we cannot bring him back, no matter how sorry we may be; so the boy shall be pardoned.

Whenever you put a man on the Supreme Court he ceases to be your friend.

In the literal sense, there has been no relevant evolution since the trek from Africa. But there has been substantial progress towards higher standards of rights, justice and freedom – along with all too many illustrations of how remote is the goal of a decent society.

How accurately can the law fix the crime? There has to be a mechanism for very fast action. The law is like this: catch them and punish them.

Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men’s skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact.

In time of war the laws are silent.

The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain.

A principle is the expression of perfection, and as imperfect beings like us cannot practise perfection, we devise every moment limits of its compromise in practice.

All human laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory; they have no power over the substance of original justice.

Peace and justice are two sides of the same coin.

It is impossible to suffer without making someone pay for it; every complaint already contains revenge.

Make crime pay. Become a lawyer.

My speculation is that the U.S. does not want to establish the principle that it has to defer to some higher authority before carrying out the use of violence.

In societies that profess some respect for law, suspects are apprehended and brought to fair trial. I stress ‚suspects.‘

Some may remember, if you have good memories, that there used to be a concept in Anglo-American law called a presumption of innocence, innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Now that’s so deep in history that there’s no point even bringing it up, but it did once exist.

The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood.

These men ask for just the same thing, fairness, and fairness only. This, so far as in my power, they, and all others, shall have.

All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.

That old law about ‚an eye for an eye‘ leaves everybody blind. The time is always right to do the right thing.

It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.

I don’t know the law, the kind of law of quantity and quality, but I think the opportunity of people being able to express themselves and to have the means of production is a great thing. It’s also changing how we’re telling stories.

The highest reach of injustice is to be deemed just when you are not.

I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

Above all, always be capable of feeling deeply any injustice committed against anyone, anywhere in the world. This is the most beautiful quality in a revolutionary.

The only way you can beat the lawyers is to die with nothing.

Conservatism discards Prescription, shrinks from Principle, disavows Progress; having rejected all respect for antiquity, it offers no redress for the present, and makes no preparation for the future.

The virtues, like the Muses, are always seen in groups. A good principle was never found solitary in any breast.

At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.

Justice that love gives is a surrender, justice that law gives is a punishment.

Fear follows crime and is its punishment.

I sent one e-mail in my life. I sent it to Jeff Raikes at Microsoft, and it ended up in court in Minneapolis, so I am one for one.

I think we all change each other’s paths. I don’t know which law idea that is in physics, but I don’t think any of us can live without affecting one another.

Those who commit injustice bear the greatest burden.

Justice is an unassailable fortress, built on the brow of a mountain which cannot be overthrown by the violence of torrents, nor demolished by the force of armies.

Knowledge which is divorced from justice, may be called cunning rather than wisdom.

Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.

No law or ordinance is mightier than understanding.