A precedent embalms a principle.

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

Where is the justice of political power if it executes the murderer and jails the plunderer, and then itself marches upon neighboring lands, killing thousands and pillaging the very hills?

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

Effective action is always unjust.

Not to help justice in her need would be an impiety.

It is a fundamental principle of criminal law that an imputed offense must correspond exactly to the type of crime described by law. If no law applies exactly to the point in question, then there is no offense.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

We become just by performing just action, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave action.

Due process should matter.

Exclusion is never the way forward on our shared paths to freedom and justice.

A right delayed is a right denied.

I am well aware that there are prisoners of conscience in the Soviet Union, including some who have said they have chosen to resist the law because of religious reasons.

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.

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.

I just usually go with my own taste. If I like something, and it happens to be against the law, well, then I might have a problem.

We have the oldest written constitution still in force in the world, and it starts out with three words, ‚We, the people.‘

Liberty consists in the power of doing that which is permitted by the law.

Laws are silent in time of war.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

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

It was an act of patriotism when we worked to pass a law allowing the prosecution of federal hate crimes in the name of Matthew Shepard and James Byrd.

Man takes his law from the Earth; the Earth takes its law from Heaven; Heaven takes its law from the Tao. The law of the Tao is its being what it is.

He who would be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves and, under a just God, cannot long retain it.

I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

He is a hard man who is only just, and a sad one who is only wise.

If we do not maintain justice, justice will not maintain us.

Capital punishment is as fundamentally wrong as a cure for crime as charity is wrong as a cure for poverty.

My parents didn’t want to move to Florida, but they turned sixty and that’s the law.

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

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

After a century of trying, we declared that healthcare in America is not a privilege for a few, it is a right for everybody. After decades of talk, we finally began to wean ourselves off foreign oil. We doubled our production of clean energy. We brought more of our troops home to their families, and we delivered justice to Osama bin Laden.

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

Taste cannot be controlled by law.

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.

The roaring thunder of the law and the fear of the terror of judgment are both used to bring us to Christ, but the final victory culminating in our salvation is won through God’s loving-kindness.

It’s hard not to have a big year at the Supreme Court.

If what you have done is unjust, you have not succeeded.

Freedom is a man’s natural power of doing what he pleases, so far as he is not prevented by force or law.

If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest.

I don’t have to see a murder in order to condemn murder.

The law will never make a man free; it is men who have got to make the law free.

It takes two to make a murder. There are born victims, born to have their throats cut, as the cut-throats are born to be hanged.

Knowledge without justice ought to be called cunning rather than wisdom.

Every child that isn’t born, but is unjustly condemned to be aborted, has the face of Jesus Christ, has the face of the Lord.

No body can be healthful without exercise, neither natural body nor politic, and certainly, to a kingdom or estate, a just and honourable war is the true exercise.

Alimony – the ransom that the happy pay to the devil.

Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.

It is difficult to make our material condition better by the best law, but it is easy enough to ruin it by bad laws.

One who is injured ought not to return the injury, for on no account can it be right to do an injustice; and it is not right to return an injury, or to do evil to any man, however much we have suffered from him.

At the heart of every being lies creation’s dream of a principle that will one day give organic form to its fragmented treasures. God is unity.

I think the first duty of society is justice.

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

We had to go on and do the work of the court and we did.

Those who intend on becoming great should love neither themselves nor their own things, but only what is just, whether it happens to be done by themselves or others.

If you must break the law, do it to seize power: in all other cases observe it.

Men should be either treated generously or destroyed, because they take revenge for slight injuries – for heavy ones they cannot.

Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.

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

Those who commit injustice bear the greatest burden.