After all, every murderer when he kills runs the risk of the most dreadful of deaths, whereas those who kill him risk nothing except promotion.

Laws too gentle are seldom obeyed; too severe, seldom executed.

There is no such thing as justice in the abstract; it is merely a compact between men.

One thing I have learned in my painful career as a gambler is that bragging when you get lucky and win a few games will plunge you into gloom and unacceptable beatings very soon. It happens every time.

It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.

Their mothers had finally caught up to them and been proven right. There were consequences after all but they were the consequences to things you didn’t even know you’d done.

To suffer the penalty of too much haste, which is too little speed.

I would impress upon your minds the fact that if you want to do a man justice, you should believe what a man says himself rather than what people say he says.

I don’t stand for the black man’s side, I don‘ t stand for the white man’s side. I stand for God’s side.

Of all that is good, sublimity is supreme. Succeeding is the coming together of all that is beautiful. Furtherance is the agreement of all that is just. Perseverance is the foundation of all actions.

There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it.

Justice is a temporary thing that must at last come to an end; but the conscience is eternal and will never die.

I think some of my colleagues‘ spicier lines are distracting. They draw attention away from what the justice is trying to say.

Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.

Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more a man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.

Germany has reduced savagery to a science, and this great war for the victorious peace of justice must go on until the German cancer is cut clean out of the world body.

By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.

A precedent embalms a principle.

We will burn that bridge when we come to it.

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

Religion was instituted to make us happy in this life and in the other. What must we do to be happy in the life to come? Be just.

We are not punished for our sins, but by them.

It’s annoying, but justice and equality are mates. Aren’t they? Justice always wants to hang out with equality. And equality is a real pain.

We win justice quickest by rendering justice to the other party.

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.

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

Sometimes if you jump into something too quickly, you can screw up something that might have been good two years down the road.

It is true we have won all our wars, but we have paid for them. We don’t want victories anymore.

He who commits injustice is ever made more wretched than he who suffers it.

When anger rises, think of the consequences.

Effective action is always unjust.

Bad seed is a robbery of the worst kind: for your pocket-book not only suffers by it, but your preparations are lost and a season passes away unimproved.

He who acts with a constant view to his own advantage will be much murmured against.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.

Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.

This report, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read.

Nothing is worth doing unless the consequences may be serious.

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

I’m not one of these guys who sits around saying, ‚Gee, I mean, the person had a strange childhood and that’s why he’s doing this horrible thing. Poor Jeffrey Dahmer. He’s just had a bad childhood and that’s why he’s eating people.‘ Wait a second! This person should be removed from the planet.

If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.

After the chaos and carnage of September 11th, it is not enough to serve our enemies with legal papers.

Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another.

When there’s justice and change, you start to see the cleansing of the soul, and that is what I want for people, and I hope it’s okay for me to say those things.

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

Resistance is feasible even for those who are not heroes by nature, and it is an obligation, I believe, for those who fear the consequences and detest the reality of the attempt to impose American hegemony.

As the eagle was killed by the arrow winged with his own feather, so the hand of the world is wounded by its own skill.

The Oklahoma City bombing was simple technology, horribly used. The problem is not technology. The problem is the person or persons using it.

Foolish men imagine that because judgment for an evil thing is delayed, there is no justice; but only accident here below. Judgment for an evil thing is many times delayed some day or two, some century or two, but it is sure as life, it is sure as death.

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

The more people smoke herb, the more Babylon fall.

For the sake of peace and justice, let us move toward a world in which all people are at last free to determine their own destiny.

Never envy a man his lady. Behind it all lays a living hell.

I understood that with the swipe of my pen as a prosecutor, I would have the decision in my pen to make a decision about someone’s life.

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

The fact is, violence is not only not a beautiful thing, but it’s also very painful and not without consequences for the perpetrator as well as the victim.

Stupidity has a knack of getting its way.

There’s a War Crimes Act in the United States passed by a Republican Congress in 1996, which says that grave breaches of the Geneva Convention are subject to the death penalty. And that doesn’t mean the soldier that committed them – that means the commanders.

Justice is sweet and musical; but injustice is harsh and discordant.

Some people will have to be afraid. Those who plunder the nation, deliver injustice, will have to feel scared of me. And I am not afraid of admitting this. Government cannot be so lenient that it forgives them.

Consequences are unpitying.

Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just.