I am a just man.

You’re innocent until proven guilty.

I should not regret a fair and full trial of the entire abolition of capital punishment.

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

Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking.

States are not moral agents, people are, and can impose moral standards on powerful institutions.

We are justified in enforcing good morals, for they belong to all mankind; but we are not justified in enforcing good manners, for good manners always mean our own manners.

All virtue is summed up in dealing justly.

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

A person should not be too honest. Straight trees are cut first and honest people are screwed first.

So far as I am concerned, I could not be accused of having set eyes, or having wished to set eyes, upon Darius‘ wife: on the contrary, I have refused even to listen to those who spoke to me of her beauty.

If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.

To God everything is beautiful, good, and just; humans, however, think some things are unjust and others just.

Effective action is always unjust.

An election is a moral horror, as bad as a battle except for the blood; a mud bath for every soul concerned in it.

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

Freedom is not enough.

If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reasons.

Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.

What has happened at Guantanamo Bay… does not represent the will of the American people. I’m embarrassed about it, I think its wrong. I think it does give terrorists an unwarranted excuse to use the despicable means to hurt innocent people.

Clever tyrants are never punished.

I have found men to be more kind than I expected, and less just.

God made and governs the world invisibly, and has commanded us to love and worship him and no other God; to honor our parents and masters, and love our neighbours as ourselves; and to be temperate, just, and peaceable, and to be merciful even to brute beasts.

Say what you will about the ten commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.

Virtue is not left to stand alone. He who practices it will have neighbors.

I want to reform the tax code so that it’s simple, fair, and asks the wealthiest households to pay higher taxes on incomes over $250,000 – the same rate we had when Bill Clinton was president; the same rate we had when our economy created nearly 23 million new jobs, the biggest surplus in history, and a lot of millionaires to boot.

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.

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

Such is the feebleness of humanity, such is its perversity, that doubtless it is better for it to be subject to all possible superstitions, as long as they are not murderous, than to live without religion.

I am prepared to die, but there is no cause for which I am prepared to kill.

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

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

Well, I’ll put it this way: you can certainly say belief in God makes people behave worse. That can be proved beyond a doubt.

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.

Ethics is the activity of man directed to secure the inner perfection of his own personality.

To say that authority, whether secular or religious, supplies no ground for morality is not to deny the obvious fact that it supplies a sanction.

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.

Some like to think that a keen appreciation of art can actually make us better people – more just, more moral, more sensitive, more understanding. Perhaps that is true – in certain rare, isolated cases.

A little bit of mercy makes the world less cold and more just.

Life is about conduct and how we conduct ourselves. But two wrongs never make a right.

Due process should matter.

What is permissible is not always honorable.

Abortion is clearly wrong.

Make crime pay. Become a lawyer.

A return to first principles in a republic is sometimes caused by the simple virtues of one man. His good example has such an influence that the good men strive to imitate him, and the wicked are ashamed to lead a life so contrary to his example.

Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.

Any man may easily do harm, but not every man can do good to another.

Fear follows crime and is its punishment.

Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.

We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.

Compassion is the basis of morality.

What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.

Human judges can show mercy. But against the laws of nature, there is no appeal.

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

There is always inequality in life. Some men are killed in a war and some men are wounded and some men never leave the country. Life is unfair.

Sin is geographical.

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

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.

Where there is righteousness in the heart, there is beauty in the character. When there is beauty in the character, there is harmony in the home. When there is harmony in the home, there is order in the nation. When there is order in the nation, there is peace in the world.

You’re morally tainted if you don’t treat both the accuser and the accused with fairness and with respect, and with due process.

In the last analysis, even the best man is evil: in the last analysis, even the best woman is bad.