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

The gift of loneliness is sometimes a radical vision of society or one’s people that has not previously been taken into account.

In the West, we have been withdrawing from our tradition-, religion-, and even nation-centred cultures.

I never leaf through a copy of National Geographic without realizing how lucky we are to live in a society where it is traditional to wear clothes.

We must reject the idea that every time a law’s broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.

The Bill of Rights is not an a la carte menu.

Fear follows crime and is its punishment.

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

Someday, the capitalist system will disappear in the United States, because no social class system has been eternal. One day, class societies will disappear.

I would not look to the U.S. Constitution if I were drafting a constitution in 2012.

Even after Independence, we have had to face the poison of casteism and communalism. How long these evils will continue? Whom does it benefit?

Never pray for justice, because you might get some.

Clever tyrants are never punished.

One of the powerful temptations is that of the cinema palace. The cinema has undoubtedly an enormous attraction for boys, and people are constantly cudgelling their brains how to stop it. But it is one of those things which would be very difficult to stop even if it were altogether desirable.

The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.

Yeah, it’s pretty hard not to be completely cynical these days.

All virtue is summed up in dealing justly.

What troubles me most about my lovely country is that its children are seldom taught that American freedom will vanish, if, when they grow up, and in the exercise of their duties as citizens, they insist that our courts and policemen and prisons be guided by divine or natural law.

To me, the black black woman is our essential mother, the blacker she is the more us she is and to see the hatred that is turned on her is enough to make me despair, almost entirely, of our future as a people.

The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.

In many ways, when you’re a Nobel peace laureate, you have an obligation to humankind, to society.

Justice cannot be for one side alone, but must be for both.

All the United States, it is a society that is split like to the bottom, that had very poor people in the country that is one of the wealthiest countries.

It’s rare for anyone to value the opinions of a teenage girl.

No one has done a study on this, as far as I can tell, but I think Facebook might be the first place where a large number of people have come out. We didn’t create that – society was generally ready for that. I think this is just part of the general trend that we talked about, about society being more open, and I think that’s good.

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

Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.

Taste cannot be controlled by law.

Morality arose largely as an empirical defence of the individual and society. Ever since intelligent beings began to be in contact, and consequently in friction, they have felt the need to guard themselves against each other’s encroachments.

We think the Dred Scott decision is erroneous. We know the court that made it has often overruled its own decisions, and we shall do what we can to have it overrule this.

Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.

There is the good and the bad, the great and the low, the just and the unjust. I swear to you that all that will never change.

The ultimate tendency of civilization is towards barbarism.

The problem is when that fun stuff becomes the habit. And I think that’s what’s happened in our culture. Fast food has become the everyday meal.

No law or ordinance is mightier than understanding.

Democracy is the road to socialism.

America is the land of the second chance – and when the gates of the prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life.

The public is a ferocious beast; one must either chain it or flee from it.

It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.

I believe that in every country the people themselves are more peaceably and liberally inclined than their governments.

In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

I believe the home and marriage is the foundation of our society and must be protected.

He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.

We have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society.

Let reverence for the laws be breathed by every American mother to the lisping babe that prattles on her lap – let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in primers, spelling books, and in almanacs; let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice.

Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed.

Humanity, you never had it to begin with.

Politics have no relation to morals.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.

Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.

The savage in man is never quite eradicated.

We have the resources to build room for a trillion humans in this solar system, and when we have a trillion humans, we’ll have a thousand Einsteins and a thousand Mozarts. It will be a way more interesting place to live.

We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings.

There never was and is not likely soon to be a nation of philosophers, nor am I certain it is desirable that there should be.

I was arrested three times and tortured once.

Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains.

Judge Afiuni has suffered enough. She has been subject to acts of violence and humiliations to undermine her human dignity. I am convinced that she must be set free.

Nothing can make injustice just but mercy.

More law, less justice.

It is not possible for civilization to flow backwards while there is youth in the world. Youth may be headstrong, but it will advance it allotted length.