More law, less justice.

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

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

In my country of South Africa, we struggled for years against the evil system of apartheid that divided human beings, children of the same God, by racial classification and then denied many of them fundamental human rights.

If the law is upheld only by government officials, then all law is at an end.

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

You don’t send people to prison on the basis of what other people imagine, or on the basis of media sound bites like ‚shooting an unarmed child,‘ when that ‚child‘ was beating him bloody.

We are all different. There is no such thing as a standard or run-of-the-mill human being, but we share the same human spirit.

I detest racialism, because I regard it as a barbaric thing, whether it comes from a black man or a white man.

Peace and justice are two sides of the same coin.

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

It occurred to me that there was no difference between men, in intelligence or race, so profound as the difference between the sick and the well.

Justice without force is powerless; force without justice is tyrannical.

Possession isn’t nine-tenths of the law. It’s nine-tenths of the problem.

There will be no prison which can hold our movement down.

Most states in the union where the death penalty is theoretically on the books don’t have executions.

It’s always going to be a fight for anyone who isn’t an older white man. I want to fight for anyone who doesn’t have a fight.

Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.

The titanic effort that has brought liberation to South Africa, and ensured the total liberation of Africa, constitutes an act of redemption for the black people of the world.

Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itself a terrible experience.

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.

America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense human rights invented America.

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

Isn’t it amazing that we are all made in God’s image, and yet there is so much diversity among his people?

I speak to the black experience, but I am always talking about the human condition.

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

Here’s the thing: every office I’ve run for I was the first to win. First person of color. First woman. First woman of color. Every time.

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

To be successful, a woman has to be much better at her job than a man.

I never sympathise with the accused unless there’s a chance the accused is not guilty, but I certainly don’t ever sympathise with the criminal.

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

The poetry you read has been written for you, each of you – black, white, Hispanic, man, woman, gay, straight.

In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free – honorable alike in that we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.

Justice is truth in action.

To cut short the question of the law of retaliation, we must note that even in its primitive form it can operate only between two individuals of whom one is absolutely innocent, and the other absolutely guilty. The victim, to be sure, is innocent. But can the society that is supposed to represent the victim lay claim to innocence?

I’m not somebody that just wants to hold up a white flag and say, ‚Let’s all just get along.‘ I think people that do horrible things should be held accountable.

For goodness sake, will they hear, will white people hear what we are trying to say? Please, all we are asking you to do is to recognize that we are humans, too.

You see, Africa makes a fool of our idea of justice. It makes a farce of our idea of equality. It mocks our pieties. It doubts our concern. It questions our commitment. Because there is no way we can look at what’s happening in Africa, and if we’re honest, conclude that it would ever be allowed to happen anywhere else.

The country has come a long way in race relations, but the pendulum swings so far back. Everyone wants to be so sensitive.

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

Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man’s nature – opposition to it is his love of justice. These principles are an eternal antagonism; and when brought into collision so fiercely, as slavery extension brings them, shocks and throes and convulsions must ceaselessly follow.

If you want to appeal to everyone, you can’t do a world tour and expect black people to show up at every date – when you’re in Australia, when you’re in Dubai, when you’re in Indonesia.

Like so many American families, our families weren’t asking for much. They didn’t begrudge anyone else’s success or care that others had much more than they did… in fact, they admired it.

I think the notion that we have all the democracy that money can buy strays so far from what our democracy is supposed to be.

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.

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.

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.

No man is above the law and no man is below it: nor do we ask any man’s permission when we ask him to obey it.

Wealthy men can’t live in an island that is encircled by poverty. We all breathe the same air. We must give a chance to everyone, at least a basic chance.

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and under the rule of a just God, cannot long retain it.

It would make everything I worked for meaningless if baseball is integrated but political parties were segregated.

Justice is the set and constant purpose which gives every man his due.

Since being in India, I am more convinced than ever before that the method of nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for justice and human dignity.

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

Freedom prospers when religion is vibrant and the rule of law under God is acknowledged.

A man is as good as he has to be, and a woman as bad as she dares.

We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.

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

When police or prosecutors conceal significant exculpatory or impeaching material, we hold, it is ordinarily incumbent on the state to set the record straight.

I’m interested in two things. I’m interested in truth and I’m interested in fairness.

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