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

It is a man’s own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways.

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.

The safest course is to do nothing against one’s conscience. With this secret, we can enjoy life and have no fear from death.

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.

Peace and justice are two sides of the same coin.

The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell.

Today we are engaged in a deadly global struggle for those who would intimidate, torture, and murder people for exercising the most basic freedoms. If we are to win this struggle and spread those freedoms, we must keep our own moral compass pointed in a true direction.

If I’d written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people – including me – would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.

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.

Woe to him that claims obedience when it is not due; woe to him that refuses it when it is.

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

He has committed the crime who profits by it.

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.

Everywhere that freedom stirs, let tyrants fear.

People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.

It is possible for one never to transgress a single law and still be a bastard.

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

Good men must not obey the laws too well.

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.

In February 2004, the two traditional torturers of Haiti – France and the United States – combined to back a military coup and send President Aristide off to Africa. The U.S. denies him permission to return to the entire region.

All the commandments: You shall not commit adultery, you shall not kill, you shall not steal, you shall not covet, and so on, are summed up in this single command: You must love your neighbor as yourself.

An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.

The quality of moral behavior varies in inverse ratio to the number of human beings involved.

How accurately can the law fix the crime? There has to be a mechanism for very fast action. The law is like this: catch them and punish them.

Then not only custom, but also nature affirms that to do is more disgraceful than to suffer injustice, and that justice is equality.

I feel a distaste for hunting, first because of a kind of Buddhist respect for the unity and sacredness of all life, and also because the pursuit of a hare or chamois strikes me as a kind of ‚escape of energy,‘ that is, the expenditure of our effort in an illusory end, one devoid of profit.

If co-operation is a duty, I hold that non-co-operation also under certain conditions is equally a duty.

Sometimes we look at gay being a bigger sin than being proud or not telling the truth. I don’t think God categorizes sins.

According to the law of nature it is only fair that no one should become richer through damages and injuries suffered by another.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

The first step in the evolution of ethics is a sense of solidarity with other human beings.

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

I just know what is right and I want to do what is right.

A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.

On wrongs swift vengeance waits.

A man who is good enough to shed his blood for the country is good enough to be given a square deal afterwards.

Live your life as though your every act were to become a universal law.

To be ashamed of one’s immorality: that is a step on the staircase at whose end one is also ashamed of one’s morality.

A system of morality which is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception which has nothing sound in it and nothing true.

I’ve been very lucky, and therefore I owe it to try and reduce the inequity in the world. And that’s kind of a religious belief. I mean, it’s at least a moral belief.

Clever tyrants are never punished.

One of the great attractions of patriotism – it fulfills our worst wishes. In the person of our nation we are able, vicariously, to bully and cheat. Bully and cheat, what’s more, with a feeling that we are profoundly virtuous.

High moral character is not a precondition for great moral accomplishments.

Non-violence, which is the quality of the heart, cannot come by an appeal to the brain.

Laws control the lesser man… Right conduct controls the greater one.

For this generation, ours, life is nuclear survival, liberty is human rights, the pursuit of happiness is a planet whose resources are devoted to the physical and spiritual nourishment of its inhabitants.

May be is very well, but Must is the master. It is my duty to show justice without recompense.

We are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do.

What do I care about Jupiter? Justice is a human issue, and I do not need a god to teach it to me.

Against eternal injustice, man must assert justice, and to protest against the universe of grief, he must create happiness.

Use every man after his desert, and who should scape whipping?

A private soldier has as much right to justice as a major-general.

I can do no other than be reverent before everything that is called life. I can do no other than to have compassion for all that is called life. That is the beginning and the foundation of all ethics.

When the President does it, that means that it’s not illegal.

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 am afraid we must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy.

Trouble brews when we steal from the poor and give to the rich.

We might come closer to balancing the Budget if all of us lived closer to the Commandments and the Golden Rule.

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.

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