This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The function of the law is not to provide justice or to preserve freedom. The function of the law is to keep those who hold power, in power
Richard Niebuhr, fully Helmut Richard Niebuhr
Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.
Capacity | Democracy | Inclination | Injustice | Injustice | Justice |
Liberty, equality - bad principles! The only true principle for humanity is justice, and justice towards the feeble becomes necessarily protection or kindness.
We feel God present in nature, whether in its awe or its beauty; and in human history, whether in its justice or its weird mysteriousness; and in the life of a good man, or the circumstances of a generous or noble act. Most of all we feel Him near when conscience, His inward messenger, speaks plainly and decisively to us.
Awe | Circumstances | God | Good | Justice | Life | Life | Present | God |
Marshall McLuhan, fully Herbert Marshall McLuhan
Whereas convictions depend on speed-ups, justice requires delay.
Convictions | Justice |
If patriotism were defined, not as blind obedience to government, nor as submissive worship to flags and anthems, but rather as love of one's country, one's fellow citizens (all over the world), as loyalty to the principles of justice and democracy, then patriotism would require us to disobey our government, when it violated those principles.
Justice | Love | Loyalty | Loyalty | Obedience | Patriotism | Principles | Worship |
Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
Truth is always in harmony with herself, and is not concerned chiefly to reveal the justice that may consist with wrong-doing.
James Baldwin, fully James Arthur Baldwin
Ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.
A man only begins to be a man when he ceases to whine and revile, and commences to search for the hidden justice which regulates his life. And he adapts his mind to that regulating factor, he ceases to accuse others as the cause of his condition, and builds himself up in strong and noble thoughts; ceases to kick against circumstances, but begins to use them as aids to his more rapid progress, and as a means of the hidden powers and possibilities within himself.
Jimmy Carter, fully James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr.
Great American power and responsibility are not unprecedented, and have been used with restraint and great benefit in the past. We have not assumed that super strength guarantees super wisdom, and we have consistently reached out to the international community to ensure that our own power and influence are tempered by the best common judgment. Within our country, ultimate decisions are made through democratic means, which tend to moderate radical or ill-advised proposals. Constrained and inspired by historic constitutional principles, our nation has endeavored for more than two hundred years to follow the now almost universal ideals of freedom, human rights, and justice for all.
Ideals | Influence | Justice | Power | Responsibility | Restraint | Strength |
John Rawls, fully John Bordley Rawls
The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance.
Justice | Principles |
John Rawls, fully John Bordley Rawls
The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance.
Justice | Principles |
John Rawls, fully John Bordley Rawls
The strength of the claims of formal justice, of obedience to system, clearly depend upon the substantive justice of institutions and the possibilities of their reform.
John Rawls, fully John Bordley Rawls
One who lacks a sense of justice lacks certain fundamental attitudes and capacities included under the notion of humanity. Now the moral feelings are admittedly unpleasant, in some extended sense of unpleasant; but there is no way for us to avoid a liability to them without disfiguring ourselves. This liability is the price of love and trust, of friendship and affection, and of devotion to institutions and traditions from which we have benefited and which serve the general interests of mankind…by understanding what it would be like not to have a sense of justice–that it would be to lack part of our humanity too–we are led to accept our having this sense.
Devotion | Feelings | Humanity | Justice | Love | Price | Sense | Understanding | Friendship |
John Rawls, fully John Bordley Rawls
Each person possesses and inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override. For this reason, justice denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others. It does not allow that the sacrifices imposed on a few are outweighed by the larger sum of advantages enjoyed by many. Therefore in a just society the liberties of equal citizenship are taken as settled; the rights secured by justice are not subject to political bargaining or to the calculus of social interests. The only thing that permits us to acquiesce in an erroneous theory is the lack of a better one; analogously, an injustice is tolerable only when it is necessary to avoid an even greater injustice. Being first virtues of human activities, truth and justice are uncompromising
Better | Citizenship | Freedom | Good | Injustice | Injustice | Justice | Right | Rights | Society | Truth | Society | Loss |
The wisdom, teaching, and counsel of the Bible are not in conflict with the ultimate attainments of the human mind, but, rather, well ahead of our attitudes… Its aim is not to record history but rather to record the encounter of the divine and the human on the level of concrete living. Incomparably more important than all the beauty or wisdom that it bestows upon our lives is the way it opens to man an understanding of what God means, of attaining holiness through justice, through simplicity of soul, through choice. Above all it never ceases to proclaim that worship of God without justice to man is an abomination; that while man'’ problem is God, God’s problem is man.
Beauty | Bible | Counsel | God | History | Important | Justice | Man | Simplicity | Understanding | Wisdom | Worship | Counsel | Beauty | God | Bible |