This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Medicine, to produce health, has to examine disease, and music, to create harmony, must investigate discord; and the supreme arts of temperance, of justice, and of wisdom, as they are acts of judgment and selection, exercised not on good and just and expedient only, but also on wicked, unjust, and inexpedient objects, do not give their commendations to the mere innocence whose boast is its inexperience of evil, and whose utter name is, by their award, simpleness and ignorance of what all men who live aright should know." - Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL
"A mere law to give all men equal rights is but useless, if the poor man must sacrifice those rights to their debts, and, in the very seats and sanctuaries of equality, the courts of justice, the offices of state, and the public discussions, be more than anywhere at the beck and bidding of the rich." - Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL
"Let us not accept violence as the way of peace. Let us instead begin by respecting true freedom: the resulting peace will be able to satisfy the world’s expectations, for it will be a peace built on justice, a peace founded on the incomparable dignity of the free human being." - Pope John Paul II, born Karol Józef Wojtyła, aka Saint John Paul the Great NULL
"Fairness is what justice really is." - Potter Stewart
"It’s about whether we’re going to be able to look forward to our descendants and hand this world over to them in much better shape, so they will look back on us with kindness and with praise – rather than cursing us for our apathy, or our narcissism, or our refusal to stand up tall for justice and freedom in the world." - Ralph Nader
"Our flag stands for "liberty and justice for all." Our flag must never be misused or defiled as a bandana for war crimes, as a gag against the people's freedom of speech and conscience or as a fig leaf to hide the shame of charlatans in high public office, who violate our Constitution, our laws and our founding fathers' framework for accountable, responsive government." - Ralph Nader
"A man is a little thing while he works by and for himself; but when he gives voice to the rules of love and justice, he is godlike." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The heroic soul does not sell its justice and its nobleness. It does not ask to dine nicely and to sleep warm. The essence of greatness is the perception that virtue is enough. Poverty is its ornament. It does not need plenty, and can very well abide its loss." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The intuition of the moral sentiment is an insight of the perfection of the laws of the soul. These laws execute themselves. They are out of time, out of space, and not subject to circumstance. Thus in the soul of man there is a justice whose retributions are instant and entire. He who does a good deed is instantly ennobled. He who does a mean deed is by the action itself contracted. He who puts off impurity, thereby puts on purity. If a man is at heart just, then in so far is he God." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Hitch your wagon to a star. Let us not fag in paltry works which serve our pot and bag alone. Let us not lie and steal. No god will help. We shall find their teams going the other way; every god will leave us. Work rather for those interests which the divinities honor and promote - justice, love, freedom, knowledge, utility." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"One man's justice is another's injustice; one man's beauty another's ugliness; one man's wisdom, another's folly as one beholds the same objects from a higher point. One man thinks justice consists in paying debts, and has no measure in his abhorrence of another who is very remiss in his duty and makes the creditor wait tediously. But that second man has his own way of looking at things; asks himself, which debt must I pay first, the debt to the rich, or the debt to the poor? The debt of money or the debt of thought to mankind, of genius to nature?" - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The judge weighs the arguments and puts a brave face on the matter, and since there must be a decision, decides as he can, and hopes he has done justice and given satisfaction to the community." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The true doctrine of omnipresence is that God reappears with all his parts in every moss and cobweb. The value of the universe contrives to throw itself into every point. If the good is there, so is the evil; if the affinity, so the repulsion; if the force, so the limitation. Thus is the universe alive. All things are moral. That soul which within us is a sentiment, outside of us is a law. We feel its inspiration; out there in history we can see its fatal strength. "It is in the world, and the world was made by it." Justice is not postponed. A perfect equity adjusts its balance in all parts of life. The dice of God are always loaded." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"If a man is at heart just, then in so far is he God; the safety of God, the immortality of God, the majesty of God, do enter in that man with justice." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Man is conscious of a universal soul within or behind his individual life, wherein, as in a firmament, the natures of Justice, Truth, Love, Freedom arise and shine. This universal soul he calls Reason: it is not mine, or thing, or his, but we are its; we are its property and men." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Whoever fights, whoever falls, Justice conquers evermore. And he who battles on her side, God, Though he were ten times slain, Crowns him victim, glorified: Victor over death and pain." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary." - Reinhold Niebuhr, fully Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr
"What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness, but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice towards those who still suffer within our country, whether they be black or they be white." - Robert Kennedy, fully Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy
"Happiness is the only good, reason the only torch, justice the only worship, humanity the only religion, and love the only priest." - Robert Ingersoll, fully Robert Green "Bob" Ingersoll
"Justice is the only worship. Love is the only priest. Ignorance is the only slavery. Happiness is the only good. The time to be happy is now, the place to be happy is here, the way to be happy is to make others so." - Robert Ingersoll, fully Robert Green "Bob" Ingersoll
"The triumph of justice is the only peace." - Robert Ingersoll, fully Robert Green "Bob" Ingersoll
"Temperance is love surrendering itself wholly to Him who is its object; courage is love bearing all things gladly for the sake of Him who is its object; justice is love serving only Him who is its object, and therefore rightly ruling; prudence is love making wise distinctions between what hinders and what helps itself." -
"Justice can never be done in the midst of injustice." - Simone de Beauvoir, fully Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir
"What is in conformity with justice should also be in conformity to the laws." - Socrates NULL
"And I say let a man be of good cheer about his soul. When the soul has been arrayed in her own proper jewels - temperance and justice, and courage, and nobility and truth - she is ready to go on her journey when the hour comes." - Socrates NULL
"There is a point at which even justice does injury." - Sophocles NULL
"There are times when even justice brings harm with it." - Sophocles NULL
"The world rests upon three things: upon truth, upon justice, and upon peace. All these three are really one, for when justice is done the truth becomes an actuality, peace a reality." - Talmud or The Talmud NULL
"With ten characteristics was the earth created: wisdom and understanding; knowledge and strength; rebuke and might; righteousness and justice; mercy and compassion." - Talmud or The Talmud NULL
"There can be no substitute for elemental virtues... only by each of us steadfastly keeping in mind that there can be no substitute for the world-old commonplace qualities of truth, justice and courage, thrift, industry, common sense and genuine sympathy with the fellow feelings of others." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt
"In the past we have admitted the right of the individual to injure the future of the Republic for his own present profit. In fact there has been a good deal of a demand for unrestricted individualism, for the right of the individual to injure the future of all of us for his own temporary and immediate profit. The time has come for a change. As a people we have the right and the duty, second to moral law, of requiring and doing justice, to protect ourselves and our children against the wasteful development of our natural resources, whether that waste is caused by the actual destruction of such resources or by making them impossible of development hereafter." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt
"Prosperity can only be lasting if it is based on justice." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt
"Foolish men imagine that because judgment for an evil thing is delayed, there is no justice; but only accident here below. Judgment for an evil thing is many times delayed some day or two, some century or two, but it is sure as life, it is sure as death." - Thomas Carlyle
"Rigid justice is the greatest injustice." - Thomas Fuller
"The firm basis of government is justice, not pity." - Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
"Settlements may be temporary, but the action of the nations in the interest of peace and justice must be permanent processes. We may not be able to set up permanent decisions." - Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
"Benevolence never developed a man or a nation. We do not want a benevolent government. We want a free and a just government. Every one of the great schemes of social uplift which are not so much debated by noble people amongst us is based, when rightly conceived, upon justice, not upon benevolence." - Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
"I say that justice is nothing other than the interest of the stronger." - Thrasymachus NULL
"Everywhere there is one principle of justice, which is the interest of the stronger." - Thrasymachus NULL
"The word “liberty,” “free-will,” is therefore an abstract word, a general word, like beauty, goodness, justice. These terms do not state that all men are always beautiful, good and just; similarly, they are not always free." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
"The sentiment of justice is so natural, and so universally acquired by all mankind, that is seems to be independent of all law, all party, all religion." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
"Simplicity deepens life. It magnifies the simple virtues on which man’s survival depends: humility, faith, courage, serenity, honesty, patience, justice, tolerance, thrift. Simplicity is the arrow of the spirit." - Wilferd Peterson, fully Wilferd Arlan Peterson
"The key to the art of prayer is thought. As we think so we pray. The highest level of prayer is to think God’s thoughts after Him, to attune our lives to love, hope, faith, justice, kindness; to become open channels for the goodness of God. Prayer is quiet meditation about eternal values. It is the mind adventuring in the universe. Prayer moves with the instantaneous speed of thought, through infinite space, to the four corners of the earth, to the depth of the human heart, to the mountaintop of inspiration." - Wilferd Peterson, fully Wilferd Arlan Peterson
"What better way is there to make men love one another than to make men understand one another. True charity comes only with clarity - just as "mercy" is but justice that understands. Surely the root of all evil is the inability to see clearly that which is." - Will Durant, fully William James "Will" Durant
"Popularity disarms envy in well-disposed minds,. Those are ever the most ready to do justice to others who feel that the world has done them justice. When success has not this effect in opening the mind, it is a sign that it has been ill deserved." - William Hazlitt
"Those are ever the most ready to do justice to others, who feel that the world has done them justice." - William Hazlitt
"I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." - Barry Goldwater