JUSTICE
QUOTES
|
Page
1 | Page 2 |
Page 3 | Page 4 | Page
5
(Click
on *
for 8.5 X 11 PDF to print)
"It
is not from reason that justice springs, but goodness
is born of wisdom."
-- Maurice Maeterlinck
|
*
"If we want to reap the harvest of peace and
justice in the future, we will have to sow
seeds of nonviolence, here and now, in the
present."
-- Mairead
Corrigan Maguire
|
|
|
|
*
Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity.
It is an act of justice. It is the protection
of a fundamental human right, the right to
dignity and a decent life . . .
--
Nelson Mandela
"Trade
justice for the developing world and for this
generation is a truly significant way for
the developed countries to show commitment
to bringing about an end to global poverty."
-- Nelson
Mandela
|
"I
have tremendous confidence in the capacity of
the poor to transform not only their own lives
but also to build a just, humane, and democratic
society."
-- Ruth Manorama
|
 |
|
It
is a good moment to repeat that a war is never
won. Never mind that history books tell us
the opposite. The psychological and material
costs of war are so high that any triumph
is a pyrrhic victory. Only peace can be won
and winning peace means not only avoiding
armed conflict but finding ways of eradicating
the causes of individual and collective violence:
injustice and oppression, ignorance and poverty,
intolerance and discrimination. We must construct
a new set of values and attitudes to replace
the culture of war which, for centuries, has
been influencing the course of civilization.
Winning peace means the triumph of our pledge
to establish, on a democratic basis, a new
social framework of tolerance and generosity
from which no one will feel excluded.
-- Federico
Mayor
|
 |
The
students I've been with these twenty years
are looking for a world where it becomes
a little easier to love and a lot harder
to hate, where learning nonviolence means
that we dedicate our hearts, minds, time,
and money to a commitment that the force
of love, the force of truth, the force of
justice, and the force of organized resistance
to corrupt power are seen as sane and the
force of fists, guns, armies, and bombs
insane.
-- Colman
McCarthy
*
"It's too easy only to blame the militarists,
racists, sexists and other pushers of violence
for the mess we're in. What is harder is
self-examination, moving beyond caring by
looking inward to ask the personal question:
What more should I be doing everyday to
bring about a peace and justice based world,
whether across the ocean or across the living
room?"
-- Colman
McCarthy
|
|
|
And
this is the time. It is the time for this
land to become again a witness to the world
for what is noble and just in human affairs.
It is the time to live more with faith and
less with fear- with an abiding confidence
that can sweep away the strongest barriers
between us and teach us that we truly are
brothers and sisters.
-- George
McGovern
|
|
|
|
*
"We are way more powerful when we turn to
each other and not on each other, when we
celebrate our diversity, focus on our commonality,
and together tear down the mighty walls of
injustice."
-- Cynthia
McKinney
|
*
"The basic goal of labor will not change. It
is -- as it has always been, and I am sure always
will be -- to better the standards of life for
all who work for wages and to seek decency and
justice and dignity for all Americans."
-- George Meany
|
 |
|
*
"Peace cannot exist without justice, justice
cannot exist without fairness, fairness cannot
exist without development, development cannot
exist without democracy, democracy cannot
exist without respect for the identity and
worth of cultures and peoples."
-- Rigoberta
Menchú
|
 |
|
|
*
It is truly only when we begin to see that injustice
is only a symptom and an opportunity to design
new models of governance, education and other
options within the fields of endeavors that
we will learn how it is to become truly conscious
HUMANS.
-- Nina Meyerhof
|
An
injustice committed against anyone is a threat to
everyone.
-- Montesquieu
|
*
"Our motto is to work for peace based
on social justice. Our mandate is to improve
the condition, health and safety of workers,
and our mission is universal."
-- David A.
Morse
|
|
 |
*
“Charity is commendable; everyone should be
charitable. But justice aims to create a social
order in which, if individuals choose not to
be charitable, people still don’t go hungry,
unschooled or sick without care. Charity depends
on the vicissitudes of whim and personal wealth;
justice depends on commitment instead of circumstance.”
-- Bill Moyers |
 |
*
A society that has more justice is a society
that needs less charity.
-- Ralph Nader
|
|
We
never will get a full situation of open transparency,
but we should seek to bring forth the major
concerns about injustice and suffering and
dishonesty. This needs to come into the open
or there will never be peace in the hearts
of us violated.
-- Beyers Naudé
|
|
 |
*
We could dramatically accelerate innovations
in sustainability and social justice just
by making choices to use our money for positive
solutions.
-- Carol Newell
I
think those of us who have extraordinary wealth
have an opportunity to leverage that wealth
to stimulate a just and sustainable economy.
I know it goes against the grain but I know
it's possible. It's just about deciding what
kind of choices we want to make.
-- Carol Newell
|
”Man's
capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but
man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.”
-- Reinhold Niebuhr
 |
*
We've got a lot of work to do economically
in this country to bring about a more just
and fair economy.
-- Barack Obama
|
|
|
"Refugee
problems may often seem intractable but they
are not insoluble. In our experience there
are two basic prerequisites for solution:
the political will of leaders to tackle the
causes and to settle for peace, and international
determination to push for peace and then to
consolidate it. Consolidating peace means
helping societies emerging from war to reintegrate
refugees in safety and dignity, to rebuild
their institutions - including in the field
of justice and human rights - and to resume
their economic development."
-- Sadako Ogata
|
|
 The
whole system has not one redeeming quality;
its very virtues, as they are termed, are
vices of great magnitude. Its charities, so
called, are gross acts of injustice and deception.
Its instructions are to rivet ignorance in
the mind and, if possible, render it perpetual.
It supports, in all manner of extravagance,
idleness, presumption, and uselessness; and
oppresses, in almost every mode which ingenuity
can devise, industry, integrity and usefulness.
It encourages superstition, bigotry and fanaticism;
and discourages truth, commonsense and rationality.
It generates and cultivates every inferior
quality and base passion that human nature
can be made to receive; and has so disordered
all the human intellects, that they have become
universally perplexed and confused, so that
man has no just title to be called a reasonable
and rational being. It generates violence,
robbery and murder, and extols and rewards
these vices as the highest of all virtues.
Its laws are founded in gross ignorance of
individual man and of human society; they
are cruel and unjust in the extreme, and,
united with all the superstitions in the world,
are calculated only to teach men to call that
which is pre-eminently true and good, false
and bad; and that which is glaringly false
and bad, true and good. In short, to cultivate
with great care all that leads to vice and
misery in the mass, and to exclude from them,
with equal care, all that would direct them
to true knowledge and real happiness, which
alone, combined, deserve the name of virtue.
-- Robert Owen
|
 |
*
I
believe in the equality of man; and I believe
that religious duties consist in doing justice,
loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures
happy.
-- Thomas Paine
|
|
|
*
"I would like to be known as a person
who is concerned about freedom and equality
and justice and prosperity for all people."
-- Rosa Parks
|
|
|
*
"Out of our first century of national life
we evolved the ethical principle that it
was not right or just that an honest and
industrious man should live and die in misery.
He was entitled to some degree of sympathy
and security. Our conscience declared against
the honest workman's becoming a pauper,
but our eyes told us that he very often
did."
-- Frances
Perkins
|
Racial
injustice, war, urban blight, and environmental
rape have a common denominator in our exploitative
economic system.
~ Channing E. Phillips
In
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (December
1948) in most solemn form, the dignity of a person
is acknowledged to all human beings; and as a consequence
there is proclaimed, as a fundamental right, the
right of free movement in search for truth and in
the attainment of moral good and of justice, and
also the right to a dignified life.
-- Pope John XXIII, 1881-1963 Pacem in Terris, 1963
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
 |
We
are privileged to have the opportunity of
contributing to the achievement of the goal
of the abolition of war and its replacement
by world law. I am confident that we shall
succeed in this great task; that the world
community will thereby be freed not only from
the suffering caused by war but also through
the better use of the earth's resources, of
the discoveries of scientists, and of the
efforts of mankind, from hunger, disease,
illiteracy, and fear; and that we shall in
the course of time be enabled to build a world
characterized by economic, political, and
social justice for all human beings and a
culture worthy of man's intelligence.
-- Linus Pauling
|
|
|
"Salvation
for a race, nation or class must come from
within. Freedom is never granted; it is
won. Justice is never given; it is exacted;
and the struggle must be continuous for
freedom is never a final fact, but a continuing
evolving process to higher and higher levels
of human, social, economic, political and
religious relationship."
-- A. Philip
Randolph
*
Freedom is never granted; it is won. Justice
is never given; it is exacted.
-- A. Philip
Randolph
|
|
|
*
Thinking about how the world might be and
envisioning a society characterized by justice
are the essence of conceptualizing the conditions
that comprise positive peace. If we are to
educate for peace, both teachers and students
need to have some notion of the transformed
world we are educating for.
-- Betty Reardon
|
|
"We
are moved to deep humility by the knowledge
that even as we are blazing new trails into
an as yet uncharted future, we are following
in the footsteps of a vast legacy of spiritual
leaders and social change makers. The struggle
for justice is as old as tyranny itself, and
the longing for a world guided by love is
as old as the human heart. Thank you for joining
us in carrying the great dream forward through
the next generation."
~
Ocean Robbins
|
 |
 |
*
If
you do things well, do them better. Be daring,
be first, be different, be just.
-- Anita Roddick
|
 |
For
here lies the corner stone of all the injustices
done woman, the wrong idea from which all
other wrongs proceed. She is not acknowledged
as mistress of herself. For her cradle to
her grave she is another's. We do indeed need
and demand the other rights of which I have
spoken, but let us first obtain OURSELVES."
--
Ernestine Rose
|
*
Where, after all, do universal human rights
begin? In small places, close to home -
so close and so small that they cannot be
seen on any maps of the world ... Such are
the places where every man, woman and child
seeks equal justice, equal opportunity,
equal dignity without discrimination. Unless
these rights have meaning there, they have
little meaning anywhere.
-- Eleanor
Roosevelt
|
|
It
is often easier to become outraged by injustice
half a world away than by oppression and discrimination
half a block from home.
-- Carl T. Rowan
 |
"If
laws are unjust, they must be continually
broken until they are altered."
--
Josephine Ruffin
|
|
|
Today
in America as in other parts of the world
we see a model of a society in which the powerful
dominate. They marginalize and they go as
far as to eliminate the weakest before the
homogenization caused by this system of globalization.
Through providence we have the taking of conscious
cultural identity. As such the church has
a special mission to be the defender and promoter
of a culture of life. This culture of life
assumes a preferential option for the poor,
opposes or puts the globalization of solidarity
in opposition to the globalization of the
markets. It makes itself a voice for those
who have no voice; denounces all violence,
all racial discrimination; walks beside those
condemned to the land, those that are displaced;
is a promoter of integral development in the
construction of peace in the search for justice
and liberation. This culture of life is what
is expressed as a service of hope. This urgency
exists in this precise moment in which the
indigenous person, conscious of being a subject
to their own history, will not opt for a church
that submerges them in a conflict where they
have to live their faith being aware of expressing
it within a dominant culture. -- Bishop
Samuel Ruiz Garcia
|
|
"We
learned that we could move others to take
action...Even though we couldn't stop the
war, I discovered that I could be involved
in the movement for peace and justice. From
that day on I knew that I was going to be
committed to working for change...."
-- Marla Ruzicka
|
 |
|
|
|
