Quotes about Injustice

It will be asked how will the two masses of Continental and of State money have cost the people of the United States seventy-two millions of dollars, when they are to be redeemed now with about six million? I answer that the difference, being sixty-six millions, has been lost on the paper bills separately by the successive holders of them. Every one, through whose hands a bill passed, lost on that bill what it lost in value during the time it was in his hands. This was a real tax on him; and in this way the people of the United States actually contributed those sixty-six millions of dollars during the war, and by a mode of taxation the most oppressive of all because the most unequal of all.

"Find out just what the people will submit to and you have found
out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon
them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words
or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the
endurance of those whom they oppress."

What kind of world permitted such terrible injustice, where good men were stripped of everything and soulless creatures of malice and hatred survived to glory in their pointless death?

Justice will only exist where those not affected by injustice are filled with the same amount of indignation as those offended.

There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.

At times you have to fight. No way around it. At some point, every one of us is confronted with danger or injustice. How we choose to combat that challenge is often life-defining. You can face difficulties head-on, or run from them, or ignore them until they consume you. But no one escapes conflict. No one.

I spent a lot of time mulling over what S. B. had told me about his thirteen months in solitary confinement, surrounded by death, and the "wild thinking" that drew him back to his beginnings. It seemed to me that this urge to retrace one's steps nto the past arises neither from nostalgia nor from a need to tell one's story to the world. It is a way of cheating death. An instinct for life in the face of oblivion. For to recollect the innocence of childhood o the viogr of youth in a moment of peril is to retrieve a sense of leife's infinite possiblitiy, ot conjure a period in our life when the wold seemed ours for the taking, and we thought we would never die. It is, in essence, to recapture a sense of our capacity to act and initiate someothing new, for, as Hannah Arendt notes, action is synonymous with our capacity to bring new life into the wold. Mortality is thus conuntermandded by natality, ai ti si this unquenchable desire for renewal, this refusal to go gently into that good night, that explains why we go back, tumbling through the darkness, in search of the light that flooded and filled our first conscious years. The days of wine and roses. When our livesstretched before us liek a field of dreams. But if our imagniation springs to our rescue in such dark times, holding out the promise of rebirth, how do we fare when we are released from darkness, and are returned to our everyday lives? How do we address the injustices we have endured, the life we have wasted, the pain we have so needlessly suffered? This question was much on my mind the day I wen to see Fina Kamara in the Murraytown Amputee Camp.

Some believe there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills -- against misery, against ignorance, or injustice and violence. Yet many of the world's great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man. A young monk began the Protestant reformation, a young general extended an empire from Macedonia to the borders of the earth, and a young woman reclaimed the territory of France. It was a young Italian explorer who discovered the New World, and 32 year old Thomas Jefferson who proclaimed that all men are created equal. 'Give me a place to stand,' said Archimedes, 'and I will move the world.' These men moved the world, and so can we all.

We have ancient habits to deal with, vast structures of power, indescribably complicated problems to solve. But unless we abdicate our humanity altogether and succumb to fear and impotence in the presence of the weapons we have ourselves created, it is as possible and as urgent to put an end to war and violence between nations as it is to put an end to poverty and racial injustice.

Laws just or unjust may govern men's actions. Tyrannies may restrain or regulate their words. The machinery of propaganda may pack their minds with falsehood and deny them truth for many generations of time. But the soul of man thus held in trance or frozen in a long night can be awakened by a spark coming from God knows where and in a moment the whole structure of lies and oppression is on trial for its life.

When my love swears that she is made of truth I do believe her, though I know she lies, That she might think me some untutor'd youth, Unlearned in the world's false subtleties. Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young, Although she knows my days are past the best, Simply I credit her false speaking tongue: On both sides thus is simple truth suppress'd. But wherefore says she not she is unjust? And wherefore say not I that I am old? O, love's best habit is in seeming trust, And age in love loves not to have years told: Therefore I lie with her and she with me, And in our faults by lies we flatter'd be.

If we have made an error, done a wrong, been unjust to another or to ourselves, or, like the Pharisee, passed by some opportunity for good, we should have the courage to face our mistake squarely, to call it boldly by its right name, to acknowledge it frankly and to put in no flimsy alibis of excuse to protect an anemic self-esteem.

1. A big black bug bit a big brown bear. 2. Bring a bit of buttered brown bran bread. 3. Just which one he wants I don't know. 4. His daughter was going to New York to study law. 5. That's the question that really troubles him. 6. Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind. 7. Thou wouldst not play false yet wouldst wrongly win. 8. Amidst the mists and coldest frosts, With stoutest wrists and loudest boasts, He hits his fists against the posts, And still insists he sees the ghosts. 9. An Austrian army awfully arrayed, Boldly by battery besiege Belgrade; Cossack commanders cannonading come, Deal devastation's dire destructive doom; Ev'ry endeavor engineers essay, For fame, for freedom, fight, fierce, furious fray. Gen'rals 'gainst gen'rals grapple,-gracious God! How honors Heav'n heroic hardihood! Infuriate, indiscriminate in ill, Just Jesus, instant innocence instill! Kinsmen kill kinsmen, kindred kindred kill. Labor low levels longest, loftiest lines; Men march 'midst mounds, motes, mountains, murd'rous mines. Now noisy, noxious numbers notice nought, Of outward obstacle o'ercoming ought; Poor patriots perish, persecution's pest! Quite quiet Quakers "Quarter, quarter" quest; Reason returns, religion, religion, right, redounds, Suwarrow stop such sanguinary sounds! Truce to thee, Turkey, terror to thy train! Unwise, unjust, unmerciful Ukraine! Vanish vile vengeance, vanish victory vain! Why wish we warfare, wherefore welcome won Xerxes, Xantippus, Xavier, Xenophon? Yield, ye young Yaghier yeomen, yield your yell! Zimmerman's, Zoroaster's zeal Again attract; art against arms appeal. All, all ambitious aims, avaunt, away! Et caetera, et caetera, et caeterä.1 10. I am the very model of a model major-general, I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral, I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical, From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical; I'm very well acquainted too with matters mathematical; I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical; About binomial theorem I'm teeming with a lot of news- With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse; . . . I'm very good at integral and differential calculus; I know the scientific names of beings animalculous; In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral I'm the very model of a modern major-general.2 1 Anonymous, "Alliteration, or the Siege of Belgrade" Bartlett's Familiar Quotations 2 The Pirates of Penzance

National injustice is a sure road to national downfall.

Delay in justice is injustice.

I believe in pride of race and lineage and self - in pride of self so deep as to scorn injustice to other selves.

What bitterness could have enveloped them. They could have taken the attitude that the Lord was unjust. They had lived good lives. Why did this have to happen to a boy with such bright prospects? But rather, this was their attitude, in their own words: "We shall be eternally grateful for the thirteen wonderful years that we were privileged to have him in our midst. We know that we are blessed in the knowledge that we are sealed as an eternal family. We know that Carl was preparing to fill a mission. We know that he was prepared for that mission and that he is now filling it." No self-pity here, but rather an attitude of faith and hope and optimism, even under the most trying of circumstances!

Rather suffer an injustice than commit one.

Always remember, no one can debase you but yourself. Slander, satire, falsehood, injustice-these can never rob you of your manhood. Men may lie about you, they may denounce you, they may cherish suspicions manifold, they may make your failings the target of their wit or cruelty. Never be alarmed; never swerve an inch from the line your judgment and conscience have marked out for you. They cannot, by all their efforts, take away your knowledge of yourself, the purity of your character, and the generosity of your nature. While these are left, you are unharmed.

In his later reminiscences, Ulysses S. Grant roundly condemned the Mexican War in which he had served, and even saw the Civil War as a sort of karmic retribution for America's sins against its southern neighbor: "Generally the officers of the army were indifferent whether the annexation [of Texas] was consummated or not; but not so all of them. For myself, I was bitterly opposed to the measure, and to this day regard the war, which resulted, as one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation. It was an instance of a republic following the bad example of European monarchies, in not considering justice in their desire to acquire additional territory."

. . . nothing could be more grotesquely unjust than a code of morals, reinforced by laws, which relieves men from responsibility for irregular sexual acts, and for the same acts drives women to abortion, infanticide, prostitution, and self-destruction.

It is possible that the scrupulously honest man may not grow rich so fast as the unscrupulous and dishonest one; but the success will be of a truer kind, earned without fraud or injustice. And even though a man should for a time be unsuccessful, still he must be honest: better lose all and save character. For character is itself a fortune. . . .

An injustice anywhere is an injustice everywhere.

It hath been said that an unjust peace is to be preferred before a just war.

Recalling an old magistrate's words to a young attorney, The rain it raineth on the just And also on the unjust fella; But chiefly on the just, because The unjust steals the just's umbrella.

Punishment is justice for the unjust.

It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy.

Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.

One man's justice is another's injustice; one man's beauty another's ugliness; one man's wisdom anpther's folly.