Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Injustice Quotes - Part 4


Suspicion is far more apt to be wrong than right; oftener unjust than just. It is no friend to virtue, and always an enemy to happiness.

Hosea Ballou (1771 - 1852)



Injustice, swift, erect, and unconfin'd, Sweeps the wide earth, and tramples o'er mankind.

Homer (c. 850 BC -




The value the world sets upon motives is often grossly unjust and inaccurate. Consider, for example, two of them: mere insatiable curiosity and the desire to do good. The latter is put high above the former, and yet it is the former that moves one of the most useful men the human race has yet produced: the scientific investigator. What actually urges him on is not some brummagem idea of Service, but a boundless, almost pathological thirst to penetrate the unknown, to uncover the secret, to find out what has not been found out before. His prototype is not the liberator releasing slaves, the good Samaritan lifting up the fallen, but a dog sniffing tremendously at an infinite series of rat-holes.

H.L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)





If a man meets with injustice, it is not required that he shall not be roused to meet it; but if he is angry after he has had time to think upon it, that is sinful. The flame is not wring, but the coals are.

Henry Ward Beecher (1813 - 1887)




Man is unjust, but God is just; and finally justice triumphs.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807 - 1882)



There is a naive belief that injustice only had to be pointed out in order to be cured.

Gloria Steinem (1934 -)



No man could be actively nonviolent and not rise against social injustice, no matter where it occurred.

Gandhi (1869 - 1948)



A weak man is just by accident. A strong but non-violent man is unjust by accident.

Gandhi (1869 - 1948)



Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.

Frederick Douglass (1817? - 1895)



One day in the middle of an important examination in high school, the point of my lead pencil broke. In those days we used pocket knives to sharpen our pencils. I had forgotten my penknife and turned to ask a neighbor for his. The teacher saw this; he accused me of cheating. When I tried to explain, he gave me a tongue-lashing for lying; worse, he forbade me to play on the basketball team in the upcoming game. I could see that the more I protested the angrier he seemed to become. But again and again I stubbornly told what had happened. Even when the coach pleaded my cause, the teacher refused to budge. The disgrace was almost more than I could bear. Then, just minutes before the game, he had a change of heart and I was permitted to play. But there was no joy in it. We lost the game; and though that hurt, by far the deeper pain was being branded a cheat and a liar. Looking back. I know that lesson was God-sent. Character is shaped in just such crucibles. My parents believed me: they were understanding and encouraging. Supported by them and a clear conscience, I began to realize that when you are at peace with your Maker you can, if not ignore human criticism, at least rise above it. And I learned something else - the importance of avoiding even the appearance of evil. Though I was innocent, circumstance made me look guilty. Since this could so easily be true in many of life's situations, I made a resolution to keep even the appearance of my actions above question, as far as possible. And it struck me, too, that if this injustice happened to me, it could happen to others, and I must not judge their actions simply on appearances.

Ezra Taft Benson (1899 - 1994)



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

Elie Wiesel (1928 -)



Ah, how unjust to Nature and himself Is thoughtless, thankless, inconsistent man!

Edward Young (1683 - 1765)




Freedom from fear and injustice and oppression will be ours only in the measure that men who value such freedom are ready to sustain its possession - to defend it against every thrust from within or without.

Dwight Eisenhower (1890 - 1969)




Love of justice in the generality of men is only the fear of suffering from injustice.

Duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613 - 1680)




There are certain fundamental requisites for wise and resolute democratic leadership. It must build on hope, not on fear; on honesty, not on falsehood; on justice, not on injustice; on public tranquility, not on violence; on freedom, not on enslavement. It must weave a social fabric in which the most important strands are a devotion to truth and a commitment to righteousness. These are essential ingredients of the American way of life. They are the necessary conditions for the achievement of freedom and human progress the world over.

Dr. Edmund Ezra Day




What is the use of this fuss about morality when the issue only involves a horse? The first and most difficult teaching of civilisation concerns man's behaviour to his inferiors. Make humanity gentle or reasonable toward animals, and strife or injustice between human beings would speedily terminate.

Dr Edward Mayhew (1813 - 1868)




There is a marvelous story of a man who once stood before God, his heart breaking from the pain and injustice in the world. "Dear God." he cried out, "look at all the suffering, the anguish and distress in your world. Why don't you send help?" God responded,"I did send help. I sent you." When we tell our children that story, we must tell them that each one of them was sent to help repair the broken world-and that it is not the task of an instant or of a year, but of a lifetime.

David J. Wolpe




Unjust criticism is usually disguised compliment. It often means that you have aroused jealously and envy. Remember that no one ever kicks a dead log.

Dale Carnegie (1888 - 1955)





Actually, what is the political struggle that we witness? It is the instinctive struggle of all people toward liberty. And what is this liberty, whose very name makes the heart beat faster and shakes the world? Is it not the union of all liberties - liberty of conscience, of education, of association, of the press, of travel, of labor, of trade? In short, is not liberty the freedom of every person to make full use of his faculties, so long as he does not harm other persons while doing so? Is not liberty the destruction of all despotism-including, of course, legal despotism? Finally, is not liberty the restricting of the law only to its rational sphere of organizing the right of the individual to lawful self-defense; of punishing injustice?

Claude Bastiat (1801 - 1850)





Law is justice. In this proposition a simple and enduring government can be conceived. And I defy anyone to say how even the thought of revolution, of insurrection, of the slightest uprising could arise against a government whose organized force was confined only to suppressing injustice.

Claude Bastiat (1801 - 1850)





True patriotism hates injustice in its own land more than anywhere else.

Clarence Darrow (1857 - 1938)




The objector and the rebel who raises his voice against what he believes to be the injustice of the present and the wrongs of the past is the one who hunches the world along.

Clarence Darrow (1857 - 1938)





I cease not to advocate peace; even though unjust it is better than the most just war.

Cicero (106 - 43 BC)




If people can be educated to see the lowly side of their own natures, it may be hoped that they will also learn to understand and to love their fellow men better. A little less hypocrisy and a little more tolerance towards oneself can only have good results in respect for our neighbor; for we are all too prone to transfer to our fellows the injustice and violence we inflict upon our own natures.

Carl Jung (1875 - 1961)






It is better to have too much courtesy than too little, provided you are not equally courteous to all, for that would be injustice.

Baltasar Gracian (1601 - 1658)




The emancipation of women from intemperance, injustice, prejudice, and bigotry. see Edgar Y. Harburg, We Gotta be Free

Amelia Bloomer (1818 - 1894)





INJUSTICE, n. A burden which of all those that we load upon others and carry ourselves is lightest in the hands and heaviest upon the back.

Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914)




Modern critics of the Conquest have an unlikely ally in the eighteenth-century prophet of laissez-faire economics: "It is not by the importation of gold and silver, that the discovery of America has enriched Europe. ...The commodities of Europe were almost all new to America, and many of those of America were new to Europe. A new set of exchanges, therefore, began t o take place which had never been thought of before, and which should naturally have proved as advantageous to the new, as it certainly did to the old continent. The savage injustice of the Europeans rendered an event, which ought to have been beneficial to all, ruinous and destructive to several of those unfortunate countries."

Adam Smith

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