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00a96ea Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities. atheism atrocities barbarity injustice religion skepticism Voltaire
3274683 I guess the only time most people think about injustice is when it happens to them. injustice Charles Bukowski
b05dca6 War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth a war, is much worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice, -- is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other. ethics fight foreign-policy injustice inspirational justice morality motivational patriotic safety selfish tyranny war will John Stuart Mill
5e9753d In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt as injustice. education fair-play injustice punishment Charles Dickens
8eec49e Some things you must always be unable to bear. Some things you must never stop refusing to bear. Injustice and outrage and dishonor and shame. No matter how young you are or how old you have got. Not for kudos and not for cash: your picture in the paper nor money in the bank either. Just refuse to bear them. injustice William Faulkner
485fbf0 In the beginning there was only a small amount of injustice abroad in the world, but everyone who came afterwards added their portion, always thinking it was very small and unimportant, and look where we have ended up today. injustice Paulo Coelho
076b243 I was astonished, bewildered. This was America, a country where, whatever its faults, people could speak, write, assemble, demonstrate without fear. It was in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights. We were a democracy... But I knew it wasn't a dream; there was a painful lump on the side of my head... The state and its police were not neutral referees in a society of contending interests. They were on the side of the rich and powerful. Free speech? Try it and the police will be there with their horses, their clubs, their guns, to stop you. From that moment on, I was no longer a liberal, a believer in the self-correcting character of American democracy. I was a radical, believing that something fundamental was wrong in this country--not just the existence of poverty amidst great wealth, not just the horrible treatment of black people, but something rotten at the root. The situation required not just a new president or new laws, but an uprooting of the old order, the introduction of a new kind of society--cooperative, peaceful, egalitarian. authoritarianism bill-of-rights constitution democracy egalitarianism failed-liberalism first-amendment free-speech injustice police power-interests radical-politics usa Howard Zinn
2b38ece Your god, sir, is the World. In my eyes, you, too, if not an infidel, are an idolater. I conceive that you ignorantly worship: in all things you appear to me too superstitious. Sir, your god, your great Bel, your fish-tailed Dagon, rises before me as a demon. You, and such as you, have raised him to a throne, put on him a crown, given him a sceptre. Behold how hideously he governs! See him busied at the work he likes best -- making marriages. He binds the young to the old, the strong to the imbecile. He stretches out the arm of Mezentius and fetters the dead to the living. In his realm there is hatred -- secret hatred: there is disgust -- unspoken disgust: there is treachery -- family treachery: there is vice -- deep, deadly, domestic vice. In his dominions, children grow unloving between parents who have never loved: infants are nursed on deception from their very birth: they are reared in an atmosphere corrupt with lies ... All that surrounds him hastens to decay: all declines and degenerates under his sceptre. god is a masked Death. contempt death decay demons discord disgust disharmony disparity domestic-life expectations false-belief families family-relationships force hatred hypocrisy idolatry injustice lovelessness marriage married-life matrimony preconceptions scorn social-norms society unfreedom unhappiness vice women worldliness Charlotte Brontë
bb14ef2 I see, these books are probably law books, and it is an essential part of the justice dispensed here that you should be condemned not only in innocence but also in ignorance. injustice the-trial Franz Kafka
f17a2e1 Suppose that a man leaps out of a burning building--as my dear friend and colleague Jeff Goldberg sat and said to my face over a table at La Tomate in Washington not two years ago--and lands on a bystander in the street below. Now, make the burning building be Europe, and the luckless man underneath be the Palestinian Arabs. Is this a historical injustice? Has the man below been made a victim, with infinite cause of complaint and indefinite justification for violent retaliation? My own reply would be a provisional 'no,' but only on these conditions. The man leaping from the burning building must still make such restitution as he can to the man who broke his fall, and must not pretend that he never even landed on him. And he must base his case on the singularity and uniqueness of the original leap. It can't, in other words, be 'leap, leap, leap' for four generations and more. The people underneath cannot be expected to tolerate leaping on this scale and of this duration, if you catch my drift. In Palestine, tread softly, for you tread on their dreams. And do tell the Palestinians that they were never fallen upon and bruised in the first place. Do not shame yourself with the cheap lie that they were told by their leaders to run away. Also, stop saying that nobody knew how to cultivate oranges in Jaffa until the Jews showed them how. 'Making the desert bloom'--one of Yvonne's stock phrases--makes desert dwellers out of people who were the agricultural superiors of the Crusaders. analogies arabs colonialism crusades europe history injustice israel israeli-palestinian-conflict jaffa jeff-goldberg jews palestine palestinians victims washington Christopher Hitchens
d489876 The people who deserved to die took forever to do so. Those who deserved to live always went too soon. good-and-evil injustice life Rick Riordan
34b3800 Police are inevitably corrupted. ... Police always observe that criminals prosper. It takes a pretty dull policeman to miss the fact that the position of authority is the most prosperous criminal position available. criminals injustice police Frank Herbert
5459a7f But by this time I was acutely conscious of the gap between law and justice. I knew that the letter of the law was not as important as who held the power in any real-life situation. injustice justice law legal-system power privilege Howard Zinn
ad4d1b4 There is a power that can be created out of pent-up indignation, courage, and the inspiration of a common cause, and that if enough people put their minds and bodies into that cause, they can win. It is a phenomenon recorded again and against in the history of popular movements against injustice all over the world. coruage indignation injustice inspiration popular-movements Howard Zinn
0f7de3d If the system turns away from the abuses inflicted on the guilty, then who can be next but the innocents? injustice innocence justice police system Michael Connelly
c846367 As long as there is one person suffering an injustice; as long as one person is forced to bear an unnecessary sorrow; as long as one person is subject to an undeserved pain, the worship of a God is a demoralizing humiliation. As long as there is one mistake in the universe; as long as one wrong is permitted to exist; as long as there is hatred and antagonism among mankind, the existence of a God is a moral impossibility. said: 'Injustice upon earth renders the justice of of heaven impossible. earth hatred impossibility ingersoll injustice justice mankind mistake morality pain robert-g-ingersoll robert-green-ingersoll robert-ingersoll sorrow suffering universe wrong Joseph Lewis
d97909d There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for me to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed or enforced nor objectively interpreted - and you create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on guilt. guilt injustice innocence innocent justice law morality morals values Ayn Rand
fc38a76 The courtroom is one instance of the fact that while our society may be liberal and democratic in some large and vague sense, its moving parts, its smaller chambers--its classrooms, its workplaces, its corporate boardrooms, its jails, its military barracks--are flagrantly undemocratic, dominated by one commanding person or a tiny elite of power. concentration-of-power courtroom domination elite injustice power Howard Zinn
d143be1 The willingness to undertake such action cannot be based on certainties, but on those possibilities glimpsed in a reading of history different from the customary painful recounting of human cruelties. In such a reading we can find not only war but resistance to war, not only injustice but rebellion against injustice, not only selfishness but self-sacrifice, not only silence in the fact of tyranny but defiance, not only callousness but compassion. Human beings show a broad spectrum of qualities, but it is the worst of these that are usually emphasized, and the result, too often, is to dishearten us, diminish our spirit. And yet, historically, that spirit refuses to surrender. history hope injustice optimisim spirit Howard Zinn
7f870e5 Being a copper I like to see the law win. I'd like to see the flashy well-dressed mugs like Eddie Mars spoiling their manicures in the rock quarry at Folsom, alongside of the poor little slum-bred guys that got knocked over on their first caper amd never had a break since. That's what I'd like. You and me both lived too long to think I'm likely to see it happen. Not in this town, not in any town half this size, in any part of this wide, green and beautiful U.S.A. We just don't run our country that way. corruption crime injustice justice money prison Raymond Chandler
1e6e78d I wish we had the technology to fight God on an equal basis. To beard him in his den. To fight back for all of the injustices heaped on humanity. To allow him to alter his smug arrogance or be blown to hell. anti-theism god injustice Dan Simmons
3d167c3 Hawaii once had a rat problem. Then, somebody hit upon a brilliant solution. import mongooses from India. Mongooses would kill the rats. It worked. Mongooses did kill the rats. Mongooses also killed chickens, young pigs, birds, cats, dogs, and small children. There have been reports of mongooses attacking motorbikes, power lawn mowers, golf carts, and James Michener. in Hawaii now, there are as many mongooses as there once were rats. Hawaii had traded its rat problem for a mongoose problem. Hawaii was determined nothing like that would ever happen again. How could Leigh-Cheri draw for Gulietta the appropriate analogy between Hawaii's rodents and society at large? Society had a crime problem. It hired cops to attack crime. Now society has a cop problem. crime hawaii injustice justice mongooses rodents Tom Robbins
3cfbe6f If any think that their influence would be lost there, and their voices no longer afflict the ear of the State, that they would not be as an enemy within its walls, they do not know how much truth is stronger than errors, nor how much more eloquently and effectively he can combat injustice who has experienced a little in his own person. Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence. injustice voting Henry David Thoreau
a68f48b The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretence but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea--something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to... imperialism injustice politics tyranny western-society Joseph Conrad
b412a98 "I have brought peace to this land, and security," he began. "And what of your soul, when you use the cleverness of argument to cloak such acts? Do you think that the peace of a thousand cancels out the unjust death of one single person? It may be desirable, it may win you praise from those who have happily survived you and prospered from your deeds, but you have committed ignoble acts, and have been too proud to own them. I have waited patiently here, hoping that you would come to me, for if you understood, then some of your acts would be mitigated. But instead you send me this manuscript, proud, magisterial, and demonstrating only that you have understood nothing at all." "I returned to public life on your advice, madam," he said stiffly. "Yes; I advised it. I said if learning must die it should do so with a friend by its bedside. Not an assassin." -- doctrine evil good injustice killing learning peace philosophy pride prosperity public-office soul values vice virtue Iain Pears
c9fe539 "You make someone into a object of - not so much of pity as of weakness, sickness, stupidity, inefectiveness, do you see what I mean? You hit them for their stupidity and their inability to respond, and when you've hurt them, marked them, they're even more sick and ugly, aren't they? And they're afraid and cringing too. Oh, I know this isn't very pleasant, but you did ask." "Go on" he said. "So you've got a frightened, stupid, even disabled person, silenced, made ugly, and what can you do with someone like that, someone who's unworthy of being treated well? You treat them badly because that's what they deserve. One thinks of poor little kids that no one love because they're dirty, sovered in snot and shit, and always screaming. So you beat them because they're hateful, they're low, they're sub-human. That's all they're good for, being hit, being reduced even further." hatred injustice prejudice violence Ruth Rendell
a959726 Therefore it seemed a dreadful injustice that these wise races should perish at the hands of creatures who were still little more than animals. It was as if vultures feasted on and squabbled over the paralyzed body of the youthful poet who could only stare at them with puzzled eyes as they slowly robbed him of an exquisite existence they would never appreciate, never know they were taking. exquiste fantasy human-nature injustice Michael Moorcock
e37f92d "When now we turn and look five miles above, there on the edge of town are five houses of prostitutes,--two of blacks and three of whites; and in one of the houses of the whites a worthless black boy was harbored too openly two years ago; so he was hanged for rape. And here, too, is the high whitewashed fence of the "stockade," as the county prison is called; the white folks say it is ever full of black criminals,--the black folks say that only colored boys are sent to jail, and they not because they are guilty, but because the State needs criminals to eke out its income by their forced labor." injustice legacy systemic-racism W.E.B. Du Bois
a6ff9e2 Every nation that carries in its bosom great and unredressed injustice has in it the elements of this last convulsion. injustice people-s-revolution slavery Harriet Beecher Stowe
5f42f6c The universe was playing with loaded dice, which insured an excess of cowards in our ranks. fear injustice oppression Ta-Nehisi Coates
d41403d But this is your home' 'Not any longer, my poppet. Women make nests but men make bequests and scatter them. Heigh-ho! gender inheritence injustice Joan Aiken
97aec45 How do you explain a world that gifts evil men with privilege and wealth and looks the other way while they torment and abuse the weakest members of society? human-nature injustice philosophy privilege wealth C.S. Harris
2482301 Since most law-abiding citizens had no contact with the parole system, it was not a priority with the state legislatures. And since most of the state's prisoners were either poor or black, and unable to use the system to their advantage, it was easy to hit them with harsh sentences and keep them locked up. But for an inmate with a few connections and some cash, the parole system was a marvelous labyrinth of contradictory laws that allowed the Parole Board to pass out favors. injustice injustice-quotes judicial-system jury justice parole prison-system John Grisham
012f0e6 The windows on the Dovetail side of the gatehouse were larger, and she could see the two corgi dogs outside, peering in through the lead latticework, flabbergasted that they had, through some enormous lacuna in procedure, been left on the outside, wagging their tails somewhat uncertainly, as if, in a world that allowed such mistakes, nothing could be counted on. injustice outside Neal Stephenson
ce30b4a There were countless injustices and difficulties in this world, but small points of light too, where the darkness was held back. hope injustice light Alexander McCall Smith
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