“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.” ——Bishop Desmond Tutu
“Cowardice asks the question: is it safe? Expediency asks the question: is it politic? Vanity asks the question: is it popular? But conscience asks the question: is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular- but one must take it simply because it is right.” ——Martin Luther King Jr., 1929-1968
“Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens.” ——Plato, Ancient Greek philosopher (428/427-348/347 B.C.)
“Primates often have trouble imagining a universe not run by an angry alpha male.” ——Author Unknown
“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” ——Abraham Lincoln
“Those that have so much power over others as to be able to oppress them have seldom so much over themselves as not to oppress.” ——Matthew Henry
“A good leader knows the way, shows the way, and goes the way.” ——Author Unknown
“Love does not dominate, it cultivates.” ——Author Unknown
“The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins.” ——Soren Kierkegaard
“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy: that is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” ——John Kenneth Galbraith
“When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.” ——Jimi Hendrix
“There is only one-way in which one can endure man’s inhumanity to man and that is to try, in one’s own life, to exemplify man’s humanity to man.” ——Alan Paton
“Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent then the one derived from fear of punishment.” ——Gandhi
“I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.” ——Abraham Lincoln
“He who is merely just is severe.” ——Voltaire
“Cowards are cruel, but the brave
Love mercy, and delight to save.” ——John Gay
“The quality of mercy is not strain’d,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.” ——William Shakespeare
“…it is our practice not to lead by force… For the mystery of godliness belongs to those who are willing, not to those who are overpowered.” ——Gregory of Nazianzus
“Such is the mercy of God that he will hold his children in the consuming fire of his distance until they pay the utmost farthing, until they drop the purse of selfishness with all the dross that is in it, and rush home to the Father and to the Son and the brethren—rush inside the life-giving Fire whose outer circle burns.” ——George MacDonald
“I tell you, brethren, if mercies and if judgments do not convert you, God has no other arrows in His quiver.” ——Robert Murray M’Cheyne
“Sometimes the best way to convince someone that he is wrong is to let him have his way.” ——Red O’Donnell
“The vague and tenuous hope that God is too kind to punish the ungodly has become a deadly opiate for the consciences of millions.” ——A. W. Tozer
“The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.” ——Herbert Spencer
“Nothing emboldens sin so much as mercy.” ——William Shakespeare
“Mercy, detached from Justice, grows unmerciful.” ——C. S. Lewis
“God will give absolute justice, which is the only good thing. He will spare nothing to bring his children back to himself, their sole well-being, whether he achieve it here—or there.” ——George MacDonald
“The pure, mere love of God is that alone from which sinners are justly to expect that no sin will pass unpunished, but that His love will visit them with every calamity and distress that can help to break and purify the bestial heart of man and awaken in him true repentance and conversion to God. It is love alone in the holy Deity that will allow no peace to the wicked, nor ever cease its judgments till every sinner is forced to confess that it is good for him that he has been in trouble, and thankfully own that not the wrath but the love of God has plucked out that right eye, cut off that right band, which he ought to have done but would not do for himself and his own salvation.” ——William Law
“That God will forgive may, indeed, be established as the first and fundamental truth of religion; for though the knowledge of his existence is the origin of philosophy, yet, without the belief of his mercy, it would have little influence upon our moral conduct. There could be no prospect of enjoying the protection or regard of him whom the least deviation from rectitude made inexorable for ever; and every man would naturally withdraw his thoughts from the contemplation of a creator, whom he must consider as a governor too pure to be pleased, and too severe to be pacified; as an enemy infinitely wise and infinitely powerful, whom he could neither deceive, escape, nor resist.” ——Samuel Johnson
“Mercy allows you to continue on in sin; grace empowers you to overcome it.” ——Jacquelyn K. Heasley
“Reconciliation has to be built with full recognition and accountability for the wrong.” ——Martha Kilpatrick
“Abel’s blood cries out ‘vengeance’—Jesus’ blood cries out ‘mercy’.” ——Jacquelyn K. Heasley
“Sweet mercy is nobility’s true badge.” ——William Shakespeare
“The goal of pursuit of justice must not simply be that justice happens but that reconciliation also happens.” ——Miroslav Volf
“Violence as a way of achieving justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert.” ——Martin Luther King
“Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.” ——Salvor Hardin
“Who overcomes by force hath overcome but half his foe.” ——John Milton
“Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. This is another paradox: what is soft is strong.” ——Lao-Tzu
“I saw that the kingdom must be interior before it can be exterior, that it is a kingdom of ideas, and not one of brute force; that His rule is over hearts, not over places; that His victories must be inward before they can be outward; that He seeks to control spirits rather than bodies; that no triumph could satisfy Him but a triumph that gains the heart; that in short, where God really reigns, the surrender must be the interior surrender of the convicted free men, and not merely the outward surrender of the conquered slave.” ——Hannah Whitall Smith
“God will not conquer evil by crushing it under-foot—any god of man’s idea could do that—but by conquest of heart over heart, of life over life, of life over death, of love over all.” ——George MacDonald
“The glory of Christianity is to conquer by forgiveness.” ——William Blake
“Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?” ——Abraham Lincoln
“Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend.” ——Martin Luther King Jr.
“Justice denied anywhere diminishes justice everywhere.” ——Martin Luther King, Jr.
“…If by a liberal they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people- their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, their civil liberties, if that is what they mean by a ‘liberal’ then I am proud to be a liberal.” ——John F. Kennedy
“As we must account for every idle word, so must we account for every idle silence.” ——Benjamin Franklin
“At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.” ——Aristotle
“Back of the problem of race and color lies a greater problem and that is the fact that so many civilized person’s are willing to live in comfort even if the price of this is poverty, ignorance, and disease of the majority of their fellowmen, [and] that to maintain this privilege men have waged war until today war tends to become universal and continuous.” ——W. E. B. DuBois, writer, teacher, Civil Rights spokesman, 1868-1963
“Everything secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity.” ——Lord Acton [John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton] (1834-1902), First Baron Acton of Aldenham, Letter, 23 January 1861
“Few are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of the colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change. Each time a person stands up for an idea, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, (s)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.” ——Robert F. Kennedy
“For the saddest words of tongue or pen these are, ‘It might have been’.” ——John Greenleaf Whittier
“He who allows oppression, shares the crime.” ——Erasmus Darwin
“I believe that justice is instinct and innate; the moral sense is as much a part of our constitution as that of feeling, seeing and hearing.” ——Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), 3rd US president, principal author of the Declaration of Independence
“Justice, sir, is the great interest of man on earth. It is the ligament which holds civilized beings and civilized nations together.” ——Daniel Webster
“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.'” ——Martin Luther King Jr.
“I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not so desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.” ——Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience, 1849
“I’m convinced that if we are to get on the right side for the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin to shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people; the giant triplets of racism, militarism, and economic exploitation are incapable of being conquered.” ——Martin Luther King Jr.
“If a man hasn’t discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.” ——Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“If a thief breaks into my house, burns and destroys my property, and kills or threatens to kill me, or those that are in it, and to ‘bind me in all cases whatsoever’ to his absolute will, am I to suffer it?” ——Thomas Paine, The American Crisis
“If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.” ——Henry David Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience, 1849
“The civility of no race can be perfect whilst another race is degraded. It is a doctrine alike of the oldest and of the newest philosophy, that man is one, and that you cannot injure any member, without a sympathetic injury to all the members.” ——Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1844
“If we do not maintain justice, justice will not maintain us.” ——Francis Bacon