Truth × Justice

Truth and Justice

Browse 30 quotations catalogued under truth with "justice" in the text or topic label.

30 quotes

This collection contains 30 quotations filed under Truth with "justice" in the quote text or topic label. These keyword matches offer a starting point for exploring Truth and Justice; they do not by themselves establish a shared argument or a historical connection between the authors.

The authors represented include Immanuel Kant, John Locke, Arthur Schopenhauer, Herbert Marcuse, and others. Read each quotation in its own context rather than assuming that these authors share a position.

One matching quotation reads: "For instance, if you have by a lie hindered a man who is even now planning a murder, you are legally responsible for all the consequences. But if you have stri…" The full quotation appears below.

Another matching quotation reads: "To teach him betimes to love and be good-natur'd to others, is to lay early the true foundation of an honest man; all injustice generally s…" Compare the wording and surrounding context to decide how each passage relates to your question.

Use the quotation links to explore individual entries and the author links to visit their profiles on QuoteLineage. For broader reading beyond these keyword matches, explore all Truth quotes or the concept page for Justice.

30 Quotes on Truth and Justice

"For instance, if you have by a lie hindered a man who is even now planning a murder, you are legally responsible for all the consequences. But if you have strictly adhered to the truth, public justice can find no fault with you, be the unforeseen consequence what it may. It is possible that whilst you have honestly answered Yes to the murderer’s question, whether his intended victim is in the house, the latter may have gone out unobserved, and so not have come in the way of the murderer, and the deed therefore have not been done; whereas, if you lied and said he was not in the house, and he had really gone out so that the murderer met him as he went, and executed his purpose on him, then you might with justice be accused as the cause of his death. For, if you had spoken the truth as well as you knew it, perhaps the murderer while seeking for his enemy in the house might have been caught by neighbours coming up and the deed been prevented."

— Immanuel Kant

"To teach him betimes to love and be good-natur'd to others, is to lay early the true foundation of an honest man; all injustice generally springing from too great love of ourselves and too little of others."

"Now if plurality and difference belong only to the appearance-form; if there is but one and the same Entity manifested in all living things: it follows that, when we obliterate the distinction between the ego and the non-ego, we are not the sport of an illusion. Rather are we so, when we maintain the reality of individuation, — a thing the Hindus call Maya, that is, a deceptive vision, a phantasma. The former theory we have found to be the actual source of the phaenomenon of Compassion; indeed Compassion is nothing but its translation into definite expression. This, therefore, is what I should regard as the metaphysical foundation of Ethics, and should describe it as the sense which identifies the ego with the non-ego, so that the individual directly recognises in another his own self, his true and very being. From this standpoint the profoundest teaching of theory pushed to its furthest limits may be shown in the end to harmonise perfectly with the rules of justice and loving-kindness, as exercised; and conversely, it will be clear that practical philosophers, that is, the upright, the beneficent, the magnanimous, do but declare through their acts the same truth as the man of speculation wins by laborious research … He who is morally noble, however deficient in mental penetration, reveals by his conduct the deepest insight, the truest wisdom; and puts to shame the most accomplished and learned genius, if the latter's acts betray that his heart is yet a stranger to this great principle, — the metaphysical unity of life."

— Arthur Schopenhauer

"Society is eliminating the prerogatives and privileges of feudal. aristocratic culture together with its content. The fact that the transcending truths of the fine arts, the aesthetics of life and thought, were accessible only to the few wealthy and educated was the fault of a repressive society. But this fault is not corrected by paperbacks, general education, long-playing records, and the abolition of formal dress in the theater and concert hall. The cultural privileges expressed the injustice of freedom, the contradiction between ideology and reality, the separation of intellectual from material productivity; but they also provided a protected realm in which the tabooed truths could survive in abstract integrity—remote from the society which suppressed them."

— Herbert Marcuse

"Do not all theists insist that there can be no morality, no justice, honesty or fidelity without the belief in a Divine Power? Based upon fear and hope, such morality has always been a vile product, imbued partly with self-righteousness, partly with hypocrisy. As to truth, justice, and fidelity, who have been their brave exponents and daring proclaimers? Nearly always the godless ones: the Atheists; they lived, fought, and died for them. They knew that justice, truth, and fidelity are not conditioned in heaven, but that they are related to and interwoven with the tremendous changes going on in the social and material life of the human race; not fixed and eternal, but fluctuating, even as life itself."

— Emma Goldman

"It is both foolish and wicked to teach the average man who is not well off that some wrong or injustice has been done him, and that he should hope for redress elsewhere than in his own industry, honesty and intelligence."

— Theodore Roosevelt

"The artist, however faithful to his personal vision of reality, becomes the last champion of the individual mind and sensibility against an intrusive society and an officious state. The great artist is thus a solitary figure. He has, as Frost said, a lover's quarrel with the world. In pursuing his perceptions of reality, he must often sail against the currents of his time. This is not a popular role. If Robert Frost was much honored in his lifetime, it was because a good many preferred to ignore his darker truths. Yet in retrospect, we see how the artist's fidelity has strengthened the fiber of our national life. If sometimes our great artist have been the most critical of our society, it is because their sensitivity and their concern for justice, which must motivate any true artist, makes him aware that our Nation falls short of its highest potential. I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist."

— John F. Kennedy

"Before I came into the department, your Excellency was obliged often to stand Quarter-master. However capable the principal was of doing his duty, he was hardly ever with you. The line and the staff were at war with each other. The country had been plundered in a way that would now breed a kind of civil war between the staff and the inhabitants. The manner of my engaging in this business, and your Excellency's declaration to the Committee of Congress, that you would stand Quarter-master no longer, are circumstances which I wish may not be forgotten; as I may have occasion, at some future day, to appeal to your Excellency for my own justification. One thing I can say, with truth and sincerity, that I have conducted the business with as much prudence and economy, as if my private fortune had been answerable for the disbursements. And I believe your Excellency will do me the justice to say, the department has cooperated with your measures as far as circumstances were to be governed by me; and this you had reason to apprehend would not have been the case had I not taken direction of the business. And here, in justice to my colleagues, I shall mention that I think them entitled to your Excellency's personal esteem, from the warmth of their wishes, and a desire to promote your ease and convenience."

— Nathanael Greene

"Dr. King understood that peace without justice was no peace at all; that aligning our reality with our ideals often requires the speaking of uncomfortable truths and the creative tension of non-violent protest. But he also understood that to bring about true and lasting change, there must be the possibility of reconciliation; that any social movement has to channel this tension through the spirit of love and mutuality. If he were alive today, I believe he would remind us that the unemployed worker can rightly challenge the excesses of Wall Street without demonizing all who work there; that the businessman can enter tough negotiations with his company’s union without vilifying the right to collectively bargain. He would want us to know we can argue fiercely about the proper size and role of government without questioning each other’s love for this country -- -- with the knowledge that in this democracy, government is no distant object but is rather an expression of our common commitments to one another. He would call on us to assume the best in each other rather than the worst, and challenge one another in ways that ultimately heal rather than wound."

— Barack Obama

"Therefore, in the last analysis, the problem facing the Romanian people today, on which all others depend, is the substitution of this fake elite with a real national one based on virtue, love and sacrifice for country, justice and love for the people, honesty, work, order, discipline, honest dealing, and honor."

— Corneliu Zelea Codreanu

"Is not every true Reformer, by the nature of him, a Priest first of all? He appeals to Heaven's invisible justice against Earth's visible force; knows that it, the invisible, is strong and alone strong. He is a believer in the divine truth of things; a seer, seeing through the shows of things; a worshipper, in one way or the other, of the divine truth of things; a Priest, that is. If he be not first a Priest, he will never be good for much as a Reformer."

— Thomas Carlyle

"The more the Jew is a Jew, the more universalist will his views and aspirations be, the less aloof will he be from anything that is noble and good, true and upright, in art or science, in culture or education; the more joyfully will he applaud whenever he sees truth and justice and peace and the ennoblement of man prevail and become dominant in human society."

— Samson Raphael Hirsch

"There is no self-awareness in ecosystems, no language, no consciousness, and no culture; and therefore no justice and democracy; but also no greed or dishonesty."

— Fritjof Capra

"Weep for me, whoever has charity, truth and justice! I did not come on this voyage for gain, honor or wealth, that is certain; for then the hope of all such things was dead. I came to Your Highnesses with honest purpose and sincere zeal; and I do not lie. I humbly beseech You Highnesses that, if it please God to remove me hence, you will help me to go to Rome and on other pilgrimages."

— Christopher Columbus

"Man naturally loves justice, for its own sake, as the natural object of his conscience. As the mind loves truth and beauty, so conscience loves the right; it is true and beautiful to the moral faculties. Conscience rests in justice as an end, as the mind in truth. As truth is the side of God turned towards the intellect, so is justice the side of Him which conscience looks upon. Love of justice is the moral part of piety."

— Theodore Parker

"We have brought three words—freedom, choice, opportunity—into the centre of the political debate. And we have exposed the language of Socialism, the gloss they put on words to conceal their true meaning. For instance, Socialists say “publicly owned”. What they mean is “State controlled”. Socialists say “Government aid”. What they mean is “taxpayers' aid”. Socialists say “social justice”. What they mean is “selective justice”. Socialists say “equality.” What they mean is “levelling down”. Why do they twist the truth like this? Because they dare not spell out the Socialist reality. One way to destroy capitalism, said Lenin, was to devalue its currency. Another way is to debase its language. Whenever we can, let us, like Luther, nail the truth to the door—and let us do it in unambiguous English. These are the opening rounds in the battle of ideas. It is a battle that we are winning."

— Margaret Thatcher

"Why this wonderful man is receiving so little honour in England, is due to Carlyle. The most fearlessly truthful historian of his age he, who abominated falsehood under whatever appearance, has stamped with the imprimatur of his honest and famous name, and thus sanctified the most iniquitous of historical injustices ever perpetrated by prejudice and bigotry."

— Alessandro Cagliostro

"I have twice seen Macready act; once in Macbeth and once in Othello. I astounded a dinner-party by honestly saying I did not like him. It is the fashion to rave about his splendid acting; anything more false and artificial, less genuinely impressive than his whole style, I could scarcely have imagined. The fact is, the stage-system altogether is hollow nonsense. They act farces well enough; the actors comprehend their parts and do them justice. They comprehend nothing about tragedy or Shakespeare, and it is a failure. I said so, and by so saying produced a blank silence, a mute consternation."

— Charlotte Brontë

"For this I have been and am a socialist. The accusation of inconsistency has no foundation. My conduct has always been straight in the sense of looking at the substance of things and not to the form. I adapted socialisticamente to reality. As the evolution of society belied many of the prophecies of Marx, the true socialism folded from possible to probable. The only feasible socialism socialisticamente is corporatism, confluence, balance and justice interests compared to the collective interest."

— Benito Mussolini

"Most secularists pretend not to know unambiguous position of Savarkar’s . Likewise, Savarkar’s plea for caste intermarriage to promote the oneness of Hindu society is usually ignored in order to keep up the pretence that he was a reactionary on caste, an “upper-caste racist” , and what not. There are no limits to secularist dishonesty... is just another case of secularist justice: Hindu are damned if they do, damned if they don’t."

— Vinayak Damodar Savarkar

"I'm proud to belong to the NAACP, because it is made up of people who are dedicated in a great crusade to make America true to itself. This is what this is about. Make America live up to its highest hopes and aspirations and translate those hopes and aspirations into practical, tangible reality in the lives of all people, whether they are white or black, whether they live in the North or the South. I say that each of us is blessed that we can be engaged in this crusade, in this struggle for justice, for human dignity, in this struggle to wipe out in every phase of our national life every ugly immoral kind of discrimination."

— Walter Reuther

"Before we try to destroy someone else, we should first pass judgment on ourselves. Before finding fault with others, we must first pass judgment upon ourselves. Before we backbite others, we must first pass judgment upon our selves. Before we lie about others, we must first judge ourselves. Before we hurt the heart of another, we must first pass judgment on ourselves. Like that, we have to pass judgment on our thoughts and on all actions done by our eyes, ears, nose, hands, and mouth. The guilty ones are within our own body and mind. These are our qualities which exist in our actions. All these qualities exist within us, do they not? So we have to pass judgment on them. That is the state of Iman-Islam. That is what is called Islam. To first see the fault in yourself and then to pass judgment and correct yourself is true justice. Those who perform that justice are in the religion of truth. They are the leaders of the religion of truth. They are in the state of Iman-Islam. They are the true believers."

— Bawa Muhaiyaddeen

"“Much less could regeneration, the bringing-on of voluntary repentance and genuine reformation in the soul, be by any sort of efficient causality,—a truth to which modern theology has evidently for some time been alive, as its forward movement is keyed upon the increasing recognition of the metaphor in the name. These thoughts, however incontrovertible they may be, are no doubt staggering thoughts, so much are we of old habituated to calling regeneration the "work" of the Holy Spirit, and to naming man the "creature" of God, and God his "maker." Still, staggering though they be, they must be true if human freedom is to be a fact; and that human freedom is to be a fact, the modern conscience, quickened by the very experience of the Christian spirit itself, firmly declares, having now apprehended that otherwise there is no justice in human responsibility, and then no moral government, but only government edictive and compulsory; and then — no personal God, no true God, at all!"

— George Holmes Howison

"Amid the destructive convulsions of the physical world, even pious minds may have for an instant questioned the superintending providence of God. In the midst of famine, or pestilence, or war, they may have stood horror- struck at the scene. In the triumphs of fraud, oppression, and injustice, over honesty, and liberty, and law. Faith may have wavered, and Hope despaired; but in no condition, either of the physical or the moral world, does the mind question the POWER of its Maker. The omnipotence of the Creator, and the exertion of it in every corner of space, — His care over the falling sparrow, and His guidance of the gigantic planet, are the earliest of our acquired truths, and the very first that observation and experience confirm. When Reason gives wisdom to our perceptions, omnipotence is the grand truth which they inculcate. Whatever the eye sees, or the ear hears, or the fingers touch, — every motion of our body, every function it performs, every structure in its fabric, impresses on the mind, and fixes in the heart the conviction, that the Creator is all-powerful as well as all-wise. Omnipotence, in short, is the only attribute of God which is universally appreciated, which skepticism never unsettles, and which we believe as firmly when under the influence of our corrupt passions, as when we are looking devoutly to heaven. All the other attributes of God are inferences. His omnipresence, His omniscience, His justice, mercy, and truth, are the deductions of reason, and, however true and demonstrable, they exercise little influence over the mind; but the attribute of omnipotence predominates over them all, and no mind responsive to its power will ever be disturbed by the ideas which it suggests of infinity of time, infinity of space, and infinity of life."

— David Brewster

"The churches I attended would embrace war metaphor. They would talk about how we are in a battle, and I agreed with them, only they wouldn't clarify that we were battling poverty and hate and injustice and pride and the power of darkness. They left us thinking that our war was against liberals and homosexuals. Their teaching would have me believe I was the good person in the world and the liberals were the bad people in the world. Jesus taught that we are all bad and He is good, and He wants to rescue us because there is a war going on and we are hostages in that war. The truth is we are supposed to love the hippies, the liberals, and even the Democrats, and that God wants us to think of them as more important than ourselves. Anything short of this is not true to the teachings of Jesus."

— Don Miller (author)

"Every morning I speak to my conscience and the dialogue calms me down. I look at the country, read the newspaper, and think: 'All is becoming a reality little by little, piece by piece'. To be truthful, I should have had the copyright to it. Justice, TV, public order. I wrote about this 30 years ago.... Berlusconi is an extraordinary man, a man of action. This is what Italy needs: not a man of words, but a man of action."

— Licio Gelli

"I know nothing, by experience, of party discipline. I would rather be a raccoon-dog, and belong to a Negro in the forest, than to belong to any party, further than to do justice to all, and to promote the interests of my country. The time will and must come, when honesty will receive its reward, and when the people of this nation will be brought to a sense of their duty, and will pause and reflect how much it cost us to redeem ourselves from the government of one man."

— Davy Crockett

"It is true, as Mr. Folkard put to us, as the Judges of old felt, there are instances in which discretionary power might be grievously abused, and was abused in times such as I trust this country will never see again. At the same time, men are open to the infirmities which unfortunately attach to human nature. There may be dishonest and corrupt Judges among us, though I trust to God that will never happen. I agree you are to frame your rules so as to keep the administration of justice as far as you can beyond the possibility of corruption. On the other hand, if a rule is essential for the convenient administration of justice, you must trust to the honesty of those to whom you commit that most important department of the State. You must trust to the means you have of punishing corruption and dishonesty if you find it operating on the minds of those judicial officers."

— Sir Alexander Cockburn

"Lt. Colonel Picquart had carried out his duty as an honest man. He kept insisting to his superiors in the name of justice. He even begged them, telling them how impolitic it was to temporize in the face of the terrible storm that was brewing and that would break when the truth became known."

— Émile Zola

"The Peace and Beauty of any Society is Dependent Upon Justice and Honesty at all Levels."

— Hazrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad

Key thinkers on this theme

Immanuel Kant· Philosophy John Locke· Philosophy Arthur Schopenhauer· Philosophy Herbert Marcuse· Philosophy Emma Goldman· Social Activism

Related ideas in Truth

All Truth quotes Explore the idea of Justice