Philosopher Quotes on Justice

“From Apollonius , true liberty, and unvariable steadfastness, and not to regard anything at all, though never so little, but right and reason: and always..that it was possible for the same man to be both vehement and remiss: a man not subject to be vexed, and offended with the incapacity of his scholars and auditors in his lectures and expositions.”

I, 5

“You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.”

Meditations, Book II | II, 11

“How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks, but only at what he does himself, to make it just and holy.”

Meditations, Book IV | IV, 18

“Retire into thyself. The rational principle which rules has this nature, that it is content with itself when it does what is just, and so secures tranquility.”

Meditations, Book VII | VII, 28

“To change your mind and to follow him who sets you right is to be nonetheless the free agent that you were before.”

Meditations, Book VIII | Remember that to change thy opinion and to follow him who corrects thy error is as consistent with freedom as it is to persist in thy error. (Long translation) VIII, 16

“As for me, I cease not to advocate peace. It may be on unjust terms, but even so it is more expedient than the justest of civil wars. Epistulae ad Atticum (Letters to Atticus) Book VII, Letter 14, section 3; as translated by E.O. Winstedt in the Loeb Classical Library”

Equidem ad pacem hortari non desino; quae vel iniusta utilior est quam iustissimum bellum cum civibus.

“Injustice often arises also through chicanery, that is, through an over-subtle and even fraudulent construction of the law. This it is that gave rise to the now familiar saw, "More law, less justice."”

De Officiis–On Duties(44 BC) | Book I, section 33; translation by Walter Miller.

“I have always been of the opinion that infamy earned by doing what is right is not infamy at all, but glory.”

In Catilinam I–Against Catiline(63 BC) | Speech I

“As for me, I cease not to advocate peace. It may be on unjust terms, but even so it is more expedient than the justest of civil wars.”

Epistulae ad Atticum (Letters to Atticus) Book VII, Letter 14, section 3; as translated by E.O. Winstedt in the Loeb Classical Library

Attributed to Cicero:

“Justice consists in doing no injury to men; decency in giving them no offence.”

“He was free, free in every way, free to behave like a fool or a machine, free to accept, free to refuse, free to equivocate; to marry, to give up the game, to drag this death weight about with him for years to come. He could do what he liked, no one had the right to advise him, there would be for him no Good or Evil unless he thought them into being.”

L'âge de raison ( The Age of Reason ) (1945)

“What do I care about Jupiter? Justice is a human issue, and I do not need a god to teach it to me.”

The Flies(1943) | Orestes, Act 2

“Listen to me: a family man is never a real family man. An assassin is never entirely assassin. They play a role, you understand. While a dead man, he is really dead. To be or not to be, right?”

Dirty Hands(1948) | Hugo, Act 4, sc. 6

“It is the same thing: killing, dying, it is the same thing: one is just as alone in each. He is lucky, he will only die once. As for me, for ten days I have been killing him at every minute.”

Dirty Hands(1948) | Hugo to Jessica, on his plans to kill Hoederer, Act 5, sc. 2

“Politics is a science. You can demonstrate that you are right and that others are wrong.”

Dirty Hands(1948) | Act 5, sc. 2

“Once again prosperous and successful crime goes by the name of virtue ; good men obey the bad , might is right and fear oppresses law . lines 251-253; ( Amphitryon )”

rursus prosperum ac felix scelus virtus vocatur; sontibus parent boni, ius est in armis, opprimit leges timor.

“Alternate translation: Might makes right. (translator unknown).”

rursus prosperum ac felix scelus virtus vocatur; sontibus parent boni, ius est in armis, opprimit leges timor.

“Just as we suffer from excess in all things, so we suffer from excess in literature; thus we learn our lessons, not for life, but for the lecture room.”

Letter CVI: On the corporeality of virtue | Line 12

“Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbour he is making for, no wind is the right wind.”

Letter LXXI: On the supreme good | Line 2

“Pyrrhus: No law the wretched captive's life doth spare. Agamemnon: What law forbids not, let this shame forbid. Pyrrhus: 'Tis victor's right to do whate'er he will. Pyrrhus: Then should he will the least who most can do.”

Troades(The Trojan Women) | lines 333-336

“Absolute freedom mocks at justice . Absolute justice denies freedom. To be fruitful, the two ideas must find their limits in each other.”

The Rebel(1951) | "Historical Murder", as translated by Anthony Bower

“One does not decide the truth of a thought according to whether it is right-wing or left-wing.”

Letter to Jean-Paul Sartre , 30 June 1952. As quoted in Paris after the Liberation: 1944-1949 by Antony Beevor and Artemis Cooper .

“Mistaken ideas always end in bloodshed, but in every case it is someone else's blood. That is why some of our thinkers feel free to say just about anything.”

Actuelles I, 1950

“The slave begins by demanding justice and ends by wanting to wear a crown. He must dominate in his turn.”

The Rebel(1951)

“"This is the truth," we say. "You can discuss it as much as you want; we aren't interested. But in a few years there'll be the police who will show you we are right."”

The Fall(1956)

“I should like to believe my people's religion, which was just what I could wish, but alas, it is impossible. I have really no religion, for my God, being a spirit shown merely by reason to exist, his properties utterly unknown, is no help to my life. I have not the parson's comfortable doctrine that every good action has its reward, and every sin is forgiven. My whole religion is this: do every duty, and expect no reward for it, either here or hereafter.”

Greek Exercises (1888), written two days after his sixteenth birthday.

“I am looking forward very much to getting back to Cambridge, and being able to say what I think and not to mean what I say: two things which at home are impossible. Cambridge is one of the few places where one can talk unlimited nonsense and generalities without anyone pulling one up or confronting one with them when one says just the opposite the next day.”

Letter to Alys Pearsall Smith (1893); published in The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell, Volume 1: The Private Years (1884–1914), edited by Nicholas Griffin

“Thee might observe incidentally that if the state paid for child-bearing it might and ought to require a medical certificate that the parents were such as to give a reasonable result of a healthy child – this would afford a very good inducement to some sort of care for the race, and gradually as public opinion became educated by the law, it might react on the law and make that more stringent, until one got to some state of things in which there would be a little genuine care for the race, instead of the present haphazard higgledy-piggledy ways.”

Letter to Alys Pearsall Smith (1894); published in The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell, Volume 1: The Private Years (1884–1914) , edited by Nicholas Griffin. It should be noted that in his talk of "the race", he is referring to "the human race". Smith married Russell in December 1894; they divorced in 1921.

“Of all evils of war the greatest is the purely spiritual evil: the hatred, the injustice, the repudiation of truth, the artificial conflict.”

1910s | Justice in War-Time (1916), p. 27

“In the part of this universe that we know there is great injustice, and often the good suffer, and often the wicked prosper, and one hardly knows which of those is the more annoying.”

Why I Am Not a Christian(1927) | "The Argument for the Remedying of Injustice"

“Do not do unto others what you do not want done to yourself.”

己所不欲，勿施於人

“Recompense injury with justice, and recompense kindness with kindness.”

以直報怨，以德報德。

“The superior man, extensively studying all learning, and keeping himself under the restraint of the rules of propriety, may thus likewise not overstep what is right.”

Analects

“The superior man has neither anxiety nor fear. When internal examination discovers nothing wrong, what is there to be anxious about, what is there to fear?”

Analects | IV

“The superior man governs men, according to their nature, with what is proper to them, and as soon as they change what is wrong, he stops.”

The Doctrine of the Mean

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

When bad men combine , the good must associate ; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle . It is not enough in a situation of trust in the commonwealth, that a man means well to his country ; it is not enough that in his single person he never did an evil act , but always voted according to his conscience , and even harangued against every design which he a

“Justice was in all countries originally administered by the priesthood; nor indeed could laws in their first feeble state have either authority or sanction, so as to compel men to relinquish their natural independence, had they not appeared to come down to them enforced by beings of more than human power. The first openings of civility have been everywhere made by religion. Amongst the Romans, the custody and interpretation of the laws continued solely in the college of the pontiffs for above a century.”

An Essay towards an Abridgment of English History (1757– c . 1763), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI (1856), p. 196

“Justice was in all countries originally administered by the priesthood; nor indeed could laws in their first feeble state have either authority or sanction, so as to compel men to relinquish their natural independence, had they not appeared to come down to them enforced by beings of more than human power. The first openings of civility have been everywhere made by religion. Amongst the Romans, the”

An Essay towards an Abridgment of English History (1757– c . 1763), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI (1856), p. 196

“In the interval between his campaigns Agricola was employed in the great labours of peace. He knew that the general must be perfected by the legislator; and that the conquest is neither permanent nor honourable, which is only an introduction to tyranny... In short, he subdued the Britons by civilizing them; and made them exchange a savage liberty for a polite and easy subjection. His conduct is th”

An Essay towards an Abridgment of English History (1757– c . 1763), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI (1856), p. 215

“These principles it is necessary strictly to attend to, because they will serve much to explain the whole course both of government and real property, wherever the German nations obtained a settlement; the whole of their government depending for the most part upon two principles in our nature,—ambition, that makes one man desirous, at any hazard or expense, of taking the lead amongst others; and a”

An Essay towards an Abridgment of English History (1757– c . 1763), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI (1856), p. 282

“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”

In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-ope

“If conquest constitutes a natural right on the part of the few, the many have only to gather sufficient strength in order to acquire the natural right of reconquering what has been taken from them.”

1860s | The Abolition of Landed Property Letter to Robert Applegarth (3 December 1869)

“Consumption is also immediately production, just as in nature the consumption of the elements and chemical substances is the production of the plant.”

Grundrisse(1857-1858) | Introduction, p. 10.

“As for the commercial business, I can no longer make head or tail of it. At one moment crisis seems imminent and the City prostrated, the next everything is set fair. I know that none of this will have any impact on the catastrophe.”

1850s | Letter to Friedrich Engels (4 February 1852), quoted in The Collected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Volume 39. Letters 1852–55 (2010), p. 32

“I have just noticed in the 2nd edition of The Times that the Prussian Second Chamber has finally done something worthwhile. We shall soon have revolution.”

1860s | Letter to Friedrich Engels (21 February 1863), quoted in The Collected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Volume 41. Letters 1860–64 (2010), p. 461

“This is a Revelation of Love that Jesus Christ , our endless bliss, made in Sixteen Shewings, or Revelations particular. Of the which the First is of His precious crowning with thorns; and therewith was comprehended and specified the Trinity, with the Incarnation, and unity betwixt God and man's soul ; with many fair shewings of endless wisdom and teachings of love: in which all the Shewings that follow be grounded and oned.”

First lines

“Our Lord God, Allmighty Wisdom, All-Love, right as verily as He hath made everything that is, all-so verily He doeth and worketh all-thing that is done.”

Wikiquote

“With this same cheer of mirth and joy our good Lord looked down on the right side and brought to my mind where our Lady stood in the time of His Passion; and said: Wilt thou see her?”

Chapter 25

“Chapter 54”

Variant: Faith is nought else but a right understanding, with true belief and sure trust, of our Being: that we are in God, and God is in us: Whom we see not.

“We give our intent to love and meekness, by the working of mercy and grace we are made all fair and clean.”

Chapter 40

“The Indians do not regret that capable natives can exercise the franchise. They would regret if it were otherwise. They, however, assert that they too, if capable, should have the right. You, in your wisdom , would not allow the Indian or the native the precious privilege under any circumstances, because they have a dark skin .”

Wikiquote

“You say that the magistrate's decision is unsatisfactory because it would enable a person , however unclean, to travel by a tram, and that even the Kaffirs would be able to do so. But the magistrate's decision is quite different. The Court declared that the Kaffirs have no legal right to travel by tram. And according to tram regulations, those in an unclean dress or in a drunken state are prohibited from boarding a tram. Thanks to the Court's decision, only clean Indians or coloured people other than Kaffirs, can now travel in the trams.”

Comments on a court case in The Indian Opinion (2 June 1906)

“Disobedience is a right that belongs to every human being, and it becomes a sacred duty when it springs from civility.”

1920s | Young India (4 January 1926)

“For one man cannot do right in one department of life whilst he is occupied in doing wrong in any other department. Life is one indivisible whole.”

1920s | Young India (27 January 1927)

“"An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so."”

1930s | From a letter to the Viceroy, 1930, published in The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi , Vol. 49, p. 180.

“"Tough love" is just the right phrase: love for the rich and privileged, tough for everyone else.”

1995–1999 | Powers and Prospects , 1996, p.137

“Lenin was a right-wing deviation of the socialist movement and he was so regarded...by the mainstream Marxists... Bolshevism was a right-wing deviation.”

1980s | Speech on “Lenin, Trotsky and Socialism and the Soviet Union”, (March 15, 1989) [1]

“There's a good reason why nobody studies history. It just teaches you too much.”

2003 | KGNU benefit at the University of Colorado at Boulder , April 5, 2003 (context: João Goulart ) [71]

“”Some Elementary Comments on The Rights of Freedom of Expression”, preface to Robert Faurisson Mémoire en défense (October 11, 1980)”

1980s

“Delivered at the First Annual Maryse Mikhail Lecture “No peace without justice; no justice without truth” The University of Toledo , March 4, 2001. [49]”

2001

“There is no outward mark of politeness that does not have a profound moral reason. The right education would be that which taught the outward mark and the moral reason together.”

Elective Affinities(1809) | Bk. II, Ch. 5, R. J. Hollingdale , trans. (1971), p. 195

“Just as, out of habit, one consults a run-down clock as though it were still going, so too one may look at the face of a beautiful woman as though she were still in love.”

Maxims and Reflections(1833) | Maxim 246, trans. Stopp

“There's nothing clever that hasn't been thought of before — you've just got to try to think it all over again.”

Maxims and Reflections(1833) | Maxim 441, trans. Stopp Variant translation: All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.

“Variant translation: He who maintains he's right—if his the gift of tongues— Will have the last word certainly.”

Faust, Part 1(1808) | Faust and Gretchen. A Street

“Three things are to be looked to in a building: that it stand on the right spot; that it be securely founded; that it be successfully executed.”

Elective Affinities(1809) | Bk. I, Ch. 9

“It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and well and justly, and it is impossible to live wisely and well and justly without living pleasantly.”

Οὐκ ἔστιν ἡδέως ζῆν ἄνευ τοῦ φρονίμως καὶ καλῶς καὶ δικαίως, οὐδὲ φρονίμως καὶ καλῶς καὶ δικαίως ἄνευ τοῦ ἡδέως. ὅτῳ δὲ τοῦτο μὴ ὑπάρχει ἐξ οὗ ζῆν φρονίμως, καὶ καλῶς καὶ δικαίως ὑπάρχει, οὐκ ἔστι τοῦτον ἡδέως ζῆν.

“Natural justice is a symbol or expression of usefulness, to prevent one person from harming or being harmed by another. (31)”

Sovereign Maxims | Variant: Natural justice is a pledge of reciprocal benefit, to prevent one man from harming or being harmed by another.

“The just man is most free from disturbance , while the unjust is full of the utmost disturbance. (17)”

Sovereign Maxims

“Sovereign Maxims”

Variant: Natural justice is a pledge of reciprocal benefit, to prevent one man from harming or being harmed by another.

“Justice respects man as living in society, and is the common bond without which no society can subsist.”

Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers(Half-Hours with the Freethinkers)

“It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world.”

Ch. 4

“Virtue can only flourish among equals.”

A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)

“A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)”

It may be confidently asserted that no man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks. And the desire of rectifying these mistakes, is the noble ambition of an enlightened understanding, the impulse of feelings that Philosophy invigorates.

“A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)”

Virtue can only flourish amongst equals.

“Tyrants and sensualists are in the right when they endeavour to keep women in the dark, because the former want only slaves, and the latter a play-thing.”

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman(1792) | Introduction

“Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.”

Book XXIX: Of the Manner of Composing Laws, Chapter 16: Things to be Observed in the Composing of Laws

“Il n’y a point de plus cruelle tyrannie que celle que l’on exerce à l’ombre des lois et avec les couleurs de la justice, lorsqu’on va, pour ainsi dire, noyer des malheureux sur la planche même sur laquelle ils s’étaient sauvés.”

No tyranny is more cruel than the one practiced in the shadow of the laws and under color of justice — when, so to speak, one proceeds to drown the unfortunate on the very plank by which they had saved themselves. See Chap. XIV of Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur décadence . Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and their Decline (1734), p.

“No tyranny is more cruel than the one practiced in the shadow of the laws and under color of justice — when, so to speak, one proceeds to drown the unfortunate on the very plank by which they had saved themselves. See Chap. XIV of Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur décadence . Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and their Decline (1734), p. 89. Quoted in Steve Sheppard, I Do Solemnly Swear: The Moral Obligations of Legal Officials (2009), preface - xxiv.”

Il n’y a point de plus cruelle tyrannie que celle que l’on exerce à l’ombre des lois et avec les couleurs de la justice, lorsqu’on va, pour ainsi dire, noyer des malheureux sur la planche même sur laquelle ils s’étaient sauvés.

“No tyranny is more cruel than the one practiced in the shadow of the laws and under color of justice — when, so to speak, one proceeds to drown the unfortunate on the very plank by which they had saved themselves.”

Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and their Decline(1876) | See Chap. XIV of Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur décadence . Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and their Decline (1734), p. 89. Quoted in

“There are only two cases in which war is just : first, in order to resist the aggression of an enemy , and second, in order to help an ally who has been attacked.”

Lettres Persanes(Persian Letters, 1721) | No. 95. (Usbek writing to Rhedi)

“All animals are equal: the principle of equality requires that suffering be considered equally with the like suffering of any other being.”

Speciesism —the word is not an attractive one, but I can think of no better term—is a prejudice or attitude of bias in favor of the interests of members of one's own species and against those of members of other species.

“If it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it.”

Famine, Affluence, and Morality

“Speciesism is a prejudice or attitude of bias in favor of the interests of members of one's own species.”

Ch. 1: All Animals Are Equal

“Speciesism is an attitude of prejudice towards beings because they're not members of our species, so just as racism means that you're prejudiced against beings who are not members of your race and sexism means you're prejudiced against people of the other sex. So we humans tend to be speciesist in we think that any being that is a member of the species homo sapien just automatically has a higher moral status and is more important than any being that is a member of any other species, irrespective of the actual characteristics of those beings.”

Peter Singer - The Genius of Darwin: The Uncut Interviews - Richard Dawkins , 2009.

“Human social institutions can effect the course of human evolution. Just as climate -change, food supply, predators, and other natural forces of selection have molded our nature, so too can our culture.”

The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress(1981) | Chapter 6, A New Understanding Of Ethics, p. 172

“Property is theft.”

Property is robbery! That is the war-cry of '93! That is the signal of revolutions ! Reader, calm yourself: I am no agent of discord, no firebrand of sedition . I anticipate history by a few days; I disclose a truth whose development we may try in vain to arrest; I write the preamble of our future constitution . This proposition which seems to you blasphemous — property is robbery — would, if our

“Justice is not the work of the law: on the contrary, the law is only the declaration and application of what is just in all circumstances where men have relations with one another.”

What is Property?(1840) | Chapter One

“Sociability is the attraction felt by sentient beings for each other; justice is the same attraction, accompanied by reflection and knowledge.”

What is Property?(1840) | Ch.V

“AXIOM. — Property is the Right of Increase claimed by the Proprietor over any thing which he has stamped as his own.”

What is Property?(1840) | Ch. IV

“I build no system . I ask an end to privilege , the abolition of slavery , equality of rights , and the reign of law . Justice , nothing else; that is the alpha and omega of my argument: to others I leave the business of governing the world.”

What is Property?(1840) | Ch. I: "Method Pursued in this Work. The Idea of a Revolution"

“Justice is what love looks like in public.”

Brother West (2009), p. 232

“The Role of Law in Progressive Politics" in Keeping Faith: Philosophy and Race in America (1993)”

In situations of sparse resources along with degraded self-images and depoliticized sensibilities, one avenue for poor people is in existential rebellion and anarchic expression. The capacity to produce social chaos is the last resort of desperate people.

“To be a Christian - a follower of Jesus Christ - is to love wisdom , love justice , and love freedom . (p172)”

Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism(2004)

“Lecture in New Haven, On Constructed Rights (28 February 2013)”

Wikiquote

Attributed to Cornel West:

“Race matters in American history because race has always mattered.”

“The Law(道, Way) is Huge and Shapeless, its Moral extends everywhere.”

夫道者、弘大而無形，德者、覈理而普至。至於群生，斟酌用之，萬物皆盛，而不與其寧。 | More Power" (《揚權》)

“When all within the four seas have been put in their proper places, [the sage] sits in darkness to observe the light. When those to his left and right have taken their places, he opens the gate to face the world. He changes nothing, alters nothing, but acts with the two handles of reward and punishment, acts and never ceases: this is what is called walking the path of principle.”

四海既藏，道陰見陽。左右既立，開門而當。勿變勿易，與二俱行，行之不已，是謂履理也。 | Wielding Power", in Han Feizi: Basic Writings (2003)

“No state is forever strong or forever weak . If those who uphold the law are strong, the state will be strong; if they are weak, the state will be weak.”

國無常強，無常弱。奉法者強則國強，奉法者弱則國弱。 | On Having Standards", in Han Feizi: Basic Writings (2003)

“A truly enlightened ruler uses the law to select men for him; he does not choose them himself. He uses the law to weigh their merits; he does not attempt to judge them for himself.”

On Having Standards", in Han Feizi: Basic Writings (2003)

“To govern the state by law is to praise the right and blame the wrong.”

"Facing South" (《南面》) | from "Having Regulations—A Memorandum" in The Complete Works of Han Fei Tzu , Volume I, Arthur Probsthain, London. Translated by W.K. Liao.

“[I]n principle and in practice, in a right track and in a wrong one, the rarest of all human qualities is consistency.”

An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation(1789; 1823) | Ch. 1: Of the Principle of Utility

Attributed to Jeremy Bentham:

“It is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.”

Attributed to Jeremy Bentham:

“The question is not, can they reason? nor, can they talk? but, can they suffer?”

Attributed to Jeremy Bentham:

“Natural rights is simple nonsense; natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense, nonsense upon stilts.”

Attributed to Jeremy Bentham:

“The said truth is that it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.”

“This liberalism says, in other words, that what makes the just society just is not the telos or purpose or end at which it aims, but precisely its refusal to choose in advance among competing purposes and ends. In its constitution and its laws, the just society seeks to provide a framework within which its citizens can pursue their own values and ends, consistent with a similar liberty for others”

Michael J. Sandel, "The Procedural Republic and the Unencumbered Self" (1984)

“Conclusion: Liberalism and the Limits of Justice”

Liberalism and the Limits of Justice(1982; 1998)

Attributed to Michael Sandel:

“We cannot reason our way to justice without reasoning together about the good.”

Attributed to Michael Sandel:

“Some things money should not buy.”

Attributed to Michael Sandel:

“A meritocracy that is not also humble is a tyranny.”

“Whatever arises from a just situation by just steps is itself just.”

Ch. 7 : Distributive Justice, Section I, The Entitlement Theory, p. 151

“The minimal state is the most extensive state that can be justified.”

Preface, p. ix

“Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor.”

Ch. 7 : Distributive Justice, Section I, Redistribution and Property Rights, p. 169

“Individuals have rights and there are things no person or group may do to them (without violating their rights). So strong and far-reaching are these rights that they raise the question of what, if anything, the state and its officials may do. How much room do individual rights leave for the state?”

Preface, p. ix

“Some anarchists have claimed not merely that we would be better off without a state, but that any state necessarily violates people's moral rights and hence is intrinsically immoral. Our starting point then, though nonpolitical, is by intention far from nonmoral. Moral philosophy sets the background for, and boundaries of, political philosophy . What persons may and may not do to one another limits what they may do through the apparatus of a state, or do to establish such an apparatus.”

Ch. 1 : Why State of Nature Theory?; Political Philosophy, p. 6

“Nothing is more miserable than those people who never failed to attack their own salvation. When there was need to observe the Law, they trampled it under foot. … On this account Stephen said: "You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart, you always resist the Holy Spirit", not only by transgressing the Law but also by wishing to observe it at the wrong time.”

Eight Homilies Against the Jews , Homily 1

“The Master is gracious and receives the last even as the first; He gives rest to him that comes at the eleventh hour, just as to him who has labored from the first. He has mercy upon the last and cares for the first; to the one He gives, and to the other He is gracious. He both honors the work and praises the intention.”

Wikiquote

Attributed to John Chrysostom:

“If you cannot find Christ in the beggar at the church door, you will not find him in the chalice.”

Attributed to John Chrysostom:

“The most disadvantageous peace is better than the most just war.”

Attributed to John Chrysostom:

“He who is not angry when there is just cause is sinful.”

“Just make yourself master of every situation, and wherever you stand is the true [place]. (Trans: R.F. Sasaki, Ed. T. Kirchner, The Record of Linji ).”

Be a master everywhere and wherever you stand is your true place. (Translator unsourced.)

“Worthy people, we must value the time. [You are wasting your chance] if you just intend to ‘study Zen’ and ‘study the Path’ as superficial adherents running busily back and forth, getting to recognize terms and phrases, seeking ‘buddhas,’ seeking ‘patriarchs,’ seeking ‘enlightened teachers’ [as you conceive of them]. You only have one father and mother: what else are you seeking? You should reflect back on yourself and see them.”

p. 18

“Outside of mind there is nothing, and what is within mind is also unattainable. What are you looking for? All of you people everywhere talk of having cultivation and having realization, but don’t make this mistake. Even if you gain something from cultivation, it is just the karma of birth and death.”

pp. 26-7

“Even the multi-part scriptural teachings of the three vehicles are just old paper for wiping away dirt. Buddha is an illusion, an apparition. The ancestral teachers were just old monks.”

The Recorded Sayings of Linji(臨濟語錄) | p. 29

“An ancient said that if you call it a thing, you miss the mark. Just look for yourself: what else is there? Talk could go on forever: each of you must personally make the effort.”

The Recorded Sayings of Linji(臨濟語錄) | p. 46