Theme
Justice
Fairness, rights, and standing against wrong.
Every quote here is provenance-checked. AI will happily put a fake quote on a beautiful slide — these are the ones you can actually use, with the right name on them.
Ready for your slide
Verified quotes about justice
Each is traced to a real source and correctly credited. ✓ Free to use = public domain, cleared for commercial reuse. Open one for a paste-ready credit line and its reuse status.
“A person's a person, no matter how small”
“All wars are planned by older men in council rooms apart”
“But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream”
“Cautious, careful people always casting about to preserve their reputation can never effect a reform”
“Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law”
“Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude”
“Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists”
“Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods”
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed”
“Every joke is a tiny revolution”
“Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do”
“Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you”
“For man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but, when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all”
“For our last number, I'd like to ask your help. Would the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands. And the rest of you, if you'll just rattle your jewellery”
“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal”
“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction”
“Get in good trouble, necessary trouble”
“Hitler didn't snub me; it was our president who snubbed me. The president didn't even send me a telegram”
“I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you! And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!”
“I cannot stand and sing the anthem. I cannot salute the flag. I know that I am a black man in a white world”
“I declare to you that woman must not depend upon the protection of man”
“I had been pushed around all my life and felt at this moment that I couldn't take it anymore”
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character”
“I would permit no man, no matter what his colour might be, to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him”
“I'm not concerned with your liking or disliking me. All I ask is that you respect me as a human being”
“If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him”
“If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse human gift will find a fitting place”
“If we don't end war, war will end us”
“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor”
“If you aren't careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing”
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”
“It's a big club and you ain't in it”
“Let the welfare of the people be the ultimate law”
“My conscience won't let me go shoot my brother, or some darker people, or some poor hungry people in the mud, for big powerful America”
“No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love”
“Organize, agitate, educate must be our war cry”
“People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in”
“Please, sir, I want some more”
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will”
“Riches and honours acquired by unrighteousness are to me as a floating cloud”
“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark”
“The best way of avenging thyself is not to become like the wrong-doer”
“The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse”
“The most disrespected person in America is the black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the black woman. The most neglected person in America is the black woman”
“The most violent element in society is ignorance”
“The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind”
“The only land we ever asked for was enough land to bury our dead”
“The quality of mercy is not strained; 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”
“Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God, cannot long retain it”
“True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice”
“Well-behaved women seldom make history”
“When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle”
“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds”
“Would You Ever Ask a Man that Question?”
“Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it”
“You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist”
“Ask for work. If they do not give you work, ask for bread. If they do not give you bread, then take bread”
“But when that white driver stepped back toward us, when he waved his hand and ordered us up and out of our seats, I felt a determination cover my body like a quilt on a winter night”
“Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time”
“Don't Tax You. Don't Tax Me. Tax That Fellow Behind the Tree”
“Every time we liberate a woman, we liberate a man”
“Have you ever been hurt and the place tries to heal a bit, and you just pull the scar off of it over and over again”
“I did not get on the bus to get arrested. I got on the bus to go home”
“I had four gold medals, but you can't eat four gold medals”
“I knew someone had to take the first step and I made up my mind not to move”
“If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back”
“One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors”
“Racism is still with us. But it is up to us to prepare our children for what they have to meet, and, hopefully, we shall overcome”
“The ballot is stronger than the bullet”
“There is no room in baseball for discrimination. It is our national pastime and a game for all”
“This country has socialism for the rich, rugged individualism for the poor”
“Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains”
“You must never be fearful about what you are doing when it is right”
No public-domain quotes on this theme yet — try another, or use an in-copyright one with attribution.
Don’t get caught out
Commonly shared about justice — but misattributed
Popular justice lines that get pinned on the wrong name. If you use one, credit it correctly.
“Life Isn't Fair, But Government Must Be”
ReallyAnn Richards · not John F. Kennedy
“No individual raindrop ever considers itself responsible for the flood”
ReallySydney J. Harris · not Douglas Adams
“Whiskey Is for Drinking; Water Is for Fighting Over”
ReallyUnknown · not Mark Twain
“Owners of capital will stimulate working class to buy more and more of expensive goods, houses and technology, pushing them to take more and more expensive credits, until their debt becomes unbearable. The unpaid debt will lead to bankruptcy of banks which will have to be nationalized and State will have to take the road which will eventually lead to communism”
ReallyUnknown — an anonymous online forward · not Karl Marx
“The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament”
ReallyVladimir Lenin · not Karl Marx
“The rich will do anything for the poor but get off their backs”
ReallyLeo Tolstoy · not Karl Marx
“We will hang the capitalists with the rope that they sell us”
ReallyNo verified speaker · not Vladimir Lenin
“The fact is that far more crime and child abuse has been committed by zealots in the name of God, Jesus and Mohammed than has ever been committed in the name of Satan”
ReallyKenneth V. Lanning · not Carl Sagan
“The problem is not that people are taxed too little, the problem is that government spends too much”
ReallyRonald Reagan · but not in these words
“Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it”
ReallyUnknown · not Leo Tolstoy
“There Is No Right Way to Do the Wrong Thing”
ReallyAnonymous · not Seneca the Younger
“Laws are Like Sausages. Better Not to See Them Being Made”
ReallyJohn Godfrey Saxe · not Otto von Bismarck
“You may go on and do so”
ReallyRosa Parks · but not in these words
“If Men Could Get Pregnant, Abortion Would Be a Sacrament”
ReallyUnknown — an elderly Irish woman driving a Boston taxi · not Florynce Kennedy
“Legal Advice: Pound the Facts, Pound the Law, Pound the Table”
ReallyAnonymous — an American lawyers' adage · not Alan Dershowitz
“The Common Law Consists of About Half A Dozen Obvious Propositions, But Unfortunately …”
ReallyWilliam Pickford, 1st Baron Sterndale
“What Is the Difference Between a Misfortune and a Calamity?”
ReallyUnknown — an anonymous French wit · not Benjamin Disraeli
“Whatever is Not Nailed Down is Mine and Whatever I Can Pry Loose is Not Nailed Down”
ReallyDavid Starr Jordan · not Upton Sinclair