Unjust Quotes - Page 15

• People have long assumed that violence is necessary for political change. Rulers never cede power voluntarily, the argument goes, so progressives have no choice but to contemplate the use of force to bring about a better world, mindful of the trade-off between a small amount of violence now and acceptance of an unjust status quo indefinitely.

  Steven Pinker

  Acceptance, Long, People

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• I developed a problem with authority. Any time that authority was what I interpreted as being unjust, I stood up to it, and that became my personality.

  Tom Petty

  Personality, Problem, Authority

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• Even if you never do anything about this, you've benefited from an unjust system. You're already the winner in a game that was rigged to your advantage from the start.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Games, Winner, Advantage

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• Fortunately, historians are now beginning to recognise the historic role of Islam as a liberating force for peoples oppressed by the burdens of unjust social systems.

  Aly Khan

  Islam, Roles, Historic

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• We, unlike Nazi Germany or Mussolini's Italy, have never stopped being a nation of laws, not of men. But witness how men with motives and a majority can manipulate law to cruel and unjust ends.

  Robert Byrd

  Men, Law, Majority

  Sen. Robert C. Byrd (2008). “Letter to a New President: Commonsense Lessons for Our Next Leader”, p.83, Macmillan

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• I abhor unjust war. I abhor injustice and bullying by the strong at the expense of the weak, whether among nations or individuals. I abhor violence and bloodshed. I believe that war should never be resorted to when, or so long as, it is honorably possible to avoid it. I respect all men and women who from high motives and with sanity and self-respect do all they can to avert war. I advocate preparation for war in order to avert war; and I should never advocate war unless it were the only alternative to dishonor.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Bullying, Strong, War

  Theodore Roosevelt (1899). “The Rough Riders: An Autobiography”, p.461, Library of America

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• Even the best parents have to spend so much time making ends meet that they cannot help their kids with homework or afford the extra tutoring that wealthier students enjoy. To address these unjust disparities, we need an early education revolution.

  Sal Albanese

  Kids, Parent, Needs

  "Education’s Elephant in the Room: Poverty" by Sal F. Albanese, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 10, 2013.

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• The prejudice of unfounded belief often degenerates into the prejudice of custom, and becomes at last rank hypocrisy. When men, from custom or fashion or any worldly motive, profess or pretend to believe what they do not believe, nor can give any reason for believing, they unship the helm of their morality, and being no longer honest to their own minds they feel no moral difficulty in being unjust to others.

  Thomas Paine

  Fashion, Believe, Men

  Thomas Paine (1861). “The Age of Reason, etc”, p.88

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• [Jehovah is] certainly the most jealous, the most vain, the most ferocious, the most unjust, the most bloodthirsty, the most despotic, and the most hostile to human dignity and liberty.

  Mikhail Bakunin

  Jealous, Religion, Liberty

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• ... so far from entrenching human conduct within the gentle barriers of peace and love, religion has ever been, and now is, the deepest source of contentions, wars, persecutions for conscience sake, angry words, angry feelings, backbitings, slanders, suspicions, false judgments, evil interpretations, unwise, unjust, injurious, inconsistent actions.

  Frances Wright

  War, Evil, Feelings

  Frances Wright (1829). “Course of popular lectures as delivered by Frances Wright: with three addresses on various public occasions, and a reply to the charges against the French reformers of 1789. Second edition”, p.107

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• For me philosophy begins with these experiences of disappointment: a disappointment at the level of what I would think of as "meaning," namely that, given that there is no God, what is the meaning of life? And, given that we live in an unjust world, how are we to bring about justice?

  Simon Critchley

  Disappointment, Philosophy, Thinking

  Interview with Jill Stauffer, believermag.com. August 2003.

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• I'm really very sorry for you all, but it's an unjust world, and virtue is triumphant only in theatrical performances.

  W. S. Gilbert

  Sorry, World, Virtue

  W. S. Gilbert, Ian C. Bradley (2016). “The Complete Annotated Gilbert and Sullivan”, p.703, Oxford University Press

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• How a regulation so unjust in itself, so foreign to the authority of Congress, and so hurtful to the sale of public land, and smelling so strongly of an antiquated bigotry, could have received the countenance of a committee is truly a matter of astonishment.

  James Madison

  Land, Hurtful, Atheism

  James Madison (1867). “1769-1793”, p.154

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• Many young men in the 1960s and 1970s came to reject some of the traditional ideas about manhood that many of their fathers tried to pass down - like unquestioning respect for authority even when that might mean killing and dying for questionable or unjust causes such as the Vietnam War.

  Jackson Katz

  Father, War, Mean

  "Fathers, Sons and Guns : An Interview With USC Sociologist and Author Michael Messner". Interview with Jackson Katz, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 31, 2011.

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• Those who deny the right of a jury to protect an individual in resisting an unjust law of the government, deny him all defence whatsoever against oppression.

  Lysander Spooner

  Government, Law, Oppression

  Lysander Spooner (2004). “An Essay on the Trial by Jury”, p.10, The Minerva Group, Inc.

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• The dream of Europe is a region of freedom and peace, of security, law, democracy, tolerance and mutual respect. If you look into the faces of the refugees you will see this dream. These are people who are fleeing from war, hate, violence and unjust systems.

  Martin Schulz

  Dream, Hate, War

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• I support Selfies! I think the war on selfies is really unjust!

  Lena Dunham

  War, Thinking, Support

  Source: thesource.com

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• As Nelson Mandela has pointed out, boycott is not a principle, it is a tactic depending upon circumstances. A tactic which allows people, as distinct from their elected but often craven governments, to apply a certain pressure on those wielding power in what they, the boycotters, consider to be an unjust or immoral way.

  John Berger

  Government, People, Way

  "We must speak out". www.theguardian.com. December 15, 2006.

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• Jedi do not fight for peace. That's only a slogan, and is as misleading as slogans always are. Jedi fight for civilization, because only civilization creates peace. We fight for justice because justice is the fundamental bedrock of civilization: an unjust civilization is built upon sand. It does not long survive a storm.

  Matthew Woodring Stover

  Fighting, Civilization, Long

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• One of the worst things about breaking the law is that it puts one at odds with an indeterminate number of other people. This is among the many corrosive effects of having unjust laws: They tempt peaceful and (otherwise) honest people to lie so as to avoid being punished for behavior that is ethically blameless.

  Sam Harris

  Lying, Odds, Law

  Sam Harris (2013). “Lying”, p.33, Four Elephants Press

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• My life is unjust, but I can strive for justice. My life is unkind, but I can vote for kindness.

  Vachel Lindsay

  Kindness, Compassion, Justice

  Vachel Lindsay, Dennis Camp (1984). “The poetry of Vachel Lindsay: complete & with Lindsay's drawings”, Spoon River Poetry Pr

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• [Heraclitus] concluded that coming-to-be itself could not be anything evil or unjust.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Evil

  Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (2012). “Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks”, p.71, Regnery Publishing

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• An unjust punishment is never forgotten.

  Penelope Fitzgerald

  Punishment, Forgotten

  Penelope Fitzgerald (1997). “The Blue Flower”, p.24, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• There are two forms of disappointment that interest me: religious and political disappointment. Religious disappointment flows from the realization that religious belief is not an option for us. Political disappointment flows from the fact that there is injustice - that we live in a world that is radically unjust and violent, where might seems to equal right, where the poor are exploited by the rich, etc.

  Simon Critchley

  Religious, Disappointment, Two

  Simon Critchley, Carl Cederström, Todd Kesselman (2011). “Impossible Objects”, p.31, Polity

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• For all riches come from iniquity, and unless one were to lose another could not gain. Hence the common adage seems to me to be very true: The rich man is unjust or the heir of an unjust one.

  St. Jerome

  Men, Riches, Heirs

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