quotations about injustice
If you tremble with indignation at every injustice, then you are a comrade of mine.
CHE GUEVARA
attributed, The Quotable Rebel: Political Quotations for Dangerous Times
People don't always get what they deserve in this world.
LEMONY SNICKET
The Blank Book
It began to seem that one would have to hold in the mind forever two ideas which seemed to be in opposition. The first idea was acceptance, the acceptance, totally without rancor, of life as it is, and men as they are: in the light of this idea, it goes without saying that injustice is a commonplace. But this did not mean that one could be complacent, for the second idea was of equal power: that one must never, in one's own life, accept these injustices as commonplace but must fight them with all one's strength. This fight begins, however, in the heart and it now had been laid to my charge to keep my own heart free of hatred and despair. This intimation made my heart heavy and, now that my father was irrecoverable, I wished that he had been beside me so that I could have searched his face for the answers which only the future would give me now.
JAMES BALDWIN
Notes of a Native Son
Justice in the hands of the powerful is merely a governing system like any other. Why call it justice? Let us rather call it injustice, but of a sly effective order, based entirely on cruel knowledge of the resistance of the weak, their capacity for pain, humiliation and misery. Injustice sustained at the exact degree of necessary tension to turn the cogs of the huge machine-for-the-making-of-rich-men, without bursting the boiler.
GEORGES BERNANOS
The Diary of a Country Priest
It's not unpatriotic to denounce an injustice committed on our behalf, perhaps it's the most patriotic thing we can do.
E. A. BUCCHIANERI
Brushstrokes of a Gadfly
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
Address at the Golden Anniversary Conference of the National Urban League, September 6, 1960
As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.
JOHN STUART MILL
Principles of Political Economy
My conscience rebels against the injustice, the cruelty, the inequality that surrounds me on every side.
ANNIE BESANT
Indian Political Thought
When one has been threatened with a great injustice, one accepts a smaller as a favour.
JANE WELSH CARLYLE
Letters and memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle?
Injustice we worship; all that lifts us out of the miseries of life is the sublime fruit of injustice. Every immortal deed was an act of fearful injustice; the world of grandeur, of triumph, of courage, of lofty aspiration, was built up on injustice. Man would not be man but for injustice.
GEORGE MOORE
Confessions of a Young Man
Acts of injustice done
Between the setting and the rising sun
In history lie like bones, each one.
W. H. AUDEN
The Ascent of F-6
When men are about to commit, or sanction the commission of some injustice, it is not uncommon for them to express pity for the object either of that or some parallel proceeding, and to feel themselves, at the time, quite virtuous and moral, and immensely superior to those who express no pity at all. This is a kind of upholding of faith above works, and is very comfortable.
CHARLES DICKENS
Nicholas Nickleby
The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men.
LYNDON B. JOHNSON
remarks in the Capitol Rotunda at the signing of the Voting Rights Act, August 6, 1965
I guess the only time most people think about injustice is when it happens to them.
CHARLES BUKOWSKI
Ham on Rye
Everything human beings can imagine has been thrown at injustice, and injustice just absorbs it, and enlarges.
GREG BAXTER
The Apartment
Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, 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 which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
ROBERT F. KENNEDY
speech in Capetown, South Africa, June 6, 1966
There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.
ELIE WIESEL
From the Kingdom of Memory
Some things you must always be unable to bear. Some things you must never stop refusing to bear. Injustice and outrage and dishonor and shame. No matter how young you are or how old you have got. Not for kudos and not for cash: your picture in the paper nor money in the bank either. Just refuse to bear them.
WILLIAM FAULKNER
Intruder in the Dust
The wound caused by injustice is better healed by the hand which inflicts it.
HANNAH M. RATHBONE
attributed, Day's Collacon
Once you start seeing injustice in one place, it's like taking off blinders -- you start to see injustice everywhere, and how it is all connected.
MARK AMES
Going Postal