What the famous, infamous, and obscure have said

The proof that the state is a creation of nature and prior to the individual is that the individual, when isolated, is not self-sufficing; and therefore he is like a part in relation to the whole. But he who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god: he is no part of a state. A social instinct is implanted in all men by nature, and yet he who first founded the state was the greatest of benefactors. For man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but, when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all; since armed injustice is the more dangerous, and he is equipped at birth with arms, meant to be used by intelligence and virtue, which he may use for the worst ends. Wherefore, if he have not virtue, he is the most unholy and the most savage of animals, and the most full of lust and gluttony. But justice is the bond of men in states, for the administration of justice, which is the determination of what is just, is the principle of order in political society.

—Aristotle, The Politics
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Superman: I’m here to fight for truth, and justice, and the American way.

Lois Lane: You’re going to end up fighting every elected official in this country!

—Superman (1978)
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Will you be so good as to answer yet one more question? Does the just man try to gain any advantage over the just?

Far otherwise; if he did he would not be the simple amusing creature which he is.

And would he try to go beyond just action?

He would not.

And how would he regard the attempt to gain an advantage over the unjust; would that be considered by him as just or unjust?

He would think it just, and would try to gain the advantage; but he would not be able.

Whether he would or would not be able, I said, is not to the point. My question is only whether the just man, while refusing to have more than another just man, would wish and claim to have more than the unjust?

Yes, he would.

And what of the unjust – does he claim to have more than the just man and to do more than is just?

Of course, he said, for he claims to have more than all men.

And the unjust man will strive and struggle to obtain more than the just man or action, in order that he may have more than all?

True.

We may put the matter thus, I said – the just does not desire more than his like, but more than his unlike, whereas the unjust desires more than both his like and his unlike?

Nothing, he said, can be better than that statement.

And the unjust is good and wise, and the just is neither?

Good again, he said.

And is not the unjust like the wise and good, and the just unlike them?

Of course, he said, he who is of a certain nature, is like those who are of a certain nature; he who is not, not.

—Socrates questioning Thrasymachus in Plato’s Republic
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Success is the sole earthly judge of right and wrong.

—Adolf Hitler
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[I]t is necessary for a prince wishing to hold his own to know how to do wrong, and to make use of it or not according to necessity. Therefore, putting on one side imaginary things concerning a prince, and discussing those which are real, I say that all men when they are spoken of, and chiefly princes for being more highly placed, are remarkable for some of those qualities which bring them either blame or praise; and thus it is that one is reputed liberal, another miserly, using a Tuscan term (because an avaricious person in our language is still he who desires to possess by robbery, whilst we
call one miserly who deprives himself too much of the use of his own); one is reputed generous, one rapacious; one cruel, one compassionate; one faithless, another faithful; one effeminate and cowardly, another bold and brave; one affable, another haughty; one lascivious, another chaste; one sincere, another cunning; one hard, another easy; one grave, another frivolous; one religious, another unbelieving, and the like. And I know that every one will confess that it would be most praiseworthy in a prince to exhibit all the above qualities that are considered good; but because they can neither be entirely possessed nor observed, for human conditions do not permit it, it is necessary for him to be sufficiently prudent that he may know how to avoid the reproach of those vices which would lose him his state; and also to keep himself, if it be possible, from those which would not lose him it; but this not being possible, he may with less hesitation abandon himself to them. And again, he need not make himself uneasy at incurring a reproach for those vices without which the state can only be saved with difficulty, for if everything is considered carefully, it will be found that something which looks like virtue, if followed, would be his ruin; whilst something else, which looks like vice, yet followed brings him security and prosperity.

—Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince
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Time is the justice that examines all offenders.

—William Shakespeare, As You Like It
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Justice that love gives is a surrender, justice that law gives is a punishment.

—Mohandas Gandhi
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Wholly guilty though I am, I am also, as you know, wholly innocent. It is not the deed but the intention of the doer which makes the crime, and justice should weigh not what was done but the spirit in which it is done.
—Heloise to Peter Abelard, The Letters of Abelard and Heloise
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I always believed that law must serve justice and when it fails to do so I try to find ways to make sure that the law brings us closer to justice. Before the revolution, my husband and I married under very fair and equal conditions according to the law. However, after the revolution I lost all my rights. I was turned practically into a slave, whereas I was an equal partner before the revolution. The injustice that I felt was affecting my behavior at home. One day I spoke with my husband and told him that I suffered from this legal injustice and I proposed that we sign a new agreement by which he would restore my equal rights. He agreed. It’s interesting that when we actually went to sign the contract, the clerk there who was sitting in the office turned to my husband and said, “Are you crazy to do this?” And he said, “Well, in order to save my family life, I need to do this.” I felt that justice was created afterwards.

—Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi
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I came from the gutter, my success in this game
is sort of like Pro-jectic Justice, a payment for brushes
with police officers, a peace offering
From the Gods for the streets I was tossed in
’Til I’m deceased in a coffin.

—Jay-Z
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Presumably, the vast ranges of undeserved inequalities found everywhere are the fault of “society” and so the redressing of those inequalities is called social justice , going beyond the traditional justice of presenting each individual with the same rules and standards. However, even those who argue this way often recognize that some undeserved inequalities may arise from cultural differences, family genes, or from historical confluences of events not controlled by anybody or by any given society at any given time. For example, there was no way that Pee Wee Reese was going to hit as many home runs as Mark Mc­Gwire, or Shirley Temple run as fast as Jesse Owens. There was no way that Scandinavians or Polynesians were going to know as much about camels as the Bedouins of the Sahara – and no way that these Bedouins were going to know as much about fishing as the Scandinavians or Polynesians. In a sense, proponents of “social justice” are unduly modest. What they are seeking to correct are not merely the deficiencies of society, but of the cosmos.... Because ordinary Americans have not yet abandoned traditional justice, those who seek cosmic justice must try to justify it politically as meeting traditional concepts of justice. A failure to achieve the new vision of justice must be represented to the public and to the courts as “discrimination.” Tests that register the results of innumerable inequalities must be represented as being the cause of those inequalities or as deliberate efforts to perpetuate those inequalities by erecting arbitrary barriers to the advancement of the less fortunate. In short, to promote cosmic justice, they must misrepresent what is happening as violations of traditional justice – as understood by others who do not share their vision.

—Thomas Sowell, “The Quest for Cosmic Justice” (from a speech posted at www.tsowell.com/spquestc.html, not from the book of the same title)
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So justice while she winks at crimes,
Stumbles on innocence sometimes.

—Samuel Butler, Hudibras
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Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.

—Groucho Marx

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Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you’re a man, you take it.

—Malcolm X

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Even in the present distribution of temporal things, does God plainly evince His own interference. For if every sin were now visited with manifest punishment, nothing would seem to be reserved for the final judgment; on the other hand, if no sin received now a plainly divine punishment, it would be concluded that there is no divine providence at all. And so of the good things of this life: if God did not by a very visible liberality confer these on some of those persons who ask for them, we should say that these good things were not at His disposal; and if He gave them to all who sought them, we should suppose that such were the only rewards of His service; and such a service would make us not godly, but greedy rather, and covetous. Wherefore, though good and bad men suffer alike, we must not suppose that there is no difference between the men themselves, because there is no difference in what they both suffer. For even in the likeness of the sufferings, there remains an unlikeness in the sufferers; and though exposed to the same anguish, virtue and vice are not the same thing. For as the same fire causes gold to glow brightly, and chaff to smoke; and under the same flail the straw is beaten small, while the grain is cleansed; and as the lees are not mixed with the oil, though squeezed out of the vat by the same pressure, so the same violence of affliction proves, purges, clarifies the good, but damns, ruins, exterminates the wicked. And thus it is that in the same affliction the wicked detest God and blaspheme, while the good pray and praise. So material a difference does it make, not what ills are suffered, but what kind of man suffers them. For, stirred up with the same movement, mud exhales a horrible stench, and ointment emits a fragrant odor.

—St. Augustine, City of God

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When love is gone, there’s always justice. And when justice is gone, there’s always force. And when force is gone, there’s always Mom. Hi, Mom!

—Laurie Anderson

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[T]hey say that justice is the constant will of giving to every man his own. And therefore where there is no own, that is, no propriety, there is no injustice; and where there is no coercive power erected, that is, where there is no Commonwealth, there is no propriety, all men having the right to all things: therefore where there is no Commonwealth, there nothing is unjust. So that the nature of justice consisteth in the keeping of valid covenants, but the validity of covenants begins not but with the constitution of a civil power sufficient to compel men to keep them: and then it is also that propriety begins.

—Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

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Justice is incidental to law and order.
—J. Edgar Hoover

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I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.

—Abraham Lincoln

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And he that killeth any man shall surely be put to death.
And he that killeth a beast shall make it good; beast for beast.
And if a man cause a blemish in his neighbour; as he hath done, so shall it be done to him;
Breach for breach, eye for eye, tooth for tooth: as he hath caused a blemish in a man, so shall it be done to him again.

—Leviticus 24:17-20

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You shall set up judges and law enforcement officials for yourself in all your cities that the lord, your god, is giving you, for your tribes, and they shall judge the people [with] righteous judgment.
You shall not pervert justice; you shall not show favoritism, and you shall not take a bribe, for bribery blinds the eyes of the wise and perverts just words.
Justice, justice shall you pursue, that you may live and possess the land the Lord, your God, is giving you.

—Deuteronomy 16:18-20

Luv the artwork, kudos :)