Quotes about justice

A robber who steals a knife and cuts himself cannot cry out against the woman who kept it sharp.

"Right or wrong. For us, it is such a simple thing, only a matter of whether a wrong has been done, or someone harmed. But they have books filled with words, with rules about how the story can and cannot be spoken. There is not room enough, nor time, to search for the real story that lies beneath the rest." (p341)

However small we are, we should always fight for what we believe to be right. And I don't mean fight with the power of our fists or the power of our swords. That has always been the problem with us Vikings. I mean the power of our brains and our thoughts and our dreams.

"They don't worry too much if they get the wrong man," Ernest said. "They reckon whoever they get is probably guilty of something. Or would have been eventually. And if he didn't do anything, he probably wanted to."

Or my gut was wrong.

Confirmation bias has put more innocent people in prison than malice.

But it’s not justice that they’re mostly concerned with, it’s division of the loot.

There can be no social order without social justice.

'Nobody,' she said, 'nobody but a child, or a child-minded person, expects life to be fair.'

8th Juror: It's very hard to keep personal prejudice out of a thing like this. And no matter where you run into it, prejudice obscures the truth. Well, I don't think any real damage has been done here. Because I don't really know what the truth is. No one ever will, I suppose. Nine of us now seem to feel that the defendant is innocent, but we're just gambling on probabilities. We may be wrong. We may be trying to return a guilty man to the community. No one can really know. But we have a reasonable doubt, and this is the safeguard that has enormous value in our system. No jury can declare a man guilty unless it's sure.

10th Juror: What do you want?

8th Juror: Nothing. I just want to talk.

7th Juror: Well, what's there to talk about? Eleven men here agree. Nobody had to think twice about it, except you.

10th Juror: I want to ask you something. Do you believe his story?

8th Juror: I don't know whether I believe it or not. Maybe I don't.

7th Juror: So what'd you vote "not guilty" for?

8th Juror: There were eleven votes for "guilty." It's not easy for me to raise my hand and send a boy off to die without talking about it first.

7th Juror: Who says it's easy for me?

8th Juror: No one.

7th Juror: What, just because I voted fast? I think the guy's guilty. You couldn't change my mind if you talked for a hundred years.

8th Juror: I'm not trying to change your mind. It's just that we're talking about somebody's life here. I mean, we can't decide in five minutes. Suppose we're wrong?

“This is to assuage our conscience, darling" she would explain to Blanca. "But it doesn't help the poor. They don't need charity; they need justice” (p162)

Any judge knows there are many kinds of justice—for instance, ideal justice as opposed to the best-we-can-do justice, which is what we end up with in making so many of our decisions. (p463)