Henry David Thoreau Justice Quotations

Truth is always in harmony with herself, and is not concerned chiefly to reveal the justice that may consist with wrong-doing.

I wish my countrymen to consider that whatever the human law may be, neither an individual nor a nation can ever commit the leastact of injustice against the obscurest individual without having to pay the penalty for it. A government which deliberately enacts injustice, and persists in it, will at length even become the laughing-stock of the world.

The effect of a good government is to make life more valuable; of a bad one, to make it less valuable.

While the Governor, and the Mayor, and countless officers of the Commonwealth are at large, the champions of liberty are imprisoned.

The lover wants no partiality. He says, Be so kind as to be just.

If I have unjustly wrested a plank from a drowning man, I must restore it to him though I drown myself.

If private men are obliged to perform the offices of government, to protect the weak and dispense justice, then the government becomes only a hired man, or clerk, to perform menial or indifferent services.

We do not live by justice, but by grace.

The Oriental philosophy approaches easily loftier themes than the modern aspires to; and no wonder if it sometimes prattle about them. It only assigns their due rank respectively to Action and Contemplation, or rather does full justice to the latter. Western philosophers have not conceived of the significance of Contemplation in their sense.

If however the law is so promulgated that it of necessity makes you an agent of injustices against another, then I say to you ... break the law.

If I were confined to a corner of a garret all my days, like a spider, the world would be just as large to me while I had my thoughts about me.

But government in which the majority rule in all cases can not be based on justice, even as far as men understand it.

If an injustice requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the government machine.

If... the machine of government... is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.

Justice is sweet and musical; but injustice is harsh and discordant.