Our Centers for Ethics:

Quotations: Fairness, justice, peace

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Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are a good person is a little like expecting the bull not to attack you because you are a vegetarian.
— Dennis Wholey, 20th/21st-century self-help author and journalist

It is reasonable that everyone who asks justice should do justice.
— Thomas Jefferson, American Founding Father and third U.S. president( 1743-1826), letter to George Hammond, 1792

It is less important to redistribute wealth than it is to redistribute opportunity.
— Arthur Vandenberg, American journalist and senator (1884-1951)

Grub first, then ethics.
— Bertolt Brecht, German dramatist (1898-1956)

The belly comes before the soul.
— George Orwell, British journalist and novelist (1903-1950)

Principles have no real force except when one is well fed.
— Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), American journalist, author and humorist (1835-1910)

Rise above principle and do what is right.
— Walter Heller, American economist (1915-1987)

You've got to have something to eat and a little love in your life before you can hold still for any damn body's sermon on how to behave.
— Billie Holiday (Eleanor Fagan), American singer (1915-1959)

The precepts of the law are these: to live honestly, to injure no one, and to give every man his due.
— Justinian I, Byzantine emperor (483-565)

A generous and noble spirit cannot be expected to dwell in the breasts of men who are struggling for their daily bread.
— Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Greek scholar (fl. c. 20 B.C.)

All bad precedents begin as justifiable measures.
— Julius Caesar, Roman general, statesman and writer (100-44 B.C.)

Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.
— Reinhold Niebuhr, American theologian (1892-1971)

Charity isn't a good substitute for justice.
— Jonathan Kozol, 2American journalist and author (b. 1936)

False hope is worse than despair.
— Jonathan Kozol, American journalist and author (b. 1936)

I do get scared about the physical danger from drug dealers. But it's not in the same league as the danger I feel eating an $80 lunch with my privileged friends to discuss hunger and poverty. That's when my soul feels imperiled.
— Jonathan Kozol, American journalist and author (b. 1936), on his work chronicling the lives of the poor in the Bronx.

Never befriend the oppressed unless you are prepared to take on the oppressor.
— Ogden Nash, American poet (1902-1971)

This country will not be a good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a good place for all of us to live in.
— Theodore Roosevelt, American adventurer and 26th president (1858-1919)

When a man hangs from a tree it doesn't spell justice unless he helped write the law that hanged him.
— E. B. White, American essayist (1899-1985)

I take it that what all men are really after is some form of, perhaps only some formula of, peace.
— Joseph Conrad (Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski), Polish/English novelist (1857-1924)

There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.
— A.J. Muste, minister and peace activist (1885-1967)

If you want to work for world peace, go home and love your families.
— Mother Teresa (Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu), nun and founder of the Order of the Missionaries of Charity (1910-1997), Nobel Prize for Peace acceptance speech, 1979

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