Quotes about Justice

To be neutral in a situation of injustice is to have chosen sides already. It is to support the status quo.

The cycle of reprisal and counter reprisal that had characterized their national history had to be broken and that the only way to do this was to go beyond retributive justice to restorative justice, to move on to forgiveness, because without it there was no future.

One of the most blasphemous consequences of injustice, especially racist injustice, is that it can make a child of God doubt that he or she is a child of God.

in the sentiment of Mahatma Gandhi, when we practice the law of an eye for an eye, we all end up blind.

But just as we do not forgive for others, we also do not forgive for God.

I would love to know who killed my father. So would my brother." Her next words stunned me and left me breathless. "We want to forgive them. We want to forgive, but we don't know who to forgive.

Each of us has the capacity to commit the wrongs against others that were committed against us. Although I might say, "I would never . . ." genuine humility will answer, "Never say never." Rather say, "I hope that, given the same set of circumstances, I would not . . ." But can we ever really know?

We choose to either walk the path of revenge and be bound to suffering, or take the path of forgiveness and be freed into healing.

The process we embarked on through the TRC was, as all real growth proves to be, astoundingly painful and profoundly beautiful.

What a profound scientific discovery that blacks, Coloreds (usually people of mixed race), and Indians were in fact human beings, who had the same concerns and anxieties and aspirations. They wanted a decent home, a good job, a safe environment for their families, good schools for their children, and almost none wanted to drive the whites into the sea. They just wanted their place in the sun. Everywhere else elections are

The white person entered the voting booth burdened by the load of guilt for having enjoyed the fruits of oppression and injustice. He emerged as somebody new. He too cried out, "The burden has been lifted from my shoulders, I am free, transfigured, made into a new person." He walked tall, with head held high and shoulders set square and straight. White people found that freedom.

The rubric of proportionality had to be observed—that the means were proportional to the objective.