Theme

Justice

What is owed to a person, and what it costs to say so. Speeches sit next to quieter lines, because justice is argued in court and also at a kitchen table.

1. Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.Chinua AchebeA proverb he carried into his essays and interviews
2. Facts are stubborn things.John AdamsArgument in defense of the British soldiers
3. Failure is impossible.Susan B. AnthonyHer birthday greeting, reported at the end of her life
4. Under conditions of terror most people will comply but some people will not.Hannah ArendtEichmann in Jerusalem
5. Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.James BaldwinAs Much Truth as One Can Bear
6. One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.Simone de BeauvoirThe Second Sex
7. When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.Edmund BurkeThoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents
8. If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.Shirley ChisholmA line she used with audiences throughout her career
9. The safety of the people shall be the highest law.CiceroDe Legibus
10. Hatred does not cease by hatred at any time. Hatred ceases by love. This is an old rule.The DhammapadaDhammapada
11. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.Frederick DouglassWest India Emancipation speech
12. If there is no struggle, there is no progress.Frederick DouglassWest India Emancipation speech
13. The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.W. E. B. Du BoisThe Souls of Black Folk
14. What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?George EliotMiddlemarch
15. The past is never dead. It’s not even past.William FaulknerRequiem for a Nun
16. Nonviolence is the first article of my faith. It is also the last article of my creed.Mohandas K. GandhiStatement at the Great Trial
17. If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?HillelPirkei Avot
18. What happens to a dream deferred?Langston HughesHarlem
19. I, too, sing America.Langston HughesI, Too
20. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of…Thomas JeffersonThe Declaration of Independence
21. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.Martin Luther King Jr.Address at the March on Washington
22. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.Martin Luther King Jr.Letter from Birmingham Jail
23. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land.Martin Luther King Jr.I’ve Been to the Mountaintop
24. A house divided against itself cannot stand.Abraham LincolnHouse Divided speech
25. With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right.Abraham LincolnSecond Inaugural Address
26. That government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.Abraham LincolnThe Gettysburg Address
27. You can’t separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.Malcolm XSpeech in New York
28. It is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.Nelson MandelaStatement from the dock at the Rivonia Trial
29. The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.Karl MarxTheses on Feuerbach
30. A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism.Karl MarxThe Communist Manifesto
31. Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you.The Gospel of MatthewThe Gospel of Matthew
32. What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?MicahMicah
33. Why have women passion, intellect, moral activity — these three — and a place in society where no one of the three can be exercised?Florence NightingaleCassandra
34. I do not pretend to understand the moral universe. The arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine…Theodore ParkerOf Justice and the Conscience
35. The only tired I was, was tired of giving in.Rosa ParksRosa Parks: My Story
36. We ought not to retaliate or render evil for evil to any one, whatever evil we may have suffered from him.SocratesPlato, Crito
37. The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart.Aleksandr SolzhenitsynThe Gulag Archipelago
38. We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal.Elizabeth Cady StantonDeclaration of Sentiments
39. Wherever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there.John SteinbeckThe Grapes of Wrath
40. Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.Henry David ThoreauCivil Disobedience
41. The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.ThucydidesHistory of the Peloponnesian War
42. I am a woman’s rights. I have as much muscle as any man, and can do as much work as any man.Sojourner TruthSpeech at the Women’s Rights Convention, Akron
43. Cast down your bucket where you are.Booker T. WashingtonAtlanta Exposition Address
44. The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.Ida B. WellsA motto of her reporting
45. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.Elie WieselNobel lecture
46. I do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves.Mary WollstonecraftA Vindication of the Rights of Woman
47. I accuse.Émile ZolaJ’Accuse…!

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