33 Quotes About Justice, Resistance, and Peace That Will Make You Question Everything

Shutterstock / a katz
Shutterstock / a katz

1. Peace without justice is tyranny. – William Allen White

2. It is certain, in any case, that ignorance allied with power is the most ferocious enemy justice can have. – James Baldwin

3. My mama used to tell me, “If you can’t find somethin’ to live for, you best find something’ to die for.” Tupac Shakur

4. Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, will make violent revolution inevitable. – John F. Kennedy

5. I do believe that where there is only a choice between violence and cowardice, I would advise violence. – Mahatma Ghandi

6. In the end we must remember that no amount of rules or their enforcement will enforce those who struggle with justice on their side. – Nelson Mandela

7. Where there is power, there is resistance. – Michel Foucault

8. Fighting for one’s freedom, struggling towards being free, is like struggling to be a poet or a good Christian or a good Jew or a good Muslim or good Zen Buddhist. You work all day long and achieve some kind of level of success by nightfall, go to sleep and wake up the next morning with the job still to be done. So you start all over again.  Maya Angelou

9. A system cannot fail those it was never meant to protect.  W.E.B. Du Bois

10. Truth is powerful and it prevails. – Sojourner Truth

11. I will not have my life narrowed down. I will not bow down to someone else’s whim or to someone else’s ignorance. – bell hooks

12. Corn can’t expect justice from a court composed of chickens. – African proverb

13. One life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it. But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying. – Joan of Arc

14. Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe. – Frederick Douglas 

15. Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted, the indifference of those who should have known better, the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most, that has made it possible for evil to triumph. – Haile Selassie I

16. A riot is the language of the unheard. – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

17. If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other. – Mother Theresa

18.  Though force can protect in emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration and cooperation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace. – Dwight D. Eisenhower

19. There is no true peace without fairness, truth, justice, and solidarity. – St. Pope John Paul II

20. Brave men do not gather by thousands to torture and murder a single individual, so gagged and bound he cannot make even feeble resistance or defense. – Ida Wells

21. Resistance is feasible even for those who are not heroes by nature, and it is an obligation, I believe, for those who fear the consequences and detest the reality of the attempt to impose American hegemony. – Noam Chomsky

22. Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery. – Malcolm X

23. In matters of truth and justice, there is no difference between large and small problems, for issues concerning the treatment of people are all the same. – Albert Einstein

24. The dead cannot cry out for justice. It is the duty of the living to do so for them. – Lois McMaster Bujold

25. True peace is not merely the absence of war but the presence of justice. – Jane Addams

26. Despair and frustration will not shake our belief that the resistance is the only way of liberation. – Emile Lahoud

27. A desire to resist oppression is implanted in the nature of man. – Tacitus

28. Reconciliation should be accompanied by justice, otherwise it will not last. While we all hope for peace it shouldn’t be peace at any cost but peace based on principle, on justice. – Corazon Aquino 

29. If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality. – Desmond Tutu

30. Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. – George Orwell

31. To the wrongs that need resistance, to the right that needs assistance, to the future in the distance: Give yourselves. – Carrie Chapman Catt

32. It is highly convenient to believe in the infinite mercy of God when you feel the need of mercy, but remember also his infinite justice. – B.R. Hayden

33. In the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but organized robbery? – St. Augustine  Thought Catalog Logo Mark

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