Derrick Bell Quotes

For no fault of mine, I lost everything.

Wealth is attended with power, by which bargains and proceedings, contrary to universal righteousness, are supported; and hence oppression, carried on with worldly policy and order, clothes itself with the name of justice and becomes like a seed of discord in the soul.

Families buying dog food now, starvation roams the streets. Babies die before their born, infected by the grief.

The gain in self-confidence of having accomplished a tiresome labour is immense.

His [Ben Okri's] work poses very serious questions for the twenty-first century. Among them: To what extent will we allow the indefinable dynamics of something called "destiny" to maintain grief and horror in the world? How hard are human beings willing to fight to achieve and sustain justice, equanimity, or joy? And should progress be called such when it devours what is best within the human spirit?

Friendship redoubleth joys, and cutteth griefs in half.

To lose a child ... was something that could end one's world. One could never get back to how it was before. The stars went out. The moon disappeared. The birds became silent.

Waste not fresh tears over old griefs.

If, as you believe there is an Almighty, Omnipresent, Omniscient God, who created the earth or universe, please let me know, first of all, as to why he created this world. This world which is full of woe and grief, and countless miseries, where not even one person lives in peace....Where is God? What is He doing? Is He getting a diseased pleasure out of it? A Nero! A Genghis Khan! Down with Him!

But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.

I knew all the rules but the rules did not know me.

He that mischief hatcheth, mischief catcheth.

In peace children inter their parents, war violates the order of nature and causes parents to inter their children.

Everything I’ve ever let go of has claw marks on it.

A circus! 100 clowns of injustice have climbed out of the tiny clown car of this court room.

To strictest justice many ills belong, And honesty is often in the wrong.

Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.

To delay is injustice.

You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong.

Despotism is unjust to everybody, including the despot, who was probably made for better things.

What shall we think of a government to which all the truly brave and just men in the land are enemies, standing between it and those whom it oppresses? A government that pretends to be Christian and crucifies a million Christs every day!

Democracy allows for A and B to band together to rip off C. This is not justice, but a moral outrage.

In the face of suffering, one has no right to turn away, not to see. In the face of injustice, one may not look the other way. When someone suffers, and it is not you, that person comes first. One's very suffering gives one priority. . . . To watch over one who grieves is a more urgent duty than to think of God.

Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms.

Don't be sad, don't be angry, if life deceives you! Submit to your grief - your time for joy will come, believe me.