Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Quotes

What does labor want? We want more schoolhouses and less jails; more books and less arsenals; more learning and less vice; more leisure and less greed; more justice and less revenge; in fact, more of the opportunities to cultivate our better natures.

Women, who are a majority of the peoples of the earth, are indispensable to the accumulation of the kind of social capital that is conducive to development, peace, justice and civility.

I think God's justice is making wrongs right.

Some like to think that a keen appreciation of art can actually make us better people - more just, more moral, more sensitive, more understanding. Perhaps that is true - in certain rare, isolated cases.

Man's nature is fundamentally good, or perhaps it is neither good nor evil. In any case, man is something to work on. We must hold fast to this fact - man is something to work on.

… evolving standards of decency … mark the progress of a maturing society

The death penalty serves social justice.

Three ideas stand out above all others in the influence they have exerted and are destined to exert upon the development of the human race: The idea of the Golden Rule, the idea of natural law, and the idea of age-long growth, or evolution.

Civilization develops man, and if he is, according to his whole character and destiny, made for development, civilization is his truly natural state …

Law and justice are not always the same. When they aren't, destroying the law may be the first step toward changing it.

I believe that God and the people of Pakistan are with me, and I hope that, somewhere, justice is still alive.

Our ultimate objective in learning about anything is to try to create and develop a more just society.

Unless education promotes character making, unless it helps men to be more moral, more just to their fellows, more law abiding, more discriminatingly patriotic and public spirited, it is not worth the trouble taken to furnish it.

Men are always invoking justice; yet it is justice which should make them tremble.

Every citizen, regardless of his race, creed, or color, is entitled to equal justice.

There is a good ear, in some men, that draws supplies to virtue out of very indifferent nutriment.

There is no justice in following unjust laws.

By a peculiar prerogative, not only each individual is making daily advances in the sciences, and may make advances in morality (which is the science, by way of eminence, of living well and being happy), but all mankind together is making a continual progress in proportion as the universe grows older. So that the whole human race, during the course of so many ages, may be considered as one man who never ceases to live and learn.

Law never made men a whit more just.

Objectivity is impossible and it is also undesirable. That is, if it were possible it would be undesirable, because if you have any kind of a social aim, if you think history should serve society in some way; should serve the progress of the human race; should serve justice in some way, then it requires that you make your selection on the basis of what you think will advance causes of humanity.

The patterns have become unmistakable and undeniable. ... We have to come to terms with some hard truths about race and justice in America.

The progressive development of man is vitally dependent on invention.

The history of the race is but that of the individual "writ large".

The new religion will teach the dignity of human nature and its infinite possibilities for development. It will teach the solidarity of the race: that all must rise and fall as one. Its creed will be justice, liberty, equality for all the children of earth.

But by this time I was acutely conscious of the gap between law and justice. I knew that the letter of the law was not as important as who held the power in any real-life situation.