Joseph Joubert Quotes

Justice without force is powerless; force without justice is tyrannical.

Justice is the first virtue of those who command, and stops the complaints of those who obey.

In our society, authority derives from justice, and in our society, learning to live with authority should derive from and aid learning to understand and to feel justice.

The law is bigger than money - but only if the law works hard enough.

He made you king to do justice and righteousness.

But the relationship of morality and power is a very subtle one. Because ultimately power without morality is no longer power.

There is no man more dangerous, in a position of power, than he who refuses to accept as a working truth the idea that all a man does should make for rightness and soundness, that even the fixing of a tariff rate must be moral.

Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all.

Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just.

Force cannot change right.

The strongest is never strong enough to always be the master unless he transforms strength into right…

The basic notion of justice, is that the rights of everybody are equals, in principle. In the rights of others, we have to respect our own rights. It is only in that condition that we can reasonably require that it be respected by others…. The realization of justice is, in the actual state of things, a matter of life or death for society and for civilization itself.

Morality is the object of government.

Justice remains the greatest power on earth. To that tremendous power alone will we submit.

There is no power without justice.

There is no real force without justice.

A human society obeys the dictates of reason and is guided and governed by a respect for justice.

Force does not constitute right... obedience is due only to legitimate powers.

You may have the might, but that does not necessarily make you right.

I think the first duty of society is justice.

Then not only custom, but also nature affirms that to do is more disgraceful than to suffer injustice, and that justice is equality.

It is the duty of the law-giver to deliver to the many the instructions of whose truth he has persuaded himself.

Justice, sir, is the great interest of man on earth. It is the ligament which holds civilized beings and civilized nations together.

In civilized life, law floats in a sea of ethics. Each is indispensable to civilization. Without law, we should be at the mercy of the least scrupulous; without ethics, law could not exist.

… the great vitality and durability of institutions which place right on the side of might