Compassionate Justice Quotes

The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of man, and his compulsion is our liberation.

The difference between justice and forgiveness: To be just is to condemn the fault and, because of the fault, to condemn the doer as well. To forgive is to condemn the fault but to spare the doer. That's what the forgiving God does.

Mercy without justice is the mother of dissolution; justice without mercy is cruelty.

Justice lacking passion fails, betrays.

There is a tendency to dehumanize kids that commit crimes. The system is focused on punishment, not on rehabilitation. These kids are the most misunderstood and most cruelly treated.

War with evil; but show no spirit of malignity toward the man who may be responsible for the evil. Put it out of his power to do wrong.

In Scotland over many years we have cultivated through our justice system what I hope can be described as a 'culture of compassion.' On the other hand, there still exists in many parts of the U.S., if not nationally, an attitude towards the concept of justice which can only be described as a 'culture of vengeance.'

Justice should remove the bandage from her eyes long enough to distinguish between the vicious and the unfortunate.

Justice is possible without equality, I believe, because of compassion and understanding. If I have compassion, then if I have more than you, which is unequal, I will still do the just thing by you.

The impression I have of Justice Warren is that he was looking for the just result in a case regardless of fixed dogma or principles and I like to think that I'm in that mold.

Power at its best is love implementing the demand of justice.

We shall look on crime as a disease, and its physicians shall displace the judges, its hospitals displace the Galleys. Liberty and health shall be alike. We shall pour balm and oil where we formerly applied iron and fire; evil will be treated in charity, instead of in anger. This change will be simple and sublime.

Well, I always say the law was meant to be interpreted in a lenient manner. And that's what I try to do, is sometimes I lean to one side of it, sometimes I lean to the other.

The highest hallmark of a civilized society is not the rapidity by which it exacts vengeance, but its ability to hold victim and victimizer in its compassionate heart.

Cruelty is no more the cure of crimes than it is the cure of sufferings; compassion, in the first instance, is good for both; I have known it to bring compunction when nothing else would.

Justice is a judgement that is both fair and forgiving. Justice is not done until everyone is satisfied, even those who offend us and must be punished by us. You can see, by what we have done with these two boys, that justice is not only the way we punish those who do wrong. It is also the way we try to save them.

Peace is the product of justice and love.

Enhanced interrogation is not to be considered lightly, but the use of enhanced interrogation techniques does not require moral people to abandon their beliefs. Rather, it is precisely during these difficult times that one's beliefs about life, justice and mercy become indispensible.

The Police and the Society of Jesus posses in common the virtue of never forsaking their enemies as friends.

I have compassion, I've told you people that over and over again. Enforcing the law overrides my compassion.

No matter what someone else has done, it still matters how we treat people. It matters to our humanity that we treat offenders according to standards that we recognize as just. Justice is not revenge - it's deciding for a solution that is oriented towards peace, peace being the harder but more human way of reacting to injury. That is the very basis of the idea of rights.

...unless the exchange be in love and kindly justice, it will but lead some to greed and others to hunger.

The Golden Rule reminds us of our responsibility to protect and defend human life at every stage of its development. This conviction has led me, from the beginning of my ministry, to advocate at different levels for the global abolition of the death penalty.

Justice is the grammar of things. Mercy is the poetry of things.

Henry Hays was cheated all his life. He was cheated by his father who taught him to hate. His community taught him to hate. My mom told me, no matter what one does in life, he or she deserves some compassion, and I knew Hays deserved compassion more than anybody.