Economic Justice Quotes

Power properly understood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose. It is the strength required to bring about social, political and economic change. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Progress is not striving for economic justice or fairness, but economic growth. ~ Rush Limbaugh

Communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social, and the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism but in a higher synthesis. It is found in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

The problem of racism, the problem of economic exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together. These are the triple evils that are interrelated. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

I care a lot about people, and I believe in being my brothers keeper and caring for those in need. And while I think some inequality is necessary and good, poverty is not. I envision a world where we all are prospering and succeeding in life, though in different ways and to varying degrees. Capitalism is the way. ~ Hendrith Smith

Finally, it was about how people treat one another. It was about human dignity. We forced the employers to treat us as equals, to sit down and talk to us about the work we do, how we do it, and what we get paid for it. And I believe that the principles for which we fought in 1934 are still true and still useful. Whether your job is pushing a four-wheeler, or programming a computer, I don't know of any way for working people to win basic economic justice and dignity except by being organized into a solid, democratic union. ~ Harry Bridges

Propelled by freedom of faith, gender equality and economic justice for all, India will become a modern nation. Minor blemishes cannot cloak the fact that India is becoming such a modern nation: no faith is in danger in our country, and the continuing commitment to gender equality is one of the great narratives of our times. ~ Pranab Mukherjee

As a nation we should commit ourselves not only to the fight against terrorism, but to economic justice, defeat of the AIDS epidemic and vestiges of discriminatory policies of all kinds. ~ Charles B. Rangel

What does 'economic justice' mean, except that you want something that someone else produced, without having to produce anything yourself in return? ~ Thomas Sowell

It's important that we recognize how extreme the Republicans are in almost every case and how against our self-interest it is to vote for them whether or not we are disappointed with the current crew. At least they believe in the Constitution. At least they have an idea of economic justice. The Republicans are devoted to creating more rich folks. ~ Gloria Steinem

The movement of Pakistan which the Quaid-e-Azam launched was ethical in inspiration and ideological in content. The story of this movement is a story of the ideals of equality, fraternity and social and economic justice struggling against the forces of domination, exploitation, intolerance and tyranny. ~ Fatima Jinnah

Meritocracy is a social arrangement like any other: it is a loose set of rules that can be adapted in order to obscure advantages, all the while justifying them on the basis of collective values. pg. 199 ~ Shamus Rahman Khan

Wendell Berry in "Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer." "I do not see that computers are bringing us one step nearer to anything that does matter to me: peace, economic justice, ecological health, political honesty, family and community stability, good work." Ethan ~ Mark Sundeen

We have fought for social justice. We have fought for economic justice. We have fought for environmental justice. We have fought for criminal justice. Now we must add a new fight - the fight for electoral justice. ~ Barbara Boxer

If this country is really to go forward along the path of social and economic justice, there must be a new party of nationwide and non-sectional principles, a party where the titular national chiefs and the real state leaders shall be in genuine accord, a party in whose counsels the people shall be supreme, a party that shall represent in the nation and the several states alike the same cause, the cause of human rights and of governmental efficiency. At present both the old parties are controlled by professional politicians in the interests of the privileged classes, and apparently each has set up as its ideal of business and political development a government by financial despotism tempered by make-believe political assassination. Democrat and Republican alike, they represent government of the needy many by professional politicians in the interests of the rich few. This is class government, and class government of a peculiarly unwholesome kind. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

I wrote Normal Life using concepts that have been helpful to me, and hoping to offer those as accessible tools for thinking differently about the pitfalls trans resistance faces, in particular the temptation to focus on legal equality and the limitations of that approach, and the alternative approaches being taken by racial and economic justice focused trans activists. ~ Dean Spade

I am conscious that an equal division of property is impracticable. But the consequences of this enormous inequality [in Europe] producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind, legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property, ... [One] means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise. ~ Thomas Jefferson

It didn't seem to have relevance, except in Central America or South America, countries where the church was connected to the fight of the people for economic justice. That's why it was so interesting to find myself back with Sister Helen [in Dead Man Walking], this new breed of nuns who were making a difference in the community. ~ Susan Sarandon

Today everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless. As a consequence, masses of people find themselves excluded and marginalized: without work, without possibilities, without any means of escape. ~ Pope Francis

He (George W. Bush) is going in the wrong way. And I dare say, that is what the strategy of his administration is, is just to wipe out government's purpose for any social and economic justice at all. ~ Dennis Kucinich

We educated, privileged lawyers have a professional and moral duty to represent the underrepresented in our society, to ensure that justice exists for all, both legal and economic justice. ~ Sonia Sotomayor

Part of the scandal of American Christianity is that statistically the U.S. is the most Christian country in the world, and yet as a country we have the greatest income inequality in the world. And as a country we are uncritically committed, not simply to being the most powerful nation in the world militarily, but to being as militarily powerful as the rest of the world combined.
We Christians live in a tradition that is passionate about issues of economic justice and peace and yet at least half of American Christians, probably even more, think it's really important that we be as powerful as the rest of the world put together. ~ Marcus J. Borg

Whenever there is in any country, uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labour and live on. If, for the encouragement of industry we allow it to be appropriated, we must take care that other employment be furnished to those excluded from the appropriation. If we do not the fundamental right to labour the earth returns to the unemployed. ~ Thomas Jefferson

When I tell people I was in the St. Justin Martyr parish, if they are native Chicagoans they know exactly where I was and what that was like. The Sunday before this particular march, the archbishop of Chicago, Cardinal Cody, had required all of his pastors to read a letter in support of open housing and economic justice in every parish in the city. ~ Sara Paretsky

Our children will work in energy tomorrow - they just won't work in fossil fuels, in the meantime, for social justice, economic justice and stability, we need ... negotiated, planned outcomes that people can touch at both the national and industry and enterprise level. ~ Sharan Burrow

The New Deal was going to redistribute the national income according to ideals of social and economic justice. ~ Garet Garrett

Bush is going in the wrong way. And I dare say, that is what the strategy of his administration is, is just to wipe out government's purpose for any social and economic justice at all. And I'm going to take the country in an opposite direction than he's taking it. ~ Dennis Kucinich

There's a wider agenda that speaks to what the Democratic Party has historically stood for, which are economic rights for those who are struggling in the middle class, concern for the poor, for economic justice for those who are marginalized in our society. ~ Mike McCurry

The way in which we can promote peace, is by promoting sustainable management of our resources, equitable distribution of these resources, and that the only way you can actually do that, is that then you have to have a political, economic system that facilitates that. And then you get into the issues of human rights, justice, economic justice, social justice, and good governance or democratic governance. That's how it ties up. ~ Wangari Maathai

So as a nation, we have a right to be very proud of the successes that we have seen because of the struggle of millions of people to create a less discriminatory society. That is something we should be proud of, but there is one struggle in which not only have we not succeeded but in which we are losing ground and that is the fundamental struggle for economic justice. ~ Bernie Sanders

The Civil Rights for Musicians Act is about economic justice for African American artists. It's about what's right. And it's about time. ~ Dionne Warwick

I think that the movement against the World Bank, against the globalization process that is happening, is very positive. We need a globalization, a globalization of people who are committed to social justice, to economic justice. We need a globalization of people who are committed to saving this earth, to making sure that the water is drinkable, that the air is breathable. ~ Assata Shakur

I've spent so many years talking about poverty and economic justice, I'm strongly tempted to get biblical. Jesus' teachings are so radical; they're just insanely generous and apocalyptic. Christians become more fascinated by the dead Jesus. They don't like the living Jesus. ~ Barbara Ehrenreich

I beg you, look for the words 'social justice' or 'economic justice' on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. ~ Glenn Beck

There was a time when I could vote for economic justice, and I can't anymore. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

If we shrug our shoulders at the avoidable suffering of the weak and the poor, of those who are getting exploited and ripped off, we are not the left. ~ Peter Singer

My long struggles as a soldier of the Chinese Revolution have forced me to realize the necessity of facing hard facts. There will be neither peace, nor hope, nor future for any of us unless we honestly aim at political, social and economic justice for all peoples of the world, great and small. ~ Chiang Kai-shek

The poor who have neither property, friends, nor strength to labor are boarded in the houses of good farmers, to whom a stipulated sum is annually paid. To those who are able to help themselves a little or have friends from whom they derive some succor, inadequate however to their full maintenance, supplementary aids are given which enable them to live comfortably in their own houses or in the houses of their friends. Vagabonds without visible property or vocation, are placed in work houses, where they are well clothed, fed, lodged, and made to labor ~ Thomas Jefferson

As we say at Year Up all the time, investing in our young people is not just a matter of economic justice. It's good business sense. ~ Gerald Chertavian

Goldman Sachs was one of those companies whose illegal activity helped destroy our economy and ruin the lives of millions of Americans. But this is what a rigged economy and a corrupt campaign finance system and a broken criminal justice is about. These guys are so powerful that not one of the executives on Wall Street has been charged with anything after paying, in this case of Goldman Sachs, a $5 billion fine. ~ Bernie Sanders

We must not allow this generation to produce record numbers for the juvenile justice, runaway and homeless youth, or foster care systems. ~ Ruben Hinojosa

Man, as a form, bears within him the eternal principle of being, and by economic movement along his endless path his form is also transformed, just as everything that lives in nature was transformed in him. ~ Kazimir Malevich

How often do police accidentally shoot and kill bankers who are committing financial crimes, stealing homes, and plunging the nation into economic instability and recession? ~ Ralph Nader

For Hades is mighty in calling men to account below the earth, and with a mind that records in tablets he surveys all things. ~ Aeschylus

An economic blockade may cause more deaths by a factor of a hundred, but it does so silently and behind closed doors. Its first victims are the very young, the very old and the very sick. The numbers of children dying before their first birthday increased from one in thirty when sanctions were imposed to one in eight seven years later. Many Iraqis were simply not getting enough to eat. I ~ Patrick Cockburn

Speaking like this doesn't mean that we're anti-white, but it does mean we're anti-exploitation, we're anti-degradation, we're anti-oppression. ~ Malcolm X

The world howls for social justice, but when it comes to social responsibility, you sometimes can't even hear crickets chirping. ~ Dean Koontz

A human rights activist is the worst type of person to mess with. If I can choose an enemy between the worst finance CEO, or the worst human rights violating dictator, and a human rights activist, I would choose the former. A human rights activist doesn't let go; doesn't have a peace of mind till responsibility for a wrongful act is finally reached. That's the uncomfortable type of person that cannot stand injustice, the type of person that doesn't fear "social desirability" sanctions for confronting wrongdoers directly, upsetting the silence and the status quo, and for screaming loud. That's the person that dares to stand up -- for themselves, for others. That's the type of person who doesn't lay low, doesn't fear being perceived as uncomfortable, the type of person that doesn't just "go along". I do not want as an enemy a person who cannot let go and forget injustice, but who instead will plug away till the very end, till justice is reached. I do not want that man or woman as an enemy. ~ Iveta Cherneva

We have previously suggested that philanthropy combines genuine pity with the display of power and that the latter element explains why the powerful are more inclined to be generous than to grant social justice. ~ Reinhold Niebuhr

When depression economics prevails, the usual rules of economic policy no longer apply: virtue becomes vice, caution is risky and prudence is folly. ~ Paul Krugman

Lf the attribute of popular government in peace is virtue, the attribute of popular government in revolution is at one and the same time virtue and terror, virtue without which terror is fatal, terror without which virtue is impotent. The terror is nothing but justice, prompt, severe, inflexible; it is thus an emanation of virtue. ~ Maximilien Robespierre

First reason is, it's not authorized in the Constitution, it's an illegal institution. The second reason, it's an immoral institution, because we have delivered to a secretive body the privilege of creating money out of thin air; if you or I did it, we'd be called counterfeiters, so why have we legalized counterfeiting? But the economic reasons are overwhelming: the Federal Reserve is the creature that destroys value. ~ Ron Paul

The people who are filing for bankruptcy in increasing numbers every year, it's not the poorest. It's not the people at the economic fringes. It's people who worked hard and played by the rules. ~ Elizabeth Warren

It is not pretended that, at the present stage of its development, economic science is able to provide an organon even remotely approaching to what it imagines for itself as its ideal. ~ Arthur Cecil Pigou

I see that the path of progress has never taken a straight line, but has always been a zigzag course amid the conflicting forces of right and wrong, truth and error, justice and injustice, cruelty and mercy. ~ Kelly Miller

In the aftermath of their visions, Petit and Rice could not have imagined all that would be required of them. Neither Petit's dream of crossing the towers nor Rice's of fighting for justice came with an instruction manual. To accomplish their feats they'd have to overcome fear, test their plans against reality and maintain an unwavering focus on what their visions had revealed to them about their future selves. ~ Camille Sweeney

At least in the United States, most economic resentment is not directed toward billionaires or high-roller financiers - not even corrupt ones. It's directed at the guy down the hall who got a bigger raise. It's directed at the husband of your wife's sister, because he earns 20 percent more than you do. ~ Tyler Cowen

I support a very active programme on disarmament and arms control for Iraq, and of course every other country in the world ... That does not require economic sanctions ... I think we've got to take the risk and give up economic sanctions while hanging on to the disarmament programme and allow the Iraqis to get on with rebuilding their country. ~ Denis Halliday

Senseless people name evil good, call good evil. As you are doing. You accuse Us of passing false judgement: you do Us injustice. We shall prove this to you. You ask who We are: We are God's handle, Master Death, a truly effective reaper. Our scythe works its way. It cuts down white, black, red, brown, green, blue, grey, yellow, and all kinds of lustrous flowers in its path, irrespective of their splendour, their strength, their virtue. And the violet's beautiful colour, rich perfume, and palatable sap, avail it nought. See: that is justice. Our justification was acknowledged by the Romans and the poets, for they knew Us better than you do.
You ask what We are: We are nothing, and yet something. Nothing, because We have neither life, nor being, nor form, and We are no spirit, not visible, not tangible; something, because We are the end of life, the end of existence, the beginning of nullity, a cross between the two. We are a happening that fells all people. Huge giants must fall before Us; all living beings must be transformed by Us.
You ask where We are: We are not ascertainable. But Our form was found in a temple in Rome*, painted on a wall, as a hoodwinked man sitting on an ox; this man wielded a hatchet in his right hand and a shovel in his left hand, with which he was beating the ox. A great crowd of all kinds of people was hitting him, fighting him, and making casts at him, each one with the tools of his trade: even the nun with her psalter was there. They str ~ Johannes Von Saaz

Christians need to pay attention to how their educational choices for their own children reinforce racial and economic segregation in schools. ~ Jemar Tisby

I love going to second-hand stores. ~ Victoria Justice

Reflect on these words from John Brown, a nineteenth-century Scottish pastor and theologian: Nothing is so well fitted to put the fear of God, which will preserve men from offending him, into the heart, as an enlightened view of the cross of Christ. There shine spotless holiness, inflexible justice, incomprehensible wisdom, omnipotent power, holy love. None of these excellencies darken or eclipse the other, but every one of them rather gives a lustre to the rest. They mingle their beams, and shine with united eternal splendour: the just Judge, the merciful Father, the wise Governor. Nowhere does justice appear so awful, mercy so amiable, or wisdom so profound. ~ Jerry Bridges

I we want peace, let's work for justice. ~ Ingrid Holm-Garibay

Going to college and finding a good job no longer guarantee economic safety. ~ Elizabeth Warren

Our present system is unique in world history, because over and above its physical and economic constraints, it demands of us total surrender of our souls, continuous and active participation in the general, conscious lie. To this putrefaction of the soul, this spiritual enslavement, human beings who wish to be human cannot consent. When Caesar, having exacted what is Caesar's, demands still more insistently that we render him what is God's - that is a sacrifice we dare not make! ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

We don't know ourselves, we knowledgeable people - we are personally ignorant
about ourselves. And there's good reason for that. We've never tried to find out who
we are. How could it ever happen that one day we'd discover our own selves? With
justice it's been said that "Where your treasure is, there shall your heart be also." Our
treasure lies where the beehives of our knowledge stand. We are always busy with our
knowledge, as if we were born winged creatures - collectors of intellectual honey. In
our hearts we are basically concerned with only one thing, to "bring something
home." As far as the rest of life is concerned, what people call "experience" - which
of us is serious enough for that? Who has enough time? In these matters, I fear, we've
been "missing the point."
Our hearts have not even been engaged - nor, for that matter, have our ears! We've
been much more like someone divinely distracted and self-absorbed into whose ear
the clock has just pealed the twelve strokes of noon with all its force and who all at
once wakes up and asks himself "What exactly did that clock strike?" - so we rub
ourselves behind the ears afterwards and ask, totally surprised and embarrassed "What
have we really just experienced? And more: "Who are we really?" Then, as I've
mentioned, we count - after the fact - all the twelve trembling strokes of the clock of
our experience, our lives, our being - alas! in ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The important thing is being capable of emotions, but to experience only one's own would be a sorry limitation. ~ Andre Gide

Justice is the armed defense of innocent liberty. ~ Wolf DeVoon

…[W]e have a country here where the past cannot keep a good man in chains, and that's the nature of the war. ~ Michael Shaara

My continued incarceration has served some good purposes. My defense committee has served as a training ground for other organizers in their defense of freedom and justice. ~ Leonard Peltier

Many of the seminal social issues of our time - poverty, lack of education, human trafficking, war and torture, domestic abuse - can track their way to our theology of, or beliefs about, women, which has its roots in what we believe about the nature, purposes, and character of God. ~ Sarah Bessey

God's justice is always perfect. ~ Shannon L. Alder

Now at the time of which I was speaking, as the voters were inscribing their ostraka [to determine which politician would be expelled from the city], it is said that an unlettered and utterly boorish fellow handed his ostrakon to Aristides, whom he took to be one of the ordinary crowd, and asked him to write Aristides on it. He, astonished, asked the man what possible wrong Aristides had done him. "None whatever," was the answer, "I don't even know the fellow, but I am tired of hearing him everywhere called 'The Just.' " On hearing this, Aristides made no answer, but wrote his name on the ostrakon and handed it back. ~ Plutarch

Military action is never the first thing that you jump to. You always look at other possibilities, including economic sanctions, tightening the screws. ~ Benjamin Carson

With the sole exception of President Bill Clinton, whose 'bridge to the 21st century' evoked the vision and optimism of other great Democratic presidents of the 20th century, such as FDR and John F. Kennedy, pessimism about America's economic future has been the hallmark of modern progressivism. ~ Bernard L. Schwartz

Ancient worship ... does truth. All one has to do is to study the ancient liturgies to see that liturgies clearly do truth by their order and in their substance. This is why so many young people today are now adding ancient elements to their worship ... This recovery of ancient practices is not the mere restoration of ritual but a deep, profound, and passionate engagement with truth - truth that forms and shapes the spiritual life into a Christlikeness that issues forth in the call to a godly and holy life and into a deep commitment to justice and to the needs of the poor. ~ Robert E. Webber

Women administer the home. They set the rules, enforce them, mete out justice for violations. Thus, like Congress, they legislate; like the Executive, they administer; like the courts, they interpret the rules. It is an ideal experience for politics. ~ Margaret Chase Smith

So how does God affect justice in this life/economy/reality? A lightening bolt, an angel of death, or by the hand of a human being?"

~R. Alan Woods [2012] ~ R. Alan Woods

Both Ulysses and Finnegans Wake are inexhaustible. They are celebrations of the ordinary, compelling reactions to philosophical elitism about "the good life". I hope to examine both of them further, doing more justice to Joycean comedy than I did in my "invitation" to the Wake, and trying to understand how the extraordinary stylistic innovations, particularly the proliferation of narrative forms, enable Joyce to "see life foully" from a vast number of sides. ~ Philip Kitcher

If you want to know what to do with a thief that you may find stealing, I say kill him on the spot, and never suffer him to commit another iniquity. I will prove by my works whether I can mete out justice to such persons, or not. I would consider it just as much my duty to do that, as to baptize a man for the remission of his sins. ~ Brigham Young

The so-called radical Negroes who have read and misunderstood Karl Marx and his disciples and would solve the political as well as the economic problems of the race by an immediate application of these principles. History shows that although large numbers of people have actually tried to realize such pleasant dreams, they have in the final analysis come back to a social program based on competition. ~ Carter G. Woodson

My top most priority is to deal with India's massive social and economic problems, so that chronic poverty, ignorance and disease can be conquered in a reasonably short period of time. ~ Manmohan Singh

But the Christian writer seems, by the usual course of the argument, to have been deprived of the common presumption of charity in his favor; and reversing the ordinary rule of administering justice in human tribunals, his testimony is unjustly presumed to be false, until it is proved to be true. ...{independent historians} have been treated, in the argument, almost as if the New Testament were the entire production, at once, of a body of men, conspiring by a joint fabrication, to impose a false religion upon the world. ~ Simon Greenleaf

Our budget also reflects key components of our campaign. It's very much focused on stabilizing public services, restoring stability to public services and investing in job creation and economic diversification and, generally speaking, acting as a cushion during this economy, something fundamentally different than what the other parties proposed in the last election. ~ Rachel Notley

I am tempted to find reason and justice in the fact that he died as violently and indecently as he lived. But that is too ingenuous a way out. It does not explain Dimitrios; it only apologizes for him. Special sorts of conditions must exist for the creation of the special sort of criminal that he typified ... all I do know is that while might is right, while chaos and anarchy masquerade as order and enlightenment, those conditions will obtain. ~ Eric Ambler

International organizations are to a large extent dependent upon these territorial entities and the willingness of their governments to support them. Only states can be members of the United Nations,14 only states are entitled to call upon the UN Security Council if there is a threat to international peace and security,15 only states may appear in contentious proceedings before the International Court of Justice,16 and only states can present a claim on behalf of a national who has been injured by another state,17 if there is no treaty to the contrary. ~ Anonymous

There is life here. Anyone reading this is breathing, maybe hurting, but breathing for sure. And if there is any light to come, it will shine from the eyes of those who look for peace and justice after the rubble and rhetoric are cleared and the phoenix has risen. Affirm life. Affirm life. We got to carry each other now. You're either with life or against it. Affirm life. ~ Suheir Hammad

The intellectual case for planning was never very strong. Keynes, as we have seen, regarded economic planning much as he did pure market theory: in order to succeed, both required impossibly perfect data. ~ Tony Judt