The collection / 566 fragments

Justice.

Explore passages mentioning justice, just. Topic suggestions use transparent word matching, not scholarly classification. Editorial meanings and lexical matches are discovery aids, not independent authentication of a quotation.

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01c. 1745 AD

The hatred of the wicked is only roused the more from the impossibility of finding any just grounds on which it can rest; and the very consciousness of their own injustice is only a grievance the more against him who is the object of it.

Jean Jacques Rousseau / quote

02In print by 1893 AD

A friend in court makes the process short.

Traditional proverb · Unknown culture / proverb

Meaning: Someone familiar with a decision-making process may help another person navigate it more quickly. The saying can describe useful guidance, but it also invites questions about favouritism and unequal access.

03In print by 1893 AD

An indifferent agreement is better than a good verdict.

Traditional proverb · Unknown culture / proverb

Meaning: A workable compromise may be more useful than a satisfying declaration that one side has won. The saying draws attention to the costs of prolonged conflict, while preserving the need for a fair outcome.

04In print by 1893 AD

A silver key can open an iron lock.

Traditional proverb · Unknown culture / proverb

Meaning: Money or another material incentive may overcome a barrier that appears firm. The silver key represents purchasing influence, and the iron lock represents resistance, inviting scrutiny of what opens access and whether that access is fair.

05In print by 1893 AD

All feet tread not in one shoe.

Traditional proverb · Unknown culture / proverb

Meaning: One arrangement will not fit everyone. Differences between people may require different provisions, just as feet of different sizes cannot all use the same shoe comfortably.

06In print by 1893 AD

Be just before you be generous.

Traditional proverb · Unknown culture / proverb

Meaning: Meet obligations and treat people fairly before making impressive gifts. Generosity loses some of its value when it depends on withholding what another person is already owed.

07In print by 1857 AD

In the end it will be known who ate the bacon.

Traditional (French-language collection) · Unknown culture / proverb

Meaning: Responsibility for a concealed act may become clear eventually. The missing bacon gives a concrete shape to a question about who benefited or took something.

08In print by 1857 AD

Upon a slight pretext the wolf takes the sheep.

Traditional (French-language collection) · Unknown culture / proverb

Meaning: Someone intent on taking advantage may use a weak excuse to justify it. The wolf’s pretext disguises a desire already directed toward the sheep.

09c. 1790 AD

The longer I live, the more it grieves me to see man, who occupies his supreme place for the very purpose of imposing his will upon nature, and freeing himself and his from an outrageous necessity,—to see him taken up with some false notion, and doing just the opposite of what he wants to do; and then, because the whole bent of his mind is spoilt, bungling miserably over everything.

Goethe / quote

10c. 1790 AD

Men get out of countenance with themselves and others because they treat the means as the end, and so, from sheer doing, do nothing, or, perhaps, just what they would have avoided.

Goethe / quote

11c. 1790 AD

In Botany there is a species of plants called Incompletæ; and just in the same way it can be said that there are men who are incomplete and imperfect. They are those whose desires and struggles are out of proportion to their actions and achievements.

Goethe / quote

12c. 1790 AD

From time to time I meet with a youth in whom I can wish for no alteration or improvement, only I am sorry to see how often his nature makes him quite ready to swim with the stream of the time; and it is on this that I would always insist, that man in his fragile boat has the rudder placed in his hand, just that he may not be at the mercy of the waves, but follow the direction of his own insight.

Goethe / quote

13c. 1790 AD

Justice insists on obligation, law on decorum. Justice weighs and decides, law superintends and orders. Justice refers to the individual, law to society.

Goethe / quote

14c. 1790 AD

It is difficult to be just to the passing moment. We are bored by it if it is neither good nor bad; but the good moment lays a task upon us, and the bad moment a burden.

Goethe / quote

15c. 1790 AD

There is no limit to the increase of experience, but theories cannot become clearer and more complete in just the same sense. The field of experience is the whole universe in all directions. Theory remains shut up within the limits of the human faculties. Hence there is no way of looking at the world, but it recurs, and the curious thing happens, that with increased experience a limited theory may again come into favour. It is always the same world which stands open to observation, which is continually being contemplated or guessed at; and it is always the same men who live in the true or in the false; more at their ease in the latter than in the former.

Goethe / quote

16c. 1790 AD

To live in a great idea means to treat the impossible as though it were possible. It is just the same with a strong character; and when an idea and a character meet, things arise which fill the world with wonder for thousands of years.

Goethe / quote

17c. 1790 AD

Man is placed as a real being in the midst of a real world, and endowed with such organs that he can perceive and produce the real and also the possible. All healthy men have the conviction of their own existence and of an existence around them. However, even the brain contains a hollow spot, that is to say, a place in which no object is mirrored; just as in the eye itself there is a little spot that does not see. If a man pays particular attention to this spot and is absorbed in it, he falls into a state of mental sickness, has presentiments of "things of another world," which are, in reality, no things at all; possessing neither form nor limit, but alarming him like dark, empty tracts of night, and pursuing him as something more than phantoms, if he does not tear himself free from them.

Goethe / quote

18c. 1790 AD

We have long been busy with the critique of reason. I should like to see a critique of common-sense. It would be a real benefit to mankind if we could convincingly prove to the ordinary intelligence how far it can go; and that is just as much as it fully requires for life on this earth.

Goethe / quote

19c. 1790 AD

Authority. Man cannot exist without it, and yet it brings in its train just as much of error as of truth. It perpetuates one by one things which should pass away one by one; it rejects that which should be preserved and allows it to pass away; and it is chiefly to blame for mankind's want of progress.

Goethe / quote

20c. 1790 AD

There is much that is true which does not admit of being calculated; just as there are a great many things that cannot be brought to the test of a decisive experiment.

Goethe / quote

21c. 1790 AD

It is just for this that man stands so high, that what could not otherwise be brought to light should be brought to light in him. What is a musical string, and all its mechanical division, in comparison with the musician's ear? May we not also say, what are the elementary phenomena of nature itself compared with man, who must control and modify them all before he can in any way assimilate them to himself?

Goethe / quote

22c. 1872 AD

Pneumatic Explanation of Nature.—Metaphysics explains the writing of Nature, so to speak, pneumatically, as the Church and her learned men formerly did with the Bible. A great deal of understanding is required to apply to Nature the same method of strict interpretation as the philologists have now established for all books with the intention of clearly understanding what the text means, but not suspecting a double sense or even taking it for granted. Just, however, as with regard to books, the bad art of interpretation is by no means overcome, and in the most cultivated society one still constantly comes across the remains of allegorical and mystic interpretation, so it is also with regard to Nature, indeed it is even much worse.

Friedrich Nietzsche / quote

23c. 1872 AD

No Internal and External in the World.—As Democritus transferred the concepts "above" and "below" to endless space where they have no sense, so philosophers in general have transferred the concepts "Internal" and "External" to the essence and appearance of the world; they think that with deep feelings one can penetrate deeply into the internal and approach the heart of Nature. But these feelings are only deep in so far as along with them, barely noticeable, certain complicated groups of thoughts, which we call deep, are regularly excited; a feeling is deep because we think that the accompanying thought is deep. But the "deep" thought can nevertheless be very far from the truth, as, for instance, every metaphysical one; if one take away from the deep feeling the commingled elements of thought, then the strong feeling remains, and this guarantees nothing for knowledge but itself, just as strong faith proves only its strength and not the truth of what is believed in.

Friedrich Nietzsche / quote

24c. 1872 AD

Bad Habits in Reasoning.—The usual false conclusions of mankind are these: a thing exists, therefore it has a right to exist. Here there is inference from the ability to live to its suitability; from its suitability to its rightfulness. Then: an opinion brings happiness; therefore it is the true opinion. Its effect is good; therefore it is itself good and true. To the effect is here assigned the predicate beneficent, good, in the sense of the useful, and the cause is then furnished with the same predicate good, but here in the sense of the logically valid. The inversion of the sentences would read thus: an affair cannot be carried through, or maintained, therefore it is wrong; an opinion causes pain or excites, therefore it is false. The free spirit who learns only too often the faultiness of this mode of reasoning, and has to suffer from its consequences, frequently gives way to the temptation to draw the very opposite conclusions, which, in general, are naturally just as false: an affair cannot be carried through, therefore it is good; an opinion is distressing and disturbing, therefore it is true.

Friedrich Nietzsche / quote