Hosea Ballou Quotes

Our sense of fairness tells us that people should pay for the wrong they do.

There is a point at which even justice does injury.

Rather leave the crime of the guilty unpunished than condemn the innocent.

Injustice is censured because the censures are afraid of suffering, and not from any fear which they have of doing injustice.

I can establish the expectation of retributive justice. Have we done that? No.

As a lawyer, as a private citizen, you see a lot of injustice. You see a lot of people who should have been punished and are not, and people who were punished wrongfully are not vindicated. Fiction is sort of a way to set the record straight, and let people at least believe that justice can be achieved and the right outcomes can occur.

I believe in justice, and I believe in people being held responsible for their actions.

One threatens the innocent who spares the guilty.

Justice is a terrible but necessary thing.

There is no such thing as justice—in or out of court.

No man ought to be condemned for exhorting people to pursue justice in a certain line, though he may foresee that in the pursuit of that justice the opposition given to those who are proceeding in a just course may produce collision, and that collision lead to the commission of crime; but our duty, as I conceive, is to seek for the injustice, and there to impute the crime… It is to that injustice, and not to those who pursue a just course for the attainment of a right end, that the guilt is to be ascribed.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

If we do not maintain justice, justice will not maintain us.

The law is cruel.

That which is unjust can really profit no one; that which is just can really harm no one.

Unless we provide consequences for activities and actions that are wrong, we are not going to get any truth.

I never hurt anybody in this business, ever.

The simplest way of understanding justice is giving people what they deserve. This idea goes back to Aristotle. The real difficulty begins with figuring out who deserves what and why.

Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.

Justice is like a train that is nearly always late.

I would not hold that we must judge by the favorable or adverse result alone whether an undertaking was just or unjust.

The man who was excellent, I rewarded him well; who was evil, I punished him well.

Shall any man be above justice? Above all shall that man be above it, who can commit the most extensive injustice?

The severest justice may not always be the best policy.

Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.