Quotes & Sayings About Injustices

To put up a show is to face life's injustices with one of the few weapons available to a desperate and brave people, their imagination. — Luigi Barzini

Protest and anger practically always derives from hope, and the shouting out against injustice is always in the hope of those injustices being somewhat corrected and a little more justice established. — John Berger

Nothing is so sad as the injustices of old age. — Beryl Bainbridge

flaunting the Kohinoor on the Queen Mother's crown in the Tower of London is a powerful reminder of the injustices perpetrated by the former imperial power. Until it is returned - at least as a symbolic gesture of expiation - it will remain evidence of the loot, plunder and misappropriation that colonialism was really all about. Perhaps that is the best argument for leaving the Kohinoor where it emphatically does not belong - in British hands. — Shashi Tharoor

Charity is no substitute for justice. If we never challenge a social order that allows some to accumulate wealth
even if they decide to help the less fortunate
while others are short-changed, then even acts of kindness end up supporting unjust arrangements. We must never ignore the injustices that make charity necessary, or the inequalities that make it possible. — Michael Eric Dyson

Our Arab mothers and sisters are suffering from injustices like domestic violence, sexual harassment, child marriages and honour killings, some are still fighting for their right to drive or travel without male custody therefore our powerful Arab media was not only expected to broadcast this particular one of a kind Women's march it should have held panels to dissect the issues being brought forth in order for the Arab world to better understand that gender equality is not an idea that one believes in, it is a planned movement that requires an enormous effort on the part of both men and women to reach. — Aysha Taryam

Anarchy may await America, due to the daily injustices suffered by the people. — Louis Farrakhan

Welfare states on both sides of the Atlantic have discovered that largesse to losers does not reduce their hostility to society, but only increases it. Far from producing gratitude, generosity is seen as an admission of guilt, and the reparations as inadequate compensations for injustices - leading to worsening behavior by the recipients. — Thomas Sowell

Dreams have consequences. There is no turning back. A revolution is not a painless march to the gates of freedom and justice. It is a struggle between rage and hope, between the temptation to destroy and the desire to build. Its temperament is desperate. It is a tormented response to the past, to all that has happened, the recalled and unrecalled injustices - for the memory of a revolution reaches much further back than the memory of its protagonists. — Hisham Matar

Your brother is young enough to believe that the past still exists, he said. That the injustices within it await his remedy. Perhaps you believe this also? — Cormac McCarthy

We accept gods that don't speak to us. We accept gods that would place us in a world filled with injustices and do nothing as we struggle. It's easier than accepting that there's nothing out there at all, and that, in our darkest moments, we are truly alone. — Lauren DeStefano

Yes, nitroglycerin," Simoun repeated slowly, with a frigid smile, staring at the glass flask with delight. "It's more than nitroglycerin, however. It's a concentration of tears, compressed, hatred, injustices, offenses. This is the supreme arbiter of weakness, force against force, violence against violence ... a moment ago I was hesitating, but then you arrived and convinced me. Tonight those most dangerous of tyrants who have hidden behind God and the state, whose abuses remain unpunished because no one can take them to task. Tonight, the Philippines will hear an explosion that will convert into rubble the infamous monument whose rottenness I helped bring about. — Jose Rizal

I did note this, and set it down as yet one more of life's injustices: that the man who has been wealthy is dunned more civilly than the fellow who has ever been poor. My creditors would come to me most graciously, diffident, if not downright apologetic, for asking what was theirs. It was as if I would be doing them a great, unlooked for kindness if only I would pay them a trifling sum on my outstanding debts. I would give them tea, and polite conversation, and, even when my answer to their just entreaty had to be a regretful, "Nothing, sir, " my mortification was always entirely self-inflicted, for their civility never failed — Geraldine Brooks

Once started, religious strife has a tendency to go on and on - to become permanent feuds. Today we see such intractable inter-religious wars in Northern Ireland, between Jews and Muslims and Christians in Palestine, Hindus and Muslims in South Asia and in many other places. Attempts to bring about peace have failed again and again. Always the extremist elements invoking past injustices, imagined or real, will succeed in torpedoing the peace efforts and bringing about another bout of hostility. — Mahathir Mohamad

At first, Comrade Professor described the injustices that the farmers had suffered at the hands of the rich. The time had come, he said, when the villagers could redress their wrongs. He called on the poor farmers to have no mercy on the karakuls, and, what struck us most, he called on us to destroy them. Killing the rich, he declared, was the only way for poor farmers to attain a better and more prosperous life. — Miron Dolot

DODD REITERATED HIS COMMITMENT to objectivity and understanding in an August 12 letter to Roosevelt, in which he wrote that while he did not approve of Germany's treatment of Jews or Hitler's drive to restore the country's military power, "fundamentally, I believe a people has a right to govern itself and that other peoples must exercise patience even when cruelties and injustices are done. Give men a chance to try their schemes. — Erik Larson

Extremist perspectives win sympathy and recruits because they offer narratives that claim to identify deep injustices and enemies. — Jonas Gahr Store

To hold in the mind forever two ideas which seemed to be in opposition. The first ... acceptance totally without rancor, of life as it is, and men as they are [;] ... the second ... that one must never, in one's life, accept ... injustices as commonplace but must fight them with all one's strength. — James Baldwin

Children are dying." Lull nodded. "That's a succinct summary of humankind, I'd say. Who needs tomes and volumes of history? Children are dying. The injustices of the world hide in those three words. Quote me, Duiker, and your work's done." The bastard's right. — Steven Erikson

What I'm talking about is more than recompense for past injustices - more than a handout, a payoff, hush money, or a reluctant bribe. What I'm talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal. Reparations would mean the end of scarfing hot dogs on the Fourth of July while denying the facts of our heritage. Reparations would mean the end of yelling "patriotism" while waving a Confederate flag. Reparations would mean a revolution of the American consciousness, a reconciling of our self-image as the great democratizer with the facts of our history. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

It is an understatement to say that in this society injustices abound: In truth it is itself the quintessence of injustice. — Emil Cioran

We study the injustices of history for the same reason that we study genocide, and for the same reason that psychologists study the minds of murderers and rapists ... to understand how those evil things came about. — Jared Diamond

You'll forget it all: the cruel power of your superiors, the thoughtless things you wish you'd never said, the stupidities, the unfinished work, the lack of consideration, the betrayals, the injustices, the indifference, those who've blamed you, those who will blame you, your financial troubles, the rush of time, the endless waits, the things and people forever beyond your reach, your loneliness, your shame, your defeats, your wretchedness, your pain, and the catastrophes - all those catastrophes - in just a few minutes you'll forget them all. The prospect comforts you. Patiently you wait. — Orhan Pamuk

You're a crime fiction writer if...The injustices of this world boil your blood. You become a fucking supernova. So you write. — Verge Le Noir

If, at the limit, you can rule without crime, you cannot do so without injustices. — Emile M. Cioran

There are two great injustices that can befall a child. One is to punish him for something he didn't do. The other is to let him get away with doing something he knows is wrong. — Robert Gardner

You still haven't managed to heal the scars left by some of the injustices committed against you in your life and it doesn't do you any good. All it does is feed a constant desire to feel sorry for yourself, because you were the victim of people stronger than you. Or else it makes you go to the other extreme and disguise yourself as an avenger ready to strike out at the people who hurt you. Isn't that a waste of time? ... It is human, but it's not intelligent or reasonable. — Paulo Coelho

My casino experience is to someone else their experience with their employer, of how the company has elected to behave solely for greed, profits, and spite. But we shouldn't give up hope in such situations. We have an obligation to separate the justices from the injustices. We should hold these corporate neighbors accountable for the wrongs that they commit.
Someone has to. — John-Talmage Mathis

What we cannot expect is that the people least responsible for this crisis will foot all, or even most, of the bill. Because that is a recipe for catastrophic amounts of carbon ending up in our common atmosphere. Like the call to honor our treaties and other land-sharing agreements with Indigenous peoples, climate change is once again forcing us to look at how injustices that many assumed were safely buried in the past are shaping our shared vulnerability to global climate collapse. — Naomi Klein

The fact that there are bigger injustices and wrongs doesn't make it right to sacrifice an innocent monkey. It doesn't alter the case at all. — Brigid Brophy

We have a rise of extremism because we need to give a sense that we are targeting some of the deeper problems in Greece, the injustices. — George Papandreou

He held her, and rocked her slightly side to side, soothing her as she'd seen him calm their children after innumerable physical injuries and social injustices. — Lisa Genova

To say that there are no secrets left today would mean that we live in a society with no hidden injustices. — Peter Thiel

When i ask God why all of these injustices are allowed to exist in the world, i can feel the Spirit whisper to me, 'you tell me why we allow this to happen. You are my body, my hands, my feet. — Shane Claiborne

Ghosts are laid to rest when injustices are righted, when their duties are fulfilled. But my mother's duty is to make me happy so long as I live. So there is not rest for her, and no escape for me. I will be happy and happy until it kills me. — Rosamund Hodge

Some people conclude that the injustices existing in the world prove there is no God. On the contrary, I conclude that God, being both just and merciful, will and can rectify all inequities in a life after death. — Henry Eyring

[Death is] the best asylum for pains and sorrows and troubles and the injustices of life. — Sadegh Hedayat

Unless physicians stand together to fight threats and injustices, our practices cannot remain viable in the future. — Samuel Wilson

You only have to pick up a paper to see the sort of scams and injustices that are out there. There's a sense that people don't belong and just aren't very happy. They're outraged, in fact, and they're being shafted left, right and centre. — Sean Bean

I now believe that evolution, or deevolution, never ends short of death, that no society has ever achieved an absolute pinnacle, that all humans are not created equal. In fact, I believe attempts to create some abstract equalization create a morass of injustices that rebound on the equalizers. Equal justice and equal opportunity are ideals we should seek, but we should recognize that humans administer the ideals and that humans do not have equal ability. — Frank Herbert

Present injustices exist not so much because simple individuals are acting in bad faith or lacking in charity, but because huge, impersonal systems (that seem beyond the control of the individuals acting within them) disprivilege some even as they unduly privilege others. — Ronald Rolheiser

Jews must learn to say without excuse, without equivocation: despite our history and our powerlessness in the past, despite allthe injustices that we have endured
today, now, the Palestinians are the victims of oppression, and their oppressors are the Israelis. — Irena Klepfisz

Within white Australia, there was a growing movement for what was known as reconciliation - a movement that peaked with millions marching in 2000 to demand the government say sorry for past injustices. — Richard Flanagan

Class reunions were about curiosity; about satisfaction at the avoidance of the mistakes of one's contemporaries, now revealed in their emerging life histories; about reflecting on the ravages - and injustices - of time; and of realizing, perhaps, how strange and random are the twists and turns of fate. — Alexander McCall Smith

We became acutely aware of the profound healing that is needed in our species. We knew with conviction that what we were doing, as women and men together, was confronting the cultural dynamics that are killing us all- killing women and men, killing our children, killing the planet. — William Keepin

The other reason that I am here today, again from the State Department and from the court record of the court of appeals, is that when I am abroad I speak out against the injustices against the Negro people of this land. — Paul Robeson

I have made the most profound apology in front of the Truth Commission and on other occasions about the injustices which were wrought by apartheid. — F. W. De Klerk

Our Prophet was a radical too- he fought against the injustices of his community and challenged the feudal order of his society, so they called him a radical. So what? We should be proud of that! — Abu Bakar Bashir

You hold on to old experiences: injuries, injustices, and great love affairs, too. And you hold them in your joints and your organs, and wear them on your skin. — Ann Brashares

The time has come for President Obama to formally rescind his order to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay and end his irresponsible allegations of injustices at the facility, which operates in a framework that respects the rule of law, keeps terrorists off American soil, and bolsters our national security. — Jason Chaffetz

People are ashamed, not of the injustices they do, but of those they receive. And so, in order that the unjust person should be ashamed, there is no other way than to give as good as one gets. — Giacomo Leopardi

By my monastic life and vows I am saying no to all the concentration camps, the aerial bombardments, the staged political trials, the judicial murders, the racial injustices, the economic tyrannies, and the whole socioeconomic apparatus which seems geared for nothing but global destruction in spite of all its fair words in favor of peace. — Thomas Merton

Leave all human injustices to the Lord, for God is the Judge, but as to yourself, be diligent in loving everybody with a pure heart ... — John Of Kronstadt

As a teenager, I began to question the Great Christian Sorting System. My gay friends in high school were kind and funny and loved me, so I suspected that my church had placed them in the wrong category ... Injustices in the world needed to be addressed and not ignored. Christians weren't good; people who fought for peace and justice were good. I had been lied to, and in my anger at being lied to about the containers, I left the church. But it turns out, I hadn't actually escaped the sorting system. I had just changed the labels. — Nadia Bolz-Weber

Here, in the land of happy thoughts, there are no gross injustices, no abuses of authority, no economic and political systems to challenge, and no reason to complain. Here, we are all happy. — Chris Hedges

I think about the poet Rainer Maria Rilke who said that it's the questions that move us, not the answers. As a writer, I believe that it's our task, our responsibility, to hold the mirror up to social injustices that we see and to create a prayer of beauty. The questions serve us in that capacity. — Terry Tempest Williams

the single ruling party remains in control while a wide range of conversations about the country's problems nonetheless occurs on websites and social-networking services. The government follows this online chatter, and sometimes people are able to use the Internet to call attention to social problems or injustices and even manage to have an impact on government policies. As a result, the average person with Internet or mobile access has a much greater sense of freedom - and may feel that he has the ability to speak and be heard - in ways that were not possible under classic authoritarianism. — Larry Diamond

We have to be willing to give up all the injustices of the past that did exist - and that do exist right now. When we become interested in liberation, we then become interested in that which transcends time. — Andrew Cohen

Depression was a foreign word to them, an American thing. In their opinion their children were immune from the hardships and injustices they had left behind in India, as if the inoculations the pediatrician had given Sudha and Rahul when they were babies guaranteed them an existence free of suffering. — Jhumpa Lahiri

I had seen so many injustices done in the court by well-meaning people. I had lost fourteen clients to gang violence in only seven years. I was angry at a system I thought had failed my clients, and I was part of it. — Richard Helms

Poverty would always exist when we allow injustices to speak. — Henry Johnson Jr

The universe takes care of iniquities, of people who have been wronged, of injustices that the world can't right. — Courtney Cole

When we struggle for human rights, for freedom, for dignity, when we feel that it is a ministry of the church to concern itself for those who are hungry, for those who have no schools, for those who are deprived, we are not departing from God's promise. He comes to free us from sin, and the church knows that sin's consequences are all such injustices and abuses. The church knows it is saving the world when it undertakes to speak also of such things. — Oscar A. Romero

It's very hard to turn your back once you're aware of what's going on, and you're aware of the injustices, and you're aware of the civilian casualties. It's much easier if you have no idea and you've never seen it. — Lynsey Addario

'Savage Inequalities' was about school finance, and 'Amazing Grace' primarily dealt with medical and social injustices in New York. But with 'Ordinary Resurrections,' I had no predetermined agenda. When I met with the children, I was not in pursuit of any line of thinking. In our conversations, I let them lead me where they wanted to go. — Jonathan Kozol

What both the state and the capitalist economy oppose is an understanding of what might be called "the true nature of things" (using the phrase without metaphysical pretensions), especially injustices and exploitative practices. — Richard A. Falk

Books can capture injustices in a way that stays with you and makes you want to do something about them. That's why they are so powerful. — Malala Yousafzai

Why do I love this place so much? Is it because here human nature hasn't time to disguise itself? Nobody here could talk about a heaven on earth. Heaven remained rigidly in its proper place on the other side of death, and on this side flourished the injustices, the cruelties, the meanness that elsewhere people so cleverly hushed up — Graham Greene

There are many injustices in the world, but some are worse than others. You can hate someone because he's poor, because of the clothes he wears, or for his political views. But a person can change that. If you hate someone for being a Jew or an Arab, he cannot rub off his skin. That sort of prejudice is the greatest injustice...next to taking someone's life. — Shane Peacock

We disliked the rigours of existence, the unfulfilled longings, the enshrined injustices of the world, the labyrinths of love, the ignorance of parents, the fact of dying, and the amazing indifference of the Living in the midst of the simple beauties of the universe. We feared the heartlessness of human beings, all of whom are born blind, few of whom ever learn to see. — Ben Okri

You need the activism. You need people who are organized and willing to bring light to injustices in society. — Maya Harris

There are doubtless those who would wish to lock up all those who suspected of terrorist and other serious offences and, in the time-honored phrase, throw away the key. But a suspect is by definition a person whom no offence has been proved. Suspicions, even if reasonably entertained, may prove to be misplaced, as a series of tragic miscarriages of justice has demonstrated. Police officers and security officials can be wrong. It is a gross injustice to deprive of his liberty for significant periods a person who has committed no crime and does not intend to do so. No civilized country should willingly tolerate such injustices. — Tom Bingham

Reading put perspective to any challenge I was facing and made me see that extraordinary people usually had extraordinary pain, difficulties or injustices. That's part of why they have the drive and hunger to do good in the world, to make something happen. — Tony Robbins

For most Black people there is still poverty and desperation. The Ghettos still exist, and the proportion of Blacks in prison is still much greater than Whites. Today, there is less overt racism, but the economic injustices create an "institutional racism" which exists even while more Blacks are in high places, such as Condoleeza Rice in Bush's Administration and Obama running for President. — Howard Zinn

It's true I've been hurt a few times after revealing myself. There are people who lie in wait for the vulnerable and pounce as a way to feel powerful. But God forgive them. I'm willing to take the occasional blow to find people I connect with. As long as you're willing to turn the other cheek with the mean ones, vulnerability can get you a wealth of friends. Can you imagine coming to the end of your life, being surrounded by people who loved you, only to realize they never fully knew you? Or having poems you never shared or injustices you said nothing about? Can you imagine realizing, then, it was too late? How can we be loved if we are always in hiding? — Donald Miller

Not every bad break is negative in the long term; not every problem is a bona fide injustice; and not every injustice is major when juxtaposed against the millions of injustices that occur daily throughout the world. — Robert Ringer

Remembering is an ethical act, has ethical value in and of itself. Memory is, achingly, the only relation we can have with the dead. So the belief that remembering is an ethical act is deep in our natures as humans, who know we are going to die, and who mourn those who in the normal course of things die before us - grandparents, parents, teachers, and older friends. Heartlessness and amnesia seem to go together. But history gives contradictory signals about the value of remembering in the much longer span of a collective history. There is simply too much injustice in the world. And too much remembering (of ancient grievances: Serbs, Irish) embitters. To make peace is to forget. To reconcile, it is necessary that memory be faulty and limited. If the goal is having some space in which to live one's own life, then it is desirable that the account of specific injustices dissolve into a more general understanding that human beings everywhere do terrible things to one another. * * * P — Susan Sontag

What we need to do is enter sensibly into an age of liberty and peaceful diversity, casting aside the injustices of the past without replacing them by new ones or by other kinds of exclusion or intolerance, and recognising the right of everyone to include several linguistic allegiances within his own identity. — Amin Maalouf

We need to notice and be aware of the injustices embedded in our criminal system. — Rand Paul

Rebellions tend to be negative, to denounce and expose the enemy without providing a positive vision of a new future ... A revolution is not just for the purpose of correcting past injustices, a revolution involves a projection of man/woman into the future ... It begins with projecting the notion of a more human human being, i.e. a human being who is more advanced in the specific qualities which only human beings have - creativity, consciousness and self-consciousness, a sense of political and social responsibility. — Grace Lee Boggs

I am filled with fear and tormented with terrible visions of pain. Everywhere people are hurting one another, the planet is rampant with injustices, whole societies plunder groups of their own people, mothers imprison sons, children perish while brothers war. O, woe. — Robert Anton Wilson

Shakespeare speaks for the human heart but Dickens speaks for the social man and for injustices. — Simon Callow

And what he contemplated was death. Some people complained when death came top early and claimed a child, a young mother, or a sailor with a family to provide for. He'd never understood that. Of course, it was a tragedy for those left behind and for the person who'd been robbed of the greater part of life. But it wasn't unfair. Death was beyond such notions. It seemed to him that the bereaved often forgot their grief at a death in favor of railing fruitlessly against life's injustices. After all, no one would dream of saying that the wind was unfair to the trees and the flowers. True, you might feel uneasy when the sun switched off its light, or ice gave your ship a dangerous list. But indignant, outraged, or angry, no. It was pointless. Nature was neither fair nor unfair. Those terms belonged to the world of men. — Carsten Jensen

Feminism, in its fullest meaning, enjoins the human race to establish zones of liberation, and literally to reshape the territorial definition of our patriarchal world, along with the social identities and injustices that those boundaries have defined for all of us. — Leslie Weisman

For all the injustices in our past and our present, we have to believe that in the free exchange of ideas, justice will prevail over injustice, tolerance over intolerance and progress over reaction. — Hillary Clinton

For here lies the corner stone of all the injustices done woman, the wrong idea from which all other wrongs proceed. She is not acknowledged as mistress of herself. For her cradle to her grave she is another's. We do indeed need and demand the other rights of which I have spoken, but let us first obtain OURSELVES. — Ernestine Rose

I can't explain exactly why it lives within me for so long and passionately. But race matters to me; racial equality matters to me, as does gender. There is something about these kinds of social injustices that go to the deep of me. — Sue Monk Kidd

3938The bread which you do not use is the bread of the hungry; the garment hanging in your wardrobe is the garment of him who is naked; the shoes that you do not wear are the shoes of the one who is barefoot; the money that you keep locked away is the money of the poor; the acts of charity that you do not perform are so many injustices that you commit. — Basil The Great

Let us give practical recognition to the injustices of the past,by building a future based on equality&social justice — Nelson Mandela

One of the greatest injustices we do to our young people is to ask them to be conservative. Christianity is not conservative, but revolutionary. — Francis A. Schaeffer

From: The Commitment in: A Week's Worth of Fiction, Volume 1
"Last night, he was sent to the nearby Military town of Kilakilla. He spent the night at a terrorist hideout disguised as a book store. He ate a wonderful meal, perhaps the best of his life. He filmed a video stating that he was opposed to the injustices his people had suffered. He gave cryptic goodbye messages to his friends and family without naming them. — Mark Wilkins

I wanted a guy who made my stomach flutter, who was polite and respectful to everyone because he didn't think of anybody as beneath him, a man who did good things not because of what he'd gain but simply because it was the right thing to do. I wanted someone that cared about the injustices of the world and tried to help even if the issue didn't affect his life. — Skyla Madi

[T]o read was precisely to enter another world, which was not the reader's own, and come back refreshed, ready to bear with equanimity the injustices and frustrations of this one. Reading was balm, amusement
not incitement. — Susan Sontag

About the greatest virtue a friend can have, is to be able to hold her tongue; and through this, like all virtues carried to extremity, may grow into a fault, and do great harm, still, it never can do so much harm as that horrible laxity and profligacy of speech which is a the root of half the quarrels, cruelties, and injustices of the world. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

When we stand, we do so not only for ourselves, but also for countless others who have similar stories but may never have an opportunity to be witnessed. — William Keepin

History teaches us to beware of the excitation of the liberated and the injustices that often accompany their righteous thirst for justice. — Wole Soyinka

Our children need to be able to see us take a stand for a value and against injustices, be those values and injustices in the family room, the boardroom, the classroom, or on the city streets. — Barbara Coloroso

Sometimes great injustices may be inflicted on the minority when the majority is in the pursuit of a great and just cause. — Paul Robeson

Humanism is the only - I would go so far as saying the final- resistance we have against the inhuman practices and injustices that disfigure human history. — Edward W. Said

One of the injustices of the world was that it was so easy to make the innocent and caring ones happy with so little. — Alexandra Ripley