A Quote by Simone Weil
The supernatural virtue of justice consists of behaving exactly as though there were equality when one is the stronger in an unequal relationship.
Related Quotes
The doctrine of equality! ... But there is no more venomous poison in existence: for it appears to be preached by justice itself, when it is actually the end of justice ... "Equality to the equal; inequality to the unequal" that would be true justice speaking: and its corollary, "never make the unequal equal".
Men agree that justice in the abstract is proportion, but they differ in that some think that if they are equal in any respect they are equal absolutely, others that if they are unequal in any respect they should be unequal in all. The only stable principle of government is equality according to proportion, and for every man to enjoy his own.
It's annoying, but justice and equality are mates. Aren't they? Justice always wants to hang out with equality. And equality is a real pain.
I want you to understand that racial justice is not about justice for those who are black or brown; racial justice is about American justice. Justice for LGBT Americans is not about gay and lesbian justice; it's about American justice. Equality for women isn't about women; it's about United States equality. You cannot enjoy justice anywhere in this country until we make sure there is justice everywhere in this country.
The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.
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.
Justice has always evoked ideas of Equality, of proportion of compensation. In short, Justice is another name of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.
Clearly, only very unequal intellectual and moral standing could justify having equality imposed, whether the people want it or not, as Dworkin suggests, and only very unequal power would make it possible.
Up to now, men and women have not been living in relationship - because woman has never been thought equal. And relationship exists only between equal people; it cannot happen between unequal people. Unless woman is given total freedom, absolute equality, there will be no possibility to relate. Up to now, man has exploited woman, woman has exploited man; there has not been real relationship.
The laboring man and the trade-unionist, if I understand him, asks only equality before the law. Class legislation and unequal privilege, though expressly in his favor, will in the end work no benefit to him or to society.
If virtue were its own reward, it would no longer be a human quality, but supernatural.
Again, it may be said, that to love justice and equality the people need no great effort of virtue; it is sufficient that they love themselves.
The social pact, far from destroying natural equality, substitutes, on the contrary, a moral and lawful equality for whatever physical inequality that nature may have imposed on mankind; so that however unequal in strength and intelligence, men become equal by covenant and by right.
It makes that a virtue which is not a virtue, and that a crime which is not a crime. Religion consists in a round of observances that have no relation whatever to natural goodness, but which rather exclude it by being a substitute for it. Penances and pilgrimages take the place of justice and mercy, benevolence and charity. Such a religion, so far from being a purifier, is the great corrupter of morals.
Nothing is so unequal as equality.
God allows unjust disparities between rich and poor because He does not miraculously intervene to establish justice against human wills. Also, discrepancies are not unjust by themselves; justice does not mean equality of result but equality of opportunity.
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