Quotes About Charity And Justice

“A society with more justice needs less charity.”

— Ralph Nader

“It is true, as we are often reminded, that kindness to animals is among the humbler duties of human charity
though for just that reason among the more easily neglected. And it is true that there will always be enough injustice and human suffering in the world to make the wrongs done to animals seem small and secondary. The answer is that justice is not a finite commodity, nor are kindness and love. Where we find wrongs done to animals, it is no excuse to say that more important wrongs are done to human beings, and let us concentrate on those. A wrong is a wrong, and often the little ones, when they are shrugged off as nothing, spread and do the gravest harm to ourselves and others.”

— Matthew Scully

“This is to assuage our conscience, darling" she would explain to Blanca. "But it doesn't help the poor. They don't need charity; they need justice.”

— Isabel Allende

“The word 'religion' has acquired a very bad name among those who really love truth, justice, charity. It also exhales the musty odor of sanctimony and falsehood.”

— Luther Burbank

“Without the fear of God, men do not even observe justice and charity among themselves.”

— John Calvin

“What I love about the ministry of Jesus is that he identified the poor as blessed and the rich as needy ... and then he went and ministered to them both. This, I think, is the difference between charity and justice. Justice means moving beyond the dichotomy between those who need and those who supply and confronting the frightening and beautiful reality that we desperately need one another.”

— Rachel Held Evans

“Overcoming poverty is not a task of charity, it is an act of justice. Like Slavery and Apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings. Sometimes it falls on a generation to be great. YOU can be that great generation. Let your greatness blossom.”

— Nelson Mandela

“Tzedakah is different than charity. Charity comes from the word charitus, which means heart. Tzedakah comes from the word tzedek, which means justice, so when you are giving tzedakah, you are not just making the world a better place by contributing to hospitals, synagogues, churches, or your favorite cause. You are in a position of bringing justice to the world, becoming as God-like as possible.”

— Celso Cukierkorn

“If we promoted justice and charity among men, we should be playing directly into the Enemy's hands; but if we guide them to the opposite behaviour, this sooner or later produces (for He permits it to produce) a war or a revolution, and the undisguisable issue of cowardice or courage awakes thousands of men from moral stupor. This, indeed, is probably one of the Enemy's motives for creating a dangerous world-a world in which moral issues really come to the point. He sees as well as you do that courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means, at the point of highest reality. A chastity or honesty, or mercy, which yields to danger will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions.”

— C.S. Lewis

“The pagan, or rational, virtues are such things as justice and temperance, and Christianity has adopted them. The three mystical virtues which Christianity has not adopted, but invented, are faith, hope and charity. Now ... the first evident fact, I say, is that the pagan virtues, such as justice and temperance, are the sad virtues, and that the mystical virtues of faith, hope, and charity are the gay and exuberant virtues. And the second evident fact, which is even more evident, is the fact that the pagan virtues are the reasonable virtues, and that the Christian virtues of faith, hope, and charity are in their essence as unreasonable as they can be ... charity means pardoning what is unpardonable, or it is no virtue at all. Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all. And faith means believing the incredible, or it is no virtue at all.”

— G.K. Chesterton

“The only genuine elite is the elite of those men and women who gave their lives to justice and charity.”

— Sargent Shriver

“It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

“Northern white people love the Negro in a sort of abstract way, as a race; through a sense of justice, charity, and philanthropy, they will liberally assist in his elevation.”

— James Weldon Johnson

“Charity begins at home, and justice begins next door.”

— Charles Dickens

“Hunger is not an issue of charity. It is an issue of justice.”

— Jacques Diouf

“Holiday and Holy Day, Christmas is more than a yule log, holly or tree. It is more than natural good cheer and the giving of gifts. Christmas is even more than the feast of the home and of children, the feast of love and friendship. It is more than all of these together. Christmas is Christ, the Christ of justice and charity, of freedom and peace.”

— Francis Spellman

“Charity is the drowning of justice in the craphole of mercy.”

— Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi

“Arbitration is justice blended with charity.”

— Nachman Of Breslov

“Charity should be abolished; and be replaced by justice.”

— Norman Bethune

“Science is experimental, moving forward step-by-step, making trial and learning through success and failure. Is not this also the way of religion, and especially of the Christian religion? The writings of those who preach the religion have from the very beginning insisted that it is to be proved by experience. If a man is drawn towards honour and courage and endurance, justice, mercy, and charity, let him follow the way of Christ and find out for himself. No findings in science hinder him in that way.”

— William Henry Bragg

“The gospel chargeth us with piety towards God, and justice and charity to men, and temperance and chastity in reference to ourselves.”

— John Tillotson

“To desire the common good and strive towards it is a requirement of justice and charity.”

— Pope Benedict XVI

“To heal the breach between the rich and the poor, it is necessary to distinguish between justice and charity.”

— Pope Pius X

“Quite agreeable, of course, was this state of things to those who thought it in their abundant riches the result of inevitable economic laws and accordingly, as if it were for charity to veil the violation of justice which lawmakers not only tolerated but at times sanctioned, wanted the whole care of supporting the poor committed to charity alone.”

— Pope Pius XI

“The fact that people are poor or discriminated against doesn't necessarily endow them with any special qualities of justice, nobility, charity or compassion.”

— Saul Alinsky

“On trade, our hypocrisy is at its most appalling. Trade reform isn't about charity, it's about justice, and this campaign, Trade Justice is an unstoppable idea.”

— Edward De Bono

“This is not about charity, it's about justice ... The war against terror is bound up in the war against poverty - I didn't say that, Colin Powell said that ... In these disturbing and distressing times, surely it's cheaper, and smarter, to make friends out of potential enemies than it is to defend yourself against them..Justice is the surest way to get peace.”

— Edward De Bono

“Not out of mere charity, but because peace in our time requires the constant advance of those principles that our common creed describes; tolerance and opportunity, human dignity and justice.”

— Barack Obama

“Charity depends on the vicissitudes of whim and personal wealth; justice depends on commitment instead of circumstance. Faith-based charity provides crumbs from the table; faith-based justice offers a place at the table.”

— Bill Moyers

“It is not a charity but a right, not bounty but justice, that I am pleading for. The present state of civilization is as odious as it is unjust. It is absolutely the opposite of what it should be, and it is necessary that a revolution should be made in it. The contrast of affluence and wretchedness continually meeting and offending the eye, is like dead and living bodies chained together”

— Thomas Paine

“Charity isn't a good substitute for justice.”

— Jonathan Kozol

“In the moral sphere, every act of justice or charity involves putting ourselves in the other person's place and thus transcending our own competitive particularity.”

— C.S. Lewis

“There is no act of charity that is not accompanied by justice or that permits us to do more than we reasonably can.”

— Vincent De Paul

“Justice comes before charity.”

— Pope John XXIII

“The essence of Theosophy is the perfect harmonizing of the divine with the human in man, the adjustment of his god-like qualities and aspirations, and their sway over the terrestrial or animal passions in him. Kindness, absence of every ill feeling or selfishness, charity, goodwill to all beings, and perfect justice to others as to oneself, are its chief features. He who teaches Theosophy preaches the gospel of goodwill; and the converse of this is true also - he who preaches the gospel of goodwill, teaches Theosophy.”

— H. P. Blavatsky

“What, then, do they want a government for? Not to regulate commerce; not to educate the people; not to teach religion, not to administer charity; not to make roads and railways; but simply to defend the natural rights of man
to protect person and property
to prevent the aggressions of the powerful upon the weak
in a word, to administer justice. This is the natural, the original, office of a government. It was not intended to do less: it ought not to be allowed to do more.”

— Herbert Spencer