Justice, not expedience, must be the guiding light. The orator must fix his eye on the polestar of justice, and plough straight thither. The moment he glances toward expediency, he falls from his high estate.
Interpretation
Justice should guide decision-making rather than convenience or expedience.
In this quote, John Peter Altgeld emphasizes the importance of justice as the foundational principle for action and oratory. He warns that when one prioritizes expediency or convenience over true justice, they compromise their integrity and moral standing, leading to a downfall from their noble goals and ideals.
In practice
During a public speech advocating for civil rights, this quote could be used to emphasize the importance of prioritizing justice over political convenience.
You ask whether a woman should be paid the same wages as man when she does the same work? To this, there can be but one answer. If she does the same quantity and quality of work under the same conditions as a man, simple justice requires that she should be paid the same. wages. To deny her this is to deny her justice.
The doctrine that might makes right has covered the earth with misery. While it crushes the weak, it also destroys the strong. Every deceit, every cruelty, every wrong, reaches back sooner or later and crushes its author. Justice is moral health, bringing happiness, wrong is moral disease, bringing mortal death.
Many are observing Ferguson and witnessing the anger, demonstrations, looting and vandalism and calling for quiet. But quiet isn't enough. The absence of noise isn't the presence of justice - and we must demand justice in Ferguson and the other 'Fergusons' around America.
The love of justice and the love of country plead equally the cause of these people, and it is a moral reproach to us that they should have pleaded it so long in vain.
In a lot of ways, civil rights division is the conscience of the Justice Department. You can almost measure what kind of Justice Department you have by what kind of civil rights division that you have.
We ask for nothing that is not ours by right, and herein lies the great moral power of our demand.
Justice, even if slow, is sure.
Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice.
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