Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just.
Interpretation
Justice and power should coexist to ensure fairness and righteousness in society.
This quote emphasizes the importance of aligning justice with power, suggesting that true power should be exercised in a just manner and that justice must have sufficient authority behind it to be effective. It reflects on the interplay between moral righteousness and political or social power, encouraging a balance where neither can exist without the other in a healthy society.
In practice
During a speech about social justice reforms.
If we submit everything to reason our religion will be left with nothing mysterious or supernatural. If we offend the principles of reason our religion will be absurd and ridiculous . . . There are two equally dangerous extremes: to exclude reason, to admit nothing but reason.
Those are weaklings who know the truth and uphold it as long as it suits their purpose, and then abandon it.
Jesus is the God whom we can approach without pride and before whom we can humble ourselves without despair.
If he exalts himself, I humble him. If he humbles himself, I exalt him. And I go on contradicting him Until he understands That he is a monster that passes all understanding.
What use is it to us to hear it said of a man that he has thrown off the yoke that he does not believe there is a God to watch over his actions, that he reckons himself the sole master of his behavior, and that he does not intend to give an account of it to anyone but himself?
It is the fight alone that pleases us, not the victory.
Idealists are people who believe in the potential of human nature for transformation. . . . The most essential attribute of human nature is its mutability and freedom from instinct . . . it is always within our power to change our nature. So it is actually the idealists who are on the mark and the realists who are off base.
...I knew he would be dead, because Dally Winston wanted to be dead and he always got what he wanted.
When white supremacy becomes institutional, it begins to harm the very people who are not simply outside of it because of their race, it begins to harm the folk who look like the folk who want to be in charge. Martin Luther King, Jr., understood this, Malcolm X understood this, James Baldwin really understood this.
Call him Voldemort, Harry. Always use the proper name for things. Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.
The tragedy of life is in what dies inside a man while he lives - the death of genuine feeling, the death of inspired response, the awareness that makes it possible to feel the pain or the glory of other men in yourself.
We must respect the interior laws of creation, of this Earth, to learn these laws and obey them if we want to survive.
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