Basic Fairness

Sunday, April 27, 2014 – Basic Fairness

These men ask for just the same thing, fairness, and fairness only. This, so far as in my power, they, and all others, shall have. ~ Abraham Lincoln

Capitalism is against the things that we say we believe in – democracy, freedom of choice, fairness. It’s not about any of those things now. It’s about protecting the wealthy and legalizing greed. ~ Michael Moore

For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to everyone that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still. ~ John Maynard Keynes

Politics can be relatively fair in the breathing spaces of history; at its critical turning points there is no other rule possible than the old one, that the end justifies the means. ~ Arthur Koestler

In dwelling, live close to the ground. In thinking, keep to the simple. In conflict, be fair and generous. In governing, don’t try to control. In work, do what you enjoy. In family life, be completely present. ~ Lao Tzu

Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words, it is war minus the shooting. ~ George Orwell

What can you do against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy? ~ George Orwell

If life were fair, Dan Quayle would be making a living asking “Do you want fries with that?” ~ John Cleese

If life was fair, Elvis would be alive and all the impersonators would be dead. ~ Johnny Carson

Equal opportunity means everyone will have a fair chance at being incompetent. ~ Laurence J. Peter

Girls have an unfair advantage over men: if they can’t get what they want by being smart, they can get it by being dumb. ~ Yul Brynner

We used to root for the Indians against the cavalry, because we didn’t think it was fair in the history books that when the cavalry won it was a great victory, and when the Indians won it was a massacre. ~ Dick Gregory

Fair play with others is primarily the practice of not blaming them for anything that is wrong with us. We tend to rub our guilty conscience against others the way we wipe dirty fingers on a rag. This is as evil a misuse of others as the practice of exploitation. ~ Eric Hoffer

The law isn’t justice. It’s a very imperfect mechanism. If you press exactly the right buttons and are also lucky, justice may show up in the answer. A mechanism is all the law was ever intended to be. ~ Raymond Chandler

A court is a place where what was confused before becomes more unsettled than ever. ~ Henry Waldorf Francis

Be fair with others, but then keep after them until they’re fair with you. ~ Alan Alda

Never fight fair with a stranger, boy. You’ll never get out of the jungle that way. ~ Arthur Miller

Take heed of critics even when they are not fair; resist them even when they are. ~ Jean Rostand

It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have been forged in controversies involving not very nice people. ~ Felix Frankfurter

The long and distressing controversy over capital punishment is very unfair to anyone meditating murder. ~ Geoffrey Fisher

Wouldn’t it be much worse if life were fair and all the terrible things that happen to us, come because we actually deserve them? So now I take comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the Universe. ~ Marcus Cole

I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect. ~ Oscar Wilde

Though force can protect in emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration and cooperation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

I think perfect objectivity is an unrealistic goal; fairness, however, is not. ~ Michael Pollan

No matter how corrupt and unjust a convict may be, he loves fairness more than anything else. If the people placed over him are unfair, from year to year he lapses into an embittered state characterized by an extreme lack of faith. ~ Anton Chekhov

“Criminal justice” is what happens after a complicated series of events has gone bad. It is the end result of failure–the failure of a group of people that sometimes includes, but is never limited to, the accused person. ~ Paul Delano Butler

When governments rely increasingly on sophisticated public relations agencies, public debate disappears and is replaced by competing propaganda campaigns, with all the accompanying deceits. Advertising isn’t about truth or fairness or rationality, but about mobilising deeper and more primitive layers of the human mind. ~ Brian Eno

You know what Americans are really sensitive to? Issues of fairness. I think this is a modern phenomenon, born of the civil rights movement. Once you convince Americans that something is basically unfair, you’ve got a winning cause. ~ Gail Collins

Equality is not a concept. It’s not something we should be striving for. It’s a necessity. Equality is like gravity. We need it to stand on this earth as men and women, and the misogyny that is in every culture is not a true part of the human condition. It is life out of balance, and that imbalance is sucking something out of the soul of every man and woman who’s confronted with it. We need equality. Kinda now. ~ Joss Whedon

Being good is easy; what is difficult is being just. ~ Victor Hugo

In the end we are always rewarded for our good will, our patience, fair-mindedness, and gentleness with what is strange. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Life isn’t fair. It’s just fairer than death, that’s all. ~ William Goodman

Life’s not fair. It’s only short ~ Hank Phillippi Ryan

My sister’s bringing up had made me sensitive. In the little world in which children have their existence whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice. It may be only small injustice that the child can be exposed to; but the child is small, and its world is small, and its rocking-horse stands as many hands high, according to scale, as a big-boned Irish hunter. Within myself, I had sustained, from my babyhood, a perpetual conflict with injustice. I had known, from the time when I could speak, that my sister, in her capricious and violent coercion, was unjust to me. I had cherished a profound conviction that her bringing me up by hand, gave her no right to bring me up by jerks. Through all my punishments, disgraces, fasts and vigils, and other penitential performances, I had nursed this assurance; and to my communing so much with it, in a solitary and unprotected way, I in great part refer the fact that I was morally timid and very sensitive. ~ Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

I do not believe in the government of the lash, if any one of you ever expects to whip your children again, I want you to have a photograph taken of yourself when you are in the act, with your face red with vulgar anger, and the face of the little child, with eyes swimming in tears and the little chin dimpled with fear, like a piece of water struck by a sudden cold wind. Have the picture taken. If that little child should die, I cannot think of a sweeter way to spend an autumn afternoon than to go out to the cemetery, when the maples are clad in tender gold, and little scarlet runners are coming, like poems of regret, from the sad heart of the earth—and sit down upon the grave and look at that photograph, and think of the flesh now dust that you beat. I tell you it is wrong; it is no way to raise children! Make your home happy. Be honest with them. Divide fairly with them in everything. ~ Robert G. Ingersoll, The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child

We need to defend the interests of those whom we’ve never met and never will. ~ Jeffrey D. Sachs

You could say to the universe this is not fair. And the universe would say: Oh, isn’t it? Sorry. ~ Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times

Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration – courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and above all, love of the truth. ~ H. L. Mencken

Win or lose, do it fairly. ~- Knute Rockne

I never thought about losing, but now that it’s happened, the only thing is to do it right. ~ Muhammad Ali

Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not. ~ Oscar Wilde

What is hateful to thyself do not do to another. That is the whole Torah. The rest is commentary. ~ Hillel

Grub first, then ethics. ~ Bertolt Brecht